Four Steps To Introduce Job Crafting To Your Team

Hi there and welcome. It’s Kerstin Jatho here from 4Seeds Consulting, a transformational coach who shifts people from languishing to flourishing. In this video, I want to talk to you about the very exciting topic of job crafting.

Jane Dutton and Amy Wrzesniewski in 2001 coined the term job crafting. But it was only in the last 10 years that it has really filtered through into the business world and language. Job crafting is about an individual crafting a task as it suits them best. So, using their skills and talent as well as how they want to do the process and the timing. For many leaders, a very scary idea, because it removes micromanagement, and you are allowing your employee to actually decide how they are going to do this task in their best way.

However, if you do that it brings out the best in the employee, allows them to flourish, increases productivity, engagement, job satisfaction, and innovation. All those things which we are wanting within our teams. I had a colleague that I once tried to explain how to do a certain task. I went through the entire process with her. I showed her step by step how to do it. And then I gave it back to her for her to actually complete it, to see that she had understood it. I was fascinated, because she started the whole activity at a completely different angle, not where I would have started. She started at a process that I was not going to apply. It was not innately where I would’ve gone. However, the end result was the same, if not maybe better. And that was watching job crafting, because she took the task and internalised it on how it works best for her.

And that’s really what job crafting is. It gives employees also a lot of autonomy and freedom on when they want to work, how they want to work, how they want to do it, what skills they want to use, what talents they want to use, what processes they want to use.

All you as a leader have to really do is provide the outline and give them an idea of, “This is what I need done by then,” and then just leave it.

The four steps for a leader to apply in implementing job crafting with your team are:

Step 1

Firstly, give your team a project, provide them with a rough outline of the actual scope of the project.

Step 2

Secondly, discuss with them what are mini milestones that you would like to see along the way of the project. Because you do need to somehow have your finger on the pulse, knowing something is happening. You don’t want to know at the end of the project that nothing has actually happened, but you want to know what the mini milestones are.

Step 3

Thirdly, agree with your team on what level of support they want from you.

Step 4

And fourthly, communicate with your team that it’s their responsibility and their duty to share with you when they need your input. That way you stop micromanaging and leave a lot of the responsibility with the team.

I know job crafting is perhaps a bit scary or uncommon, but it is the way forward. Because if you think about it, in the hybrid workplace, it is all about job crafting. You are not going to know when your employees are doing what because they’re not always physically there.

So, this is a very practical way of starting to introduce them into job crafting and letting them go. And knowing that they actually can do the work. However, that you are there on the side-line to support them if they need you, and that you will always be there to give guidance and advice.