Does Job Crafting Increase Sustainable Employability? A cross-sectional study regarding the influence of job crafting on sustainable employability and the mediating role of Burn-Out and Work Engagement.

Abstract

The average life expectancy has strongly increased over the past 70 years and this trend is expected to continue. As newcomers cannot make up for the higher share of older employees, it becomes increasingly important that employees continue working until their retirement age, but this is not the case. Therefore, the remaining question is how to increase the sustainable employability? Theoretical background and empirical findings have shown that optimizing the work environment by proactively changing job characteristics could be a promising element in job design. This is called job crafting. Research has shown that job crafting may reduce burn-out risk and improve work engagement, which indirectly increases sustainable employability. The relationship between job crafting and sustainable employability is rarely examined and therefore an interesting topic to explore. In this study 191 participants were included. All participants were 18 years or older and employed when filling in the questionnaire. This study showed that individuals, who crafted their job more, were more engaged and had a higher sustainable employability than individuals who crafted their job less. No relationship was found between job crafting and burn-out. Finally, when examining mediation of the relationship between job crafting and sustainable employability by burn-out or work engagement, there was no relationship found. This study showed that job crafting could help organisations to increase sustainable employability, which is not only good for the organisations, but also for the employees and society.