“Don’t quit your day job” is the advice that very few people are taking. Over the past two years, we have been experiencing the Great Resignation, where many Americans have been quitting their jobs. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics at the end of December 2021 around 4 million Americans left their previous employers. You may be wondering why so many people are no longer clocking in and out. The bottom line is that people don’t want to be stuck in a dead-end job. Many want to pursue their passions and make money doing what they love. Although some people can drop everything and chase their dream job, that’s not feasible for everyone. There are many BAUCE’s who are working a 9 to 5 job to put themselves through school. Some are at a boring desk job to get their foot in the door at Fortune 500 company. If walking away from a job is not an option for you, here is a way you can keep your job and squeeze some enjoyment out of it.
Job crafting is a technique used by many professionals to enhance their work environment. This concept came about through the case studies done by Professor Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton who studied a group of hospital cleaners. The study showed that although the tasks of their jobs were tedious, many cleaners found joy and fulfillment almost every day they left for work. For example, in an interview, they found out that one particular worker spent time re-arranging rooms for patients. When asked why she did this, said that it wasn’t a part of her job to put in the extra care and work, but it was a part of who she was.
Job crafting puts the power back into the hands of the employees and allows them to shape or craft a better job experience. It involves reshaping or redesigning your job so that it, fosters growth and resilience, and leads to job satisfaction. In essence, it’s changing aspects of your job so that you can be happier and more fulfilled in your work.
There are three main types of job crafting
Task crafting: Involves changing, lessening, or adding tasks and responsibilities related to your job.
Relationship crafting: Changing the interaction you have with the people you work with.
Cognitive crafting: This involves changing your perspective or mindset around the work that you do.
How to use job crafting with your current employment
Play to your strengths: Using the technique of task crafting, create a list of all your daily or weekly tasks. From this list, which task can you drop or delegate to someone else. Think about the task that you do that aren’t related to your job description. Once you’ve cleared out the unnecessary, think about a task you can add in, that plays to your strengths.
Change your work relationships: If the people or the environment is causing you to dread your job, then this is an area you can craft. This might look like making the effort to connect more with your colleagues and build a relationship with them. Let’s say you are working on the marketing team; you could try collaborating with the production team. With this collaboration, you can better understand the product and how to market it.
Change your mindset: What dull task do you do every day that might feel boring but makes a difference? For example, if you do sales calls to get someone to buy a new internet packet. Every phone call is an opportunity to help someone save money. Working in the front office at a hotel gives you the opportunity to make guests’ first moments at the hotel memorable and relaxing.
With careers, and jobs taking up a large portion of our lives, it’s almost necessary that we spend those hours doing meaningful work. As Marc Anthony said, “If you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life.”
