Impact of Job Crafting and Employee Personality on Work Engagement and Perceived Career Satisfaction, by Jonathan H. Westover, PhD

Abstract: This research brief examines the relations between job crafting behaviors, work engagement, career satisfaction, and the moderating role of personality traits. Job crafting refers to physical and cognitive changes individuals make to their work tasks and relationships. The literature review findings indicate job crafting is positively associated with increased work engagement and career satisfaction. Personality characteristics like proactivity and conscientiousness enhance these relationships, as proactive and conscientious employees are better able to strategically craft their work for growth. However, neuroticism weakens job crafting's benefits due to negative emotional tendencies. Practical recommendations include selecting proactive job candidates, training conscientious employees in crafting, tailoring support for neurotic workers, providing crafting resources and training organization-wide, and fostering supervisor support for bottom-up job changes. Considering individual differences can help optimize engagement and satisfaction through tailored job crafting initiatives.