Case Study: Crafting a Better Job

Considers for a moment a midlevel manager at a multi-national foods company, Fatima, who
would seem to be at the top of her career. She’s consistently making her required benchmarks and
goals, she has built successful relationships with colleagues, and senior management have
identified her as “high potential.” But she isn’t happy with her work. She’d be much more
interested in understanding how her organization can use social media in marketing efforts. Ideally,
she’d like to quit and find something that better suits her passions, but in the current economic
environment this may not be an option. So she has decided to proactively reconfigure her current
job.

Fatima is part of a movement toward job “crafting, “which is the process of deliberately
reorganizing your job so that it better fits your motives, strengths, and passions. The core of job
crafting is creating diagrams of day-to-day activities with a coach. Then you and the coach
collaboratively identify which tasks fit with your personal passions, and which tend to drain
motivation and satisfaction. Next the client and coach work together to imagine ways to emphasize
preferred activities and de-emphasize those that are less interesting. Many people engaged in job
crafting find that upon deeper consideration, they have more control over their work than they
thought.

So how did Fatima craft her job? She first noticed that she was spending too much of her time
monitoring her team’s performance and answering team questions, and not enough time working
on the creative projects that inspire her. She then considered how to modify her relationship with
the team so that these activities incorporated her passion for social media strategies, with team
activities more centered around developing new marketing. She also identified members of her
team who might be able to help her implement these new strategies and directed her interactions
with these individuals toward her new goals. As a result, not only has her engagement in her work
increased, but she has also developed new ideas that are being recognized and advanced within the
organization. In sum, she has found that by actively and creatively examining her work, she has
been able to craft her current job into one that is truly satisfying.
Summary:
Craft:
An art, trade, or occupation requiring special skill, especially manual skill

job crafting:
job “crafting, “which is the process of deliberately reorganizing your job so that it better fits your
motives, strengths, and passions.

Introductions:
This case is about a midlevel manager at a multi-national foods company, Fatima, who would seem
to be at the top of her career. She’s consistently making her required benchmarks and goals, she
has built successful relationships with colleagues, and senior management. But she isn’t happy
with her work. She’d be much more interested in understanding how her organization can use
social media in marketing efforts. Ideally, she’d like to quit and find something that better suits
her passions, but in the current economic environment this may not be an option. So she has
decided to proactively reconfigure her current job.

Objectives:
 Identify which tasks fit with employee’s passions, and which tend to drain motivation and
satisfaction.
 Reorganizing your job so that it better fits your motives, strengths, and passions.
 To emphasize preferred activities and de-emphasize those that are less interesting.

So how did Fatima craft her job?

She first noticed that she was spending too much of her time monitoring her team’s performance
and answering team questions, and not enough time working on the creative projects that inspire
her. She then considered how to modify her relationship with the team so that these activities
incorporated her passion for social media strategies, with team activities more centered around
developing new marketing. She also identified members of her team who might be able to help her
implement these new strategies and directed her interactions with these individuals toward her new
goals.
Result:

As a result, not only has her engagement in her work increased, but she has also developed new
ideas that are being recognized and advanced within the organization. In sum, she has found that
by actively and creatively examining her work, she has been able to craft her current job into one
that is truly satisfying.

Questions:

Q: 1 Why do you think many people are in jobs that are not satisfying? Do organizations help
people craft satisfying and motivating jobs, and if not, Why not?

Ans: Fatima is working in a multinational foods company as a midlevel manager, she is

continuously growing in her job by completing all tasks and goals but she is not satisfied with her
job. The reason is, she has a creative mind and has interest to create new strategies about social
media but in the current job she didn’t do this. Yes, organizations help people to craft their current
jobs according to their passions, motives and strengths. She decided to reconfigure her current job.
Fatima and his coach make a chart of day to day activities of the current job. The results show
Fatima engaged most of her time in giving answers and monitoring her team’s performance. Later
on the results will be positive and she creates some great strategies for the social media. Beside
this she has found that by actively and creatively examination her work, she has been able to craft
her current job into one that is truly satisfying.

Q: 2 Think about how you might reorient yourself to your own job. Are the principles of job
crafting described above relevant to your work? Why or Why not?

Ans: As my previous job is concerned the job crafting would be very helpful and desired to
improve the performance and satisfaction of all my team. As second in charge of Accounts, the
majority of time I spent it monitoring, controlling and answering my team member’s questions
from procurement to expedition. Principles of job crafting would change my way of understanding
the work toward focusing on making my team members craft their jobs and put everyone to do
what he likes and feel comfortable with in respecting the organization’s procedures and for the
objective of enhancing job satisfaction and performance. And for my side it would give the
opportunity to develop new skills in technical part as SAP and ERP technology which I had desire
to master that time.

Q: 3 Some contend that job crafting sounds good in principle but is not necessarily available to
everyone. What types of jobs are probably not amenable to job crafting activities?

Ans: It depends on which department. If someone is in charge of public safety and the job of every
members is very important and critical, he should make the goal same as the organizations have
no damages, for example, a fire officer, police, soldier and doctor etc. the types of jobs that are
probably not amenable to job crafting activities include highly routine jobs such as assembly line
worker and customer service representative.

Q: 4 Are there any potential drawbacks to the job crafting approach? How can these concerns be
minimized?

Ans: There would be a conflict if individual’s goals are different from the organization’s goals,
because the organization is no flexible enough to accept all individual’s goals. A potential
drawback to the job crafting approach would be the erosion of focus on the job to be done. The
modification of the job methods may lead to more inefficient ways of completing the task, and
therefore a loss of productivity. These concerns can be minimized by closely supervising the
amount of production.