Job Crafting: Changing and adapting work as one piece of the puzzle for a sustainable working life

Sammanfattning: Introduction: This thesis focuses on job crafting as one way to increase work-related well-being and enable people to extend their working lives. The studies included were conducted within two different contexts, namely the manufacturing industry and public healthcare. These two contexts struggle with, for example, challenging working environments and staff shortages, as well as enabling older workers to extend their working lives. Job crafting, an active form of job redesign, can be defined as employees actively changing the physical and cognitive boundaries of work to better suit the person’s abilities and desires. These kinds of bottom-up-driven strategies to change and adapt work have been found to increase employee well-being and productivity, as well as reduce staff turnover. According to previous research, job crafting thus has positive effects on both people at work and their organizations. Previous research also shows that organizational structures as well as individual factors can facilitate and enhance employees’ job crafting. There is, however, a lack of studies focusing on how to best promote and facilitate employee-driven job crafting in practice. Aim: This thesis aimed to explore job crafting as one part of a health-promoting and extended working life. Job crafting was analysed in relation to an extended working life among blue-collar workers in one company in the manufacturing industry, and in relation to being able to work and feel well within public healthcare and manufacturing industry. Methods: Data was collected at one global manufacturing company and different workplaces within Swedish public healthcare. In the manufacturing company, data was collected from 100 blue-collar workers as part of an age management project focusing on factors influencing employees’ retirement decisions. The respondents represented older employees in three different countries: Sweden, the Netherlands, and France. These respondents completed a questionnaire and participated in semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data was descriptively analysed and the qualitative data was analysed with content analysis. Within public healthcare, a questionnaire was first administered to 421 healthcare employees at two times (T1-T2), six to eight months apart. A response rate of 59% provided data from 250 respondents. Secondly, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 healthcare employees and five managers. The quantitative data from the survey was analysed with SEM analysis, whereas the qualitative data was analysed with reflexive thematic analysis. Findings: Factors that influenced blue-collar workers’ decisions about retirement and an extended working life included perceived health and economic situation, task characteristics, support from colleagues and managers, work autonomy and work setup, and national pension schemes. Job crafting strategies that were perceived as health-promoting among blue-collar workers included adapting work whenever possible, asking colleagues for help to finish work, and changing their way of thinking about work. For some, these strategies were considered as contributing to being able to extend working life. Among the healthcare employees, health-promoting job crafting strategies included asking for new assignments and opportunities for professional development, organizing work in close cooperation with others, and involving patients in the planning of daily activities. These strategies were derived from different motives, including crafting for their development, crafting for a common good, crafting for manageability, and crafting for meaningfulness in work. Working conditions such as having support from managers and colleagues, and formal autonomy in work, facilitated job crafting among the healthcare employees. The health-promoting crafting strategies were connected to increasing work-related sense of coherence through comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. Job crafting strategies and motives were said to change over time, for example in relation to work-life balance and work experience, among respondents in both contexts. Within both contexts, it was also indicated that a strong inner drive for personal development sometimes outweighed hindering structural conditions when employees crafted for their development and manageability in work. Conclusions: Factors that influenced the retirement decisions were found on different levels within the blue-collar workers’ work context. Perceived antecedents of health-promoting job crafting among the respondents within both contexts in this thesis were found in organizational structures, workplace conditions, and individual factors. Job crafting motives and strategies were also said to change over time and were influenced by both individual factors and workplace-related conditions. From the findings in this thesis, it is suggested to further explore how to facilitate job crafting on the different work-system levels, as well as to plan job crafting interventions directed to healthcare employees and older blue-collar workers within the manufacturing industry.