Ellen Jaldestad

Job crafting–an active form of job redesign–has been widely studied within healthcare in recent years, possibly because of its many positive outcomes in this context. Job crafting can be described as actions to redesign a current work situation to increase the fit of a person’s abilities, resources, and desires. Among the positive consequences of job crafting are employee well-being, work engagement, and a productive workforce. The Swedish healthcare sector struggles with challenging work environments and staff shortages, and health-promoting activities can thus be particularly important for employees’ wellbeing. To identify antecedents of job crafting that can promote well-being within public healthcare, semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees and managers in five different healthcare departments. Departments with daytime activities only and 24/7 operations were represented in the study. On an individual level, being a driven person as well as focusing on the patient were found to precede health-promoting job crafting. Being a driven person indicates an ability to deal with restrictive work conditions, such as a lack of support among colleagues and managers, for those who choose to craft their jobs. Working autonomously or in cross-professional teams were contextual antecedents that led to a more comprehensible work situation and different degrees of perceived freedom in work. Utilizing these degrees of freedom through job crafting strategies with the patient’s best interests in mind led to a work situation that was considered more manageable and meaningful. When planning how to facilitate health-promoting job crafting among healthcare employees, it is recommended to keep in mind that job crafting antecedents seem to interplay on different organizational and individual levels.

The maintenance of older workers and determining the appropriate age for retirement are growing issues related to the fact that fewer people, still active in working life, have to provide for more non-working people due to increased life expectancy. As a result, retirement age has started to rise in many countries, and employers need to find ways to maintain an older and healthy work force, not least to avoid the loss of important experience. The aim of the current study was to increase the knowledge of factors influencing the retirement decisions among blue-collar workers in different national settings. A survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of 100 blue-collar workers in Sweden, the Netherlands, and France, aged 55 years and older, within a global manufacturing company. Based on the results, implications for companies’ age management strategies were discussed from a system perspective. Factors contributing to both retirement and to a prolonged work life were found on individual, organisational, and societal levels. This indicates the importance of a system perspective when planning for age management interventions.

(1) Background: Both employees and organizations benefit from a work environment characterized by work engagement and job satisfaction. This study examines the influence of work-group social capital on individuals’ work engagement, job satisfaction, and job crafting. In addition, the mediating effect of job crafting between social capital on the one side and job satisfaction and work engagement on the other side was analyzed. (2) Methods: This study used data from 250 health-care employees in Sweden who had completed a questionnaire at two time points (six to eight months apart). Analyses of separate cross-lagged panel designs were conducted using structural regression modeling with manifest variables. (3) Results: Social capital was predictive of both job satisfaction and work engagement over time. The results also indicated that higher degrees of social capital was predictive of more cognitive and relational, but not task-related job crafting over time. There was no clear evidence for a mediating effect of job crafting for social capital to work engagement or job satisfaction. (4) Conclusion: It would be beneficial for the health-care sector to consider setting up the organizations to promote social capital within work groups. Individual workers would gain in well-being and the organization is likely to gain in efficiency and lower turnover rates.