UM File # 4074

Background
Many employees feel stuck, dissatisfied, or disengaged at work. With today's busy schedules, even employees who are happy with their jobs often overlook opportunities for shaping their jobs to better suit their personalities and interests. Both satisfied and dissatisfied employees could benefit from creating a better fit between their jobs and what drives them personally. But how does someone go about identifying how to accomplish this? Individuals and organizations had few places to turn for tools to help in this area.

Technology Description
The Job Crafting Exercise™ is a tool that helps people identify resourceful ways to make their jobs more engaging and more fulfilling. The exercise encourages people to view their job as a flexible set of building blocks rather than a fixed list of duties. Using this perspective, people create a visual plan for redesigning their job to better fit their motives, strengths, and passions. The visual and creative nature of the Job Crafting Exercise enables people to ask and answer a number of questions about their jobs in a clear, concise, and enjoyable way. As a result, people find that the exercise helps them develop newfound positive attitudes about their jobs, innovative insights and ideas on how to improve their lives at work, and resourceful solutions to problems that they did not see prior to the exercise. The Job Crafting Exercise comes as an instruction booklet that contains all the necessary supplies (besides a writing instrument). One booklet is needed per participant.

Applications
• Professional development workshops
• Self-development
• One-on-one coaching
• Job enrichment seminars
• Classroom teaching

Advantages
• Visually engaging, hands-on, easy-to-use
• Based on cutting-edge research
• Problem identification and resolution
• Both short- and long-term benefits
• Fosters creative thinking and resourcefulness

File Number: 4074 

Web site: http://www.jobcrafting.org