E070: Job Crafting

This is the world of work podcast with James and James, hi. This

is James and just before we start this episode, I wanted to remind you that you can support us via Patreon on our website at WWW dot, World of work.io. Forward, slash support. Okay, let's get on with the episode. Hello. This is James, and this is Jane, and here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast. It's exciting. It's a Friday afternoon. The sun shining in Edinburgh. What are we speaking about

today? Jane, so sun shining in edmre, it really is. I know it's a Friday afternoon. Can you tell we're also sounding quite hyper? So today we're talking about job crafting. Okay? Job crafting is basically saying that we find ways to shape or craft our jobs to either increase our productivity or to make us more engaged with it, or for a variety of reasons. So we're going to talk all about where the original research and what the types of job crafting are, and also a little bit about who might do it and why cool,

looking forward to it. In the meantime, though, just a quick shout out. You guys can get in touch with us if you want to. We're on Twitter, at the WoW podcast, or we're emailable Hello at World of work.io, and we're on Facebook and LinkedIn and places like that, so you can get in touch with us there, and if you get a chance, it'll be good to have you guys write a little review that's always helpful for us. Yeah, particularly at the moment if you listen on Apple, yeah, yeah. Just saying, you know. And this episode is going to follow a usual sort of process. So we'll have some definitions, a bit of research list of a week, some stories, some final thoughts, and then we'll get out of your way

for the weekend. Yeah, sorry. I'm really happy. So for those of you who don't know, it is, we're recording this in February, and it has just started to get lighter. Yeah, right. So it was four o'clock, and I looked out the window and it wasn't pitch black. So excited. Okay, James, you're gonna take us away with some definitions. Yeah,

I'd love to. So I'll kick us off with some definitions. We've got three of them. The first one we're gonna talk about is job design. And job design is the process of establishing employees roles and responsibilities and the systems and procedures that they should use or follow. And that's from the CIPD. Next up, we've got job crafting. So job crafting captures the active changes employees make to their own job designs in ways that can bring about numerous positive outcomes, including engagement, job satisfaction, resilience and thriving. And that's from some work in 2007 by Berger toll, which is some of the core seminal work in relation to this field. And then the last one we're going to bring in for definitions is micro crafting. So micro crafting, what's that about? Well, micro crafting is really saying that micro job crafting involves small or micro changes people proactively make to personalize or shape their approach to work through their actions, their interactions or their perceptions, and which typically takes less than 12 minutes a day or an hour a week in total. So it sounds pretty micro, doesn't it? Jen's smiling at me. We're going to leave it there on that one. Yeah, we'll come back for that cool. All right,

so let's dive straight into the research rather Yay. Okay, so a couple last couple of episodes, we've tried to start our research round ups with why we're talking about this. And I think that's really helpful, right? Why does it matter? Why should you care? Yeah, so, and I think with your crafting, it's really important we talk about that. Yeah, so, why does it matter? Why does it matter? Well, there's the little question, and then there's the big question, right? There always is with us, yeah? So, on a really basic level, people need income to live, right? And many people are doing work that does not necessarily satisfy lots of their needs, but it does to some extent, meet their financial needs. Yeah, everyone has that. And what that means is people are doing jobs and spending up to a quarter of their life at work, and it whilst maybe helping pay the bills might not necessarily be satisfying some of their intellectual, emotional, mental, physical needs, yeah, you know. And ultimately, if people are unsatisfied, that's not great for them. It's not great for their family, the people that around them. It's not great work and their team, and it's not great for the organization or the community that they're a member of. So a kind of matters that people have, to some extent, some satisfaction or some comfort, or some comfort with what their job is from an organization's point of view. Let's face it, organizations particularly profit making ones they want. They need to be competitive, and they need to manage their productivity. And at the moment, the buzz word, the Holy Grail, is employee engagement. Oh, yeah, it's not a huge amount of agreement, I would say at the moment about what employee engagement is. And I think there's, I think there's a very interesting question about productivity generally, and we'll come on to that later. Later. But I also think that very practically, from a manager's perspective, it's not fun managing people who are not satisfied at work. Yeah, they're unhappy. It's awful. Nothing less fun. And I also think it matters, because sometimes we want to find the things we can do to make things okay or a little bit better. The other thing, I think that's quite we talked about this fair bit like there's an increasing need, desire, want to have more flexible working, certainly in

the Western world, isn't it? Yeah, for all kinds of reasons, for lots of reasons, very much

so quite often, because two parents working, right? So there's lots of more flexibility. But also, people are changing the way they think of their lives. Parents need more care. All that sort of stuff's going on with so therefore, I think there are more people who are where they find a job that meets those needs, yeah, right. If you think back to career anchors, it's your work life balance, yeah, and that sort of stuff. And I think therefore they, they sometimes stay in jobs longer, or stay in jobs that don't fit everything, because it works in so many other reasons. Good enough in many ways. Yeah, yeah, good enough. So I think there's more of it, and I think that's why it's really important we talk about this stuff, and also shine a little lens on, from my perspective, a little conversation, just little one about, is this really, you know, just dodging a bullet, about whether these jobs are the right jobs. Or for whom? Do you mean, for

whom, for the organization, for the person, and why do they need? Crafting and our jobs, you know, and our job descriptions a little bit out of date, yeah, whose obligation is it really to do that crafting anyway? I mean, where does

that so, as always. And you know, my ex lecturer will be so proud as always, the question is, you know, whose responsibility is this? Yeah, and why are we laying the blame at the employee again anyway? So why might people job craft really practical. We've talked a little bit about it, but there's some really practical things. There's things like as a coping strategy, so to alleviate boredom, yeah, I'll tell you a story about that later, to improve individual relationships, like another individual one with their line manager, for example, if they don't have a great I mean, they might start changing the way they do things to better meet the needs of that person, their own passion, their own purpose, wanting to feel more linked to things better, linking with the organization's purpose, because they don't feel like their job fits or matters as much. But also things like increasing work life balance, increasing community personal development needs. And I really there's two that I particularly enjoy. One is increasing absorption. So absorption is basically how absorbed you are in your work, right? It sounds like paper towel or something, doesn't it

there? No, but I think maybe, but so there's one of the other ones is restructuring the order of tasks to suit your flow. Yeah, right. So both, both of those, right, are about being in your sweet spot. In sport, it would be described as in the zone. Yeah, right. And so there's lots of reason people job craft. Some of those are really, like, quite intrinsic, and some of them very practical, yeah. And there's a couple of things that you should know about people who job craft. It tends to be the people who are more proactive, okay, who will think about doing this and do it off their own backs, which is not a massive surprise, yeah. And, of course, that links to maybe a sense of agency and control and all those types of Yeah.

And I think that's really, really important, and I suspect you would see differences. I haven't read the research, but I suspect you'd see differences in different industries. And I think there's something else though, like, I read some of this stuff, and it was like, ah, these the people are more likely to do it, the people who are more likely to Job craft are the people who want to stay in a job that doesn't meet all their needs. I think it's as simple as that. Now, those could be lots of things. Those could be because they're not meeting their purpose driven needs. It could be because they can't fit it in around work. It could because they're bored, and then they're procrastinators, unless they're engaged or they're extroverts and all their workers introverts or whatever it is, right? But fundamentally, what we're saying is it's not going to work if the person doesn't want to stay, yeah, but if the person does want to stay and wants to stay in that team or that job or that organization, then then working with them, yeah, to help them figure out how they can do the job with some sense of satisfaction. Yeah, is a proof,

right? You know, a question, no brainer. Well, and

there is a bit of this slightly, slightly makes me feel like, is it? Is it? You know, it's stay in the blooming obvious, as my mother would say. So something's not that great. Why don't you make it a bit better? Yeah,

what I do, like is the types of job crafting the burger out about 10 years ago. And so they talk about, predominantly, they talk focus on three things, task crafting, relationship crafting and cognitive crafting. Okay, so when you think about job, you went talked about the definition of job crafting, which is about making changes to your job design to help you achieve more from your job, right? And whether that's about satisfaction or productivity or productivity or whatever, yeah, whatever that direction. So what bergenel argue is that people do it in one of broadly three ways, task crafting, and that is fundamentally changing what you do right, or changing the way that you do the things you do. Yeah? So your actual activities, right? Your actual activities, and they've got a lovely little quote from their paper. Are about someone who they would argue, this is what they're doing, task crafting, which is, I really enjoy online tools and Internet things, so I've really tailored that aspect of the written job description and really upped it because I enjoy it. It gives me an opportunity to play around, explore tools and web applications, and I get to learn, which is one of my favorite things. That's nice, right? Which is a really lovely way of someone taking a little bit of ownership of what they do and saying, you know, what, if we give out information, we could be doing it loads of different ways, right? We can do ad campaigns. We can do online campaigns. We could go out and do workshops, yeah? Or we can share data online, and what's going to help the organization? Because I think I'm, you know, it's plain,

where can I add value? Yeah, what am I good at?

What do I enjoy? Yeah, and I think it's pretty straightforward, but it also might mean taking on extra tasks, which obviously then has some challenges, because quite often people are like, Hey, take on the next role that'll keep you happy, but you still do your old job. And I think the other thing is that they sometimes do stuff around helping out across teams, which can bring a bit benefit organizations, but also can then make your own team politely neglect Yeah, type stuff, yeah. And so task crafting, it absolutely makes complete sense. It kind of again, feels obvious, but I think a lot of the site, a lot of the science or art in it is building a relationship with your manager and your team to allow you to do that. So the second is relationship crafting. So it's who you do it with, who you do it to, who you do it near, who you're around. And I think one of the really great examples from the paper was around customer service, people who wanted to in order to be able to explain to customers why things were going wrong. They wanted to spend time in other departments, right? They're sociable. They like building relationships. They want to understand stuff because they find it easier to talk about stuff. So they made the argument that if you let me spend a bit of time, then I'm going to be able to live about customer service. Yeah, great. It's Win, win for everyone, right? But it's about understanding. That for that person, their job is not simply transaction on doesn't get broken down to bullet points of job descriptions. It's about seeing the organization as a whole and the relationships within it. And then the third one is what they refer to as cognitive crafting. Oh, and this is about how you think about your job, brain, brain crafting. Brain crafting. So, so I tell me about cognitive crafting is pretty straightforward, and it's about, you know, you know the old story about the NASA cleaner? Oh, yeah, I'm not cleaning forwards. I'm putting a man on the moon. Yeah. What are you doing? That's cognitive that is cognitive crafting in extreme, right? Yeah. So one of the examples that they gave is about a baker who changed the way that they thought they thought about their role to being a culinary artisan. Oh, nice. And much more thought about feedback from customers as a learning process so that they can improve their craft, and they could deliver a better product, and everything was a bigger picture of the whole and I feel really complex about this, right? Because I love it. I know hands are clenching, right? I've done it myself. I do it all the time. I coach people, and I mentor people to think about things differently, to change their perspective on their own work and their own strengths and weaknesses, but at the same time, I can't help but feel that if you're not really careful, this becomes a well, if you're not happy in your job, that's your problem, and you just need to think about it differently. And I feel like I get scared that could get reduced and weaponized. Yeah, and you

know what? When we talk about tales from a keyboard, I'm going to reflect on something kind of similar to that. But I think there's a piece in here about the account a bit. Accountability, and I think there's also a piece in here about the malleability of humanity. And when do you decide that actually, it's not about me, it's about something else, and this, this very much, is, you know, it's about me as the employee. What do I do? How do I fit into the world? And sometimes it's not your place to fit in, sometimes it's your place to change the world chain.

Well, I do think there's a question of, you know, how long do you put up with stuff that's just not comfortable for you? Yeah? And I think it depends on your role in the organization and your level of responsibility. And I worry when I see it attributed and addressed to people who may be the NASA Ed, right, yeah. Is he paid? Well, hopefully, yeah, is it? Is people polite to him. That's, you know, does he have good relationships with people? That's probably as important and his cognitive crafting of how he thinks about his

job. And, you know, with this, I think there's also an obligation to others, because the more that you accept things yourself, and you know, sort of bend yourself out of shape to fit in through cognitive crafting in your own role, the harder you make it for other people not to do that? Yes, right? And so I think there's a little bit of collective endeavor, if it's important, in this as well, but that takes us way off a different route that isn't, I

know we're almost on industrial relations. Definitely leave that for today, but I do look coming back to the original without question, to the point where I'm glad they've done this work to show it and shine a. Light on it. This is what we do. We do it all the time. We think about our work. So I work a lot in the nonprofit sector, and there were lots of my job that I wanted to smash my head against a wall because of the paperwork or whatever, but I always framed it within the I am navigating this on behalf of a team of people who are trying to do a better thing, their purpose, right? And that makes you get through it. We do this all the time. We adapt the way we think about stuff. So I just want to spend a minute just before we finish up on a couple of two other things. One is, you mentioned it in the definitions micro crafting. So I came across micro crafting in a couple of places, and I've included it really because I'm not sure what I think of it. That just feels like a buzzword. So I'm going to give you some examples of things where people micrograph. Remember it's meant to be 12 minutes a day, right? Yeah. And it's things like spending time tidying up the electronic client notes, if they felt they were not clear, sending a notice thanks to a colleague once a day, investing extra time with a colleague, changing the format of a meeting from a sit down one to a walking meeting, shadowing a colleague who was spilled with a specific task, reclaiming lunch break and setting up a lunch date with a colleague

each week. That was a nice deep breath in you did there in that section? Transition? Spoke words,

yeah. So I volunteer for new project. I mean, I just, I, are these micro crafting job? Crafting is this just life and how we get on with stuff, with what stuff anyway? So look, I I understand that weaving. So the research is interesting. And CIPD found that actually people making tiny adjustments really does make a difference, sure, and I think there is a very interesting thing about people having the freedom to feel they can do their job in their own way, in their own time. Autonomy. Think back to self determination theory Dan Pink, you know, people have autonomy over the way they do their work. They are more likely to be engaged and get that and I also think if you encourage people to think about doing it differently, but I also think it smacks a little bit of organizations that just don't ever change stuff, right? Because all good organizations and teams I've worked and we've changed stuff all the time, crafting constantly, how we do our work, because we're trying to play to everyone's strengths, but also we're trying to get the work done. Well, yeah, so I'm not sure about that. And then the last thing I wanted to cover was, so okay, you. This is you, right? This is absolutely you me as a person, not you as a person, person, listening, right? You realize you are not as satisfied as you could be, but you are definitely staying in this job, right? And this is what you want, so you're going to Job craft. And firstly, it is an actual thing, right? It isn't just a thing. It's actually a sit down and think about it, thing. And I've got three questions for you that these are mine? No, there's nothing clever about them, but there are three questions that I would encourage you to think about. So the first is, Are you sure you're not just avoiding a job change, right? And if you are, that's okay, but be honest about that and make yourself comfortable with intentionality. Don't pretend that you you have a reason, because quite often we stay in things far too long. Yep. And we look back when we change, and we go, oh, we should have moved. Yeah, years ago, I remember a probably terrible statistic about people on average, 18 months too long, right? I was like, is that all nonprofit decades? Sorry, nonprofit. I love you. I love you. Number two, what existing space do you have to Job craft? And when I say space, I mean, what autonomy do you have in the way you do your work? How much authority do you have about your take day? How much authority permission do you have about who you work with, where you sit, which meetings you go to, what tasks you do, what you delegate, what you share with other people? And get really clear what permissions you do have in your head and think about what permissions would help you do that if you don't have them. And then the question is, how can you create more space? So how can you have a conversation with your line manager or your team and say, You know what, I am struggling and I am sick, and you know, it's not an excuse to get rid of all the boring work. But you know, I used to work with someone who loves spreadsheets. You still do. I used to work with someone different who loves spreadsheets and loved making them really neat as well. And, you know, I used to feel like I was dumping work on them. But that person quite, I think, quite liked that they can make my work look better than it did. Well, no, I think she, I think genuinely, this person was like, was like, this now functions far better. We're gonna mess up an efficiency drug, whatever. So, so I think, yeah, those are, those are my three questions. Are you sure you're not just avoiding a job? Change what existing space and autonomy do you have to craft within your job? And then how can you create more space? Because actually forget, if you not forget your crafting, that's not fair. Forget all the research and everything for one just one moment. Ultimately, if we have autonomy and a plan for how we want to do our work that will suit us, we're probably going to be more productive for our organizations. And if you don't feel that's happening, it's probably worth a conversation somewhere. Yeah, it's good. Okay, so that's my everything I've got for three. It's Roundup. Pretty exciting. I liked it. It's a good topic. You

don't like it nearly as much as you've got your list coming up, though. No, that's true. Of course. I'm

going to take us into the list of a week then, and we got a very special moment. We're going to say our first rude word on the world of work podcast. Who's going to say it? I

don't know too much. I think I'm going to just do it. So our list of a week is going to talk about bullshit jobs. There we go. That felt kind of good. I think that just because we're rebels, yes, it's because it's a book title, and it's going to be BS jobs from now on. So what we're going to do in our list of a week is we're going to explore some things from David graber's book. David graber's Professor of Anthropology at the LSE London School of Economics, who wrote originally, a paper years ago about BS jobs, and then that's grown into a book, and he's done a lot of work and had great amounts of sort of input and feedback from people around the world. And we're going to touch on the types of jobs that he describes as BS jobs, and that he's had sort of fed into him from people about their experiences, which he's categorized as different types of BS jobs. And we're doing this because, one, it's really interesting and fun. Two, because these jobs, these Bs jobs, are the types of jobs that people might want to craft and change, right? So in all of these roles, people might want to try and change their tasks. They might want to try and craft their relationships. And my guess is that a lot of these people are looking or are, you know, using some sort of cognitive adjustment to be happy in these roles as well. So what we're going to do, what I'm going to do is just tell you about those five different types of jobs that he's identified as BS jobs, and I'd say, Go and read his paper or grab his book or listen to him, because it's, it's interesting. So coming up, what's number one? Jane got to know? Number one is flunkies. Yeah. So flunkies are people who are employed only to make their bosses seem important. So in some instances, this can be, you know, something like a receptionist who sits in an office where the phone rings once a day, right? And that's kind of like, you know, they're only really there to help their boss feel powerful. But in other levels, you get, you know, sort of bureaucratic roles where people start to bring in assistance. So you get, like, a non executive director in a large organization who doesn't maybe have as much decision making and influence as others in terms of capital spend and things like that, but still builds out a large team of assistants and people to support them. And that doesn't always and it's

a perk sometimes, right? That's how they lure people. I know someone made names who got a job offer and they said, and they were like, no, no, no. And then they went, we'll throw you in an EA three days a week, Assistant, three days a week. And I'm like, Do you need an EA? And they're like, I don't know something I can do with, yeah,

exactly. So that's a flunky, but flunky is somebody who is employed to make somebody feel important. And there's millions of these people out there. Role type number two is called the duct taper, right? And duct tapers are employees who treat symptoms, not problems. Like, for example, maybe customer service reps or paid to apologize when a repair worker doesn't show up on schedule, right? So instead of, you know, say you're say you're working somewhere and you're in a large organization, and maybe you know you've got a supply that's not coming in, and you phone up, and what you do is you complain, and you say, Sorry, my thing's not here yet. And the person says, Yes, I know, I'm sorry. We're working on that. You're top of our priority list. We'll have somebody with you right away. And then, you know, somebody else calls them, and so on. But instead of having more people actually doing the job of going out and fixing things or just fixing the system, or just fixing the system, yeah,

then you've got people who are these sort of intermediaries apologizing. And again, there are lots of people like this is people who you know, do utilities

companies in the UK, yeah, massive. I reckon I've spent over 15 hours on the phone in the last year to duck tapers in the utilities, yeah, and I feel so sorry, yeah. This is not a criticism of them. Absolutely,

these jobs, yeah. So that's duck tapers next. And this is one of my personal favorites. This is the box tickers. Now, box tickers are people who create reports that never get used. And having worked in large organizations, this stuff happens all the time, and somebody decides that some reports are an important thing, or actually, in my experience, what happens is generally, somebody senior asks for a piece of ad hoc information once because they're curious about it, and it percolates down through the organization, and before you know it, it's a monthly process, and every month you need to create that same thing, and then somebody says, well, it would be better if we added a bit more information, and you create it, and it gets sent out, but nothing, nothing happens as a result. There's no decision made. There's no Well, there's nothing, right? It's just a lot of data wasted. My

advice to anyone who looks at that and goes, Wow, that's my job. My advice to anyone seriously, this is the moment where you have to ask that first question to my just avoiding changing my job, yeah? It's because it's the absolute difficulty of motivating yourself when you know your work is worth nothing. Yeah, yeah.

And a little top tip, just put a password on it and see if anybody asks for it, if you're sending out a report. And you know, probably, like 95% of people won't ask for a password, and then, you know, they're not even open in it. So there we go. Sorry, that might sound a bit harsh for all the people creating reports, but it's just something that might be worth thinking about next. We've got goons. We're like a goon, don't we a bit of a henchman. So goons are people who go and they go around and they use tactics like aggression and manipulation to attract customers, and it's almost like a coercive, coercive way to drive business. And again, this isn't really necessary, and it's not a nice job for a lot of people to have some people like it, but generally it's not, not nice. But really, the point here is that, you know, with goons, what they're doing is they're creating a need where there is no need through aggressive tactics. And that's pretty unsatisfying, isn't it? I mean, maybe I just sway to the other side

of goons. No, no. I think it's not only unsatisfying, but fundamentally, if you are about got your wits about you, and you are a active middle member of society. Yeah, fine. But actually, quite a lot of the goon stuff is targeted as people who don't get it to older people, yeah, aggressive phone sales, stuff like that, all that sort of

stuff. But also, like, I don't know if it sits within goons or a little broader, but you get whole job classes like lots of corporate lawyers who exist because there are other corporate lawyers who might be aggressive, right? So within this whole world, you get industries where people grow because other people in those industries exist. So if you get particularly

that's literally the example they use, corporate lawyers who sit there saying, I mean, I understand the company needs me, but they only need me because the other guys got we all just sit down. Just sit down tools.

Yeah, and another one that's great is divorce lawyers, right? I mean, like divorce lawyers that get more and more expensive, and if one party has an expensive divorce lawyer, the next person has an expensive divorce lawyer, and the outcome is nothing but a division of assets, right? There's no productivity or no output, except everyone's losing, except the lawyer. Everyone's losing without question, and the

lawyer has a BS job, and that's fine. Anyway, a bit of a rant. There. Next one. Number five, the task master. So task masters manage workers who don't need supervision. Sounds good, right?

I think, I think this is probably of all of them. This is the one where I feel like, certainly in the UK, it is where we could make the fastest inroads to productivity. I really do. I think if you could free up that pay everyone who's in that team a little bit more the way that some of the it's happening with some of the self managed nurses teams in the scandig countries. They organize themselves. Oh, is it Holland? Holland? Okay? And they've got groups of nurses that, instead of being managed, they organize all their own shift rotors, they coordinate all of their information, and they just get paid a bit more, and they don't have a manager, yeah? And they're doing fine, yeah? The danger comes when you get organizations that try and put too many people in a team, and that's silly. Just don't just have smaller teams with no managers, because the whole reason that they're making bigger teams is because they don't, can't afford as many managers as they have, so just get

rid of them. All right, so I'm just going to run through that again. This is five types of roles that we think might be experiencing or benefiting from job crafting. These are BS jobs David graber's work on this. And the five types of job that David Graber flags up as Bs are flunkies, people who make their boss look important don't really have another job. Duct tapers, people who fix systems, not problems, box stickers, people who create reports or similar things, but never actually get used, goons who use sort of aggressive and manipulation to drive business and task masters who manage workers who don't need supervision. So that is our list of a week. And with that, let's jump on to our stories from a keyboard. Have you got a story you want

to share? Jen, yeah, I think so cool. So it's a little bit, it's a little bit of combo of being one of those jobs, okay, sort of. And

so when I was desperately applying to get my dream job, when I was like, in my mid 20s, I took on a temp role for a higher education establishment, and I was quite good at it, and they were quite pleased, and they paid me quite well for a first job, and I was so bored. Oh, I've never been so bored in all my life. But it was convenient. They would let me have time off for interviews. They liked me. I really liked the people. I used to have lunch at the mall. It was really social. It was a bus ride away, so it wasn't seven spending a lot of money commuting. It was great. And I was like, the next job I take is going to be the job that I want in that I want in that organization, so I'm just going to keep waiting. But in the meantime, I was bored. I cannot tell you how bored I was, and they were lovely, but I was bored. So what I used to do is I used to, I used to basically make it a competition to see how fast in the day I could get through my work, so that I could. Playing computer games, right? Which is truly terrible, but, yes, but I did do it right? And it got to the point where I was coming in early because it became this thing where I was like, I reckon I can finish my day before it's meant to start. So I was coming in early for a job. I hated, wow, to do it early just to prove to myself, yeah. And it was actually, it was partly, it was like, you go back to why do people job craft? It was around getting in the flow. It was around was around organizing it, and feeling like I had some kind of autonomy, when actually I didn't really, because I was stuck in this position where I had a job I didn't really want. But it worked for now, and they were amazing. They let me do anything and everything, as long as I got the work done. They were like, we like you. You fit. Tell us what you want to do and how you want to do this job, and we will let you do will let you do it. And I was like, I mean, they were desperate, they were lovely, but desperate. But I just it really struck me. And I think I went into every I moved into a very hierarchical organization, a dream organization, but quite hierarchical afterwards. And I just came in with the same attitude. And I think everyone didn't really know what to do with me, because I just went around doing my job the way I wanted to do it. Yeah. And everyone was like, Is someone going to tell you she's not meant to do it that way? Yeah? And no one did. And actually, as a result, we ended up massively changing the way the department worked. Because I kind of naively had gone into this organization going, well, we'll just change this. Yeah. So

yeah. And I always struck by the quote that Bill Gates talks about that he would always hire it. I think it's Bill Gates says he would always hire a lazy engineer. And what he means is he's always looking for the engineer that doesn't want to waste time. Yeah? Solution. So this is and this is what ultimately I did. I just didn't. I was like, if I'm gonna do this job, I'm gonna do it in the bare minimum time, yeah, and I'm gonna get it done. And as a result, the department got loads better, the first one and the second one. Yeah, good. Not on purpose, but they did. What about you? So

my story is slightly different, I guess, and it's maybe more a bit of a reflection. And I've been thinking about a time when I've been in a situation at work, in a role that I was unhappy with, in a way that you know a lot of people often are. And I went without knowing anything about job crafting. I did bits of it, but I definitely reflected on the sort of cognitive piece of it, and I got myself to a stage where I felt that I could make myself happy again in my work and by thinking about it and doing some of those things. But there came to be a sort of a tipping point where I consciously decided I'm not going to do that. It's not about, you know, changing myself to fit into this role. It really is time for me to go. And it was just an interesting sort of awareness that I probably could have done some of that cognitive stuff to be happy in what I was doing, and I could have done bits of my relationships with others and so on, but I ended up feeling that that wasn't the right thing to do. And for me, that came back to probably, you know, sort of personal values around what I felt was happening around me. And I could have got myself to be happy with it, but it would have been bending myself out of shape, and I didn't want to do that. And your point about, is it time to leave? You know, you can put yourself into that, you know, square peg in a round hold or whatever, but it might not be comfortable in

the long term. And I think, I think HR generally get very hung up on turnover, and I don't understand it. There is nothing more toxic to an organization than or maybe there is, but there's very few things more toxic than someone who should be leaving, yeah, but feels for some whatever reason they're saying, Yeah, pay them and go. I say, right, I don't know about that. I'm not sure

I believe in paying them to go, but definitely support and help them grow, develop. And, you know, I never understand why people don't help the people that work for them try my new job if they're ready, if they can't give them the work that they want and need, help them find different work. Yeah, totally. But literally, it's so against the grain of what we talk about with turnover rate. Yeah,

any final thoughts before we start to wrap up?

So on the back of that, what I've just said, it's a bit of a plea to HR and line managers, please stop getting hung up on job descriptions. Yeah. Firstly, they're probably not very well written in the first place, yeah. And if they are brilliant, stick to them, but working with people to really help them understand, do they want to stay in this job? And if they do, then working with them to help them job, craft it, as long as it doesn't, you know, really negative. You'd be amazed what will come out of it. You'd be amazed how people will come up with doing things differently, and how many ways there are to develop stuff. You know, when people have autonomy and an ability to grow, it helps them and it helps the business. So why wouldn't you try and help them? And I know it's tiring, and I know it's energetic, and energy sapping doing that, but do it. It's not a BS job. If you do it, is it? No, and HR is not a BS job. If you help people do that, right? It's a really brilliant job. So helping people remember where you got in. It probably to help fulfill people. Yeah. And it's as a line manager, I found it incredibly hard to manage people out of the organization, as in, not, I don't mean performance management. I mean as in, help them find their next job, but it's probably some of the proudest things I've ever done. It's rewarding, isn't it, if you help somebody onto a place that feels good for them? Yeah. I.

How about you?

I guess mine is kind of more of a personal one. So when we're speaking about job crafting and the different aspects of it, I kind of really think what we're saying to people is, if you think something can be better, or you think something can be less bad, find ways to try and do that, and have courage to explore doing that and speak to people about it, and try and have some impetus to change things for better, and I think that that probably fits with a lot of aspects of work and some aspects of personal life as well. And it doesn't always work, but I think trying to craft things for better is a worthwhile thing to do. And I'd say just go out and do it and speak to people about it, right? So often people don't know right. Communication gets in the way of so many of these things in terms of what people's experiences are and how things could be better. So, you know, think about how you can make things better for yourself and give it a go. Because, you know, there's not really much harm in trying most of the time. No,

I don't think there is. And I think it's funny you say that I still, I still, there's a part of me deep down that I have two concerns really. One is, is this all just common sense? That's like labeling it in order to get give people permission to do it? And maybe that is it, maybe. And the second thing I have, and I cannot get away from this, is fundamentally for profit organizations are there to take to find ways to make people be more productive. Organizations be more productive using people, right? Make a margin on labor or whatever. Yes, make a margin on labor. Make a margin on their human capital. Extract more value out of the people. Is all of this just to make it a more comfortable conversation between managers and people versus saying, no, just do it and get on with it. Yeah, yeah. Does it really impact productivity better? Or is this really just because people don't like feeling Yeah, that they have to, in some way performance manage people? Yeah, yeah. I've got all those concerns as well.

Yeah. Whose job is it? Right? Whose job is it to make sure that you're doing the right job and the right job for you? Yeah? Questions, answers on a puzzle, yeah, please. Or a tweet on

a tweet, yes, please. All right. Well, let us wrap up there and call it a day. You can get in touch with us, usual places, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, website, World of work.io. We send out our wild mail as well. So you can sign up to that. We send someone out most weeks with some good information in it. Anything else? Monthly Twitter chat. Monthly Twitter chat, yeah, we do that. Find that come and say hello, yeah, absolutely, yeah. We do. We like chats on Twitter. We do. We do like a bit of a chat on Twitter, and most of all, have a really good week. Yeah,