How can i shape my job to suit me better? Job crafting for sustainable employees and organizations

Job redesign is the process through which changes in the jobs, tasks or conditions of individual workers are made with the aim of contributing to their work motivation and performance. Given the unique constellation of working conditions prevalent in each job, traditional top-down job redesign interventions often turn out to be partly ineffective. Currently, organizations recognize that these should be complemented by bottom-up redesign strategies initiated by job incumbents themselves. Job crafting is a socially innovative, proactive strategy for employees to ‘shape their job to suit them better’, thereby benefitting sustainable organizational innovation and the sustainable employability of the workforce. Departing from the Job Demands-Resources Model perspective, an overview of empirical research on the predictors and outcomes of job crafting is given, and the way in which organizations can become more sustainable by stimulating the job crafting behaviour of their employees is explained.