Job Crafting: How To Be Happier At Work
Updated: 4/10/20
An increasing number of people are unhappy at work. In fact, a 2019 survey revealed almost half of the workforce is dissatisfied. Many feel unfulfilled, uninspired and unrecognized. And realities like raising children, hefty mortgages and a tough economy, can make the reality of finding a new job seem like a pipe dream. Regardless of whether you're on the job search, making a switch, or happy in your current role, it can be helpful to reflect on what does light you up and what doesn't.
What does make people happy at work? Science on what motivates us reveals three main aspects:
1. Autonomy - the ability to direct our own lives
2. Mastery - the drive the get better at something that matters
3. Purpose - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves
How does your current or past job look through these lenses? Regardless of where you fall on the job satisfaction spectrum, increased happiness is closer than you think. And you can get there by shifting your focus and making a few small tweaks. What is this work magic It’s called job crafting.
What is Job crafting?
Job crafting essentially means turning the job you have into the job you want. The founder of positive psychology—Martin Seligman—offers another definition:
"Using your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something much larger than you are.”
Job crafting is highlighting and focusing on your favorite aspects of your job (or identifying what you’d like to be doing) and doing more of that to feel fulfilled. And it starts with little shifts. Shifts in what you do, who you do it with and how you perceive your work. With this technique, people in all different job functions and industries are crafting their way toward happier and more inspiring days at work. Let's look at some examples.
Jennifer is a waitress at a high-end Philadelphia restaurant. She works night and after every shift, she feels exhausted from the late-night schedule and drained from being on her feet for hours at a time. What does she love about her job? Talking with people and human connection. So at work, she goes out of her way to make the social aspect a bigger part of her job. She visits each of her tables more often to make sure her customers are satisfied. She also makes a point to check in with her co-workers, to ask how they're doing and learn about their life outside of work. By ‘crafting in’ more of what she loves, the physically tiring and stressful aspects of her job become more tolerable.
Or let’s look at Derek. He works in a high-stress, faced-paced operations role at a tech company in Manhattan. Every day when he leaves work, he's exhausted and has little energy left for what he loves—creative expression. So when Derek hears that the marketing team at his company is looking for new ideas to create more engaging and creative social media content, he jumps at the opportunity. He 'crafts in' a task that allows him to be more creative at work: brainstorming ideas for the marketing team and using his creative writing background in the process.
Different ways to craft your job
While there are countless ways to craft your job, studies show three common ways that can be a great place to start. As we cited in the examples with Jennifer and Derek, ‘task-crafting' involves changing or shifting the to-dos in your job description. Neither could give up the tiring aspects of their job, but what they could do is add in more of a task they love—socializing with people or being more creative. By doing good work on what you love—no matter how small the task—you may find more assignments that make you happy start coming your way.
A second way to lean toward happiness, is through ‘relationship-crafting’. This means reshaping the type and nature of the interactions you have at work. This means collaborating more with people that energize and inspire or making time to check in with the people on teams who are doing more of the work that excites you.
A third way to craft? Cognitively. By mentally reframing your job, you can feel happier even though none of your tasks have changed. Let's look at a well-known example.
At a hospital, there are two janitors with the exact same job. Janitor A sees himself simply as the person who cleans dirty rooms. He shows up, does what's expected of him, feels uninspired, and drags through his day. Janitor B sees himself as a healer. He says his work is to create spaces where patients can heal. He makes a point to check in with each patient in every room he visits. And though he does the exact same work as Janitor A, he instead views his job as an act of service. In a simple daily reframing, Janitor B has created a more fulfilling and inspiring job.
A path to more fulfilling days
Most of us know what makes us happy, but how to get there (and how to begin crafting) will look different depending on your job and day-to-day responsibilities. It can be valuable to first spend some time reflecting on past and current jobs and the aspects you enjoyed most. Here are a few prompts and questions to help get the wheels turning.
1. Pay attention to your emotions throughout your workday. Write down the tasks and activities you do and how you feel about them. Which give you energy and which drain you?
2. Analyze a few days in a row at work. What do you do regularly and what are your patterns?
It can be easy to check through your daily tasks without stopping to notice how you actually feel about them, so these two steps alone might be very enlightening.
3. After you've analyzed what you do and how you feel about it, you can start crafting. What are ways you could improve the parts you're not happy with?
For example: If you're stuck working alone in less collaborative work like writing or analyzing data and you'd rather be socializing, how could you build in more social time? Does just working near people energize you? If so, perhaps you could move your solo work into a more populated area. Or maybe you find ways to split up your work time more with social breaks, checking in with co-workers.
4. Ask yourself other probing questions like:
How much do I interact with co-workers, clients, customers, supervisors? Is it enough, too much or too little?
What skills or talents of mine am I using? Which am I not using?
Now it's your turn
You may already have some ideas brewing. Job crafting is an empowering way to help you feel happier and more fulfilled in the place where you might spend 40+ hours of your week. It's important to note that job crafting is not meant to be subversive or covert, but rather is a way to have an open, productive dialogue about harnessing your energy and skills to help your organization meet their goals. With benefits like better work performance as well as increased engagement and enthusiasm, organizations have a lot to gain from you taking charge of your own happiness at work.
Resources: https://positivepsychology.com/job-crafting/
Comments