Seven ways technology can help you craft your job
Zoom fatigue, hyperconnectivity, … much has been written about the dark side of workplace technology. But what if these technologies could also help us to make our work more fulfilling? In this video, Professor Giverny DE BOECK discusses the strategies workers can proactively use to leverage technology to reshape their work tasks, relationships, and learning opportunities to better align with their personal skills, needs, and preferences.
04/22/2025
3 min
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With her co-authors, she studied how employees from different industries and occupations used digital (ICT) technologies such as Teams and Whatsapp to make their jobs more meaningful and engaging through a process called job crafting. Job crafting refers to workers’ self-initiated efforts to redesign specific aspects of their jobs such as autonomy or work demands to better fit their personal situation. This matters because workers who perceive they have a good fit with their job are more engaged, perform better, and experience higher wellbeing.
Seven job crafting strategies; managing tasks, regulating emotions & conflict…
Their *study identifies seven different ICT job crafting strategies that workers can employ.
These include using technology to optimize the task-related aspects of their work: including work organization, knowledge management, scheduling & coordination, and collaboration.
But also workers using technology to manage social work aspects and help regulate emotions and conflict in the workplace. For example, certain technologies such as Whatsapp may permit workers to vent anger or ensure an employee has not been misunderstood.
Aquiring new information and skills
What’s more, employees can strategically leverage these technological tools to acquire new information and skills related to their job. HR managers, for example, may turn to a series of specialist podcasts and LinkedIn Learning to make sure they can stay ahead of industry trends.
Finally, workers who employ the seventh crafting tactic of “workload management” use ICTs to establish clear work boundaries vis-à-vis others and for delegating responsibilities.
Importantly, companies can also support employees in this job crafting process – for example by enabling access to and supporting the use of such technologies. Rather than banning ICTs from the work floor or restricting access, they can provide workers with autonomy to decide for themselves whether and when to use certain ICTs. They can also consider offering job crafting workshops that teach workers about job crafting and stimulate them to reflect on how they could apply it to their own jobs using ICTs.
*Exploring the use of ICTs as a tool for job crafting, Journal of Vocational Behavior (Feb 2025), Lisa Handke (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany), Giverny De Boeck (IESEG School of Management, UMR 9221 – LEM – Lille Economie Management), Sharon K. Parker (Curtin University, Australia)
