You don’t have to change the job

First theorised by Amy Wrzesniewski, an associate professor of organisational behaviour at the Yale School of Management, job crafting, as a technique, gives employees the relative freedom to adjust their job scope and at the same time, meet the organisation’s goals.

Rather surprisingly, as Wrzesniewski dug deeper, although there were the expected responses from janitors who actually hated their jobs, a considerable number of them gave the opposite reply. With the exact same job descriptions and responsibilities as all their peers, one group of janitors described their work in completely different terms. Many of these happy crew members reported going out of their way to learn as much as possible about the patients whose rooms they cleaned, down to which cleaning chemicals were likely to irritate them less. One particular janitor described forming such a strong bond with patients that she continued to write letters to some of them after they were discharged.

What part of this job would appeal to you? The occasional challenge of unclogging a toilet bowl? Or perhaps mopping up fresh vomit that an unwell young patient just threw up on the floor?

In Wrzesniewski’s words, "It was not just that they were taking the same job and feeling better about it, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and whistling. It was that they were doing a different job." Yes. A different job. A job that gave these employees more than what a dollar of salary could give them intrinsically.While being interested in people who love their jobs, those who didn’t and the reasons behind them, Wrzesniewski devoted much of her initial research on hospital workers. In fact, more specifically, she interviewed hospital janitors, who are mainly responsible for the cleaniness of the wards, floors, toilets, offices, pantries and corridors. They are the ones who visit the rubbish dump more than anyone else in the hospital. They are the "dirty workers" whom a visitor wouldn’t even bat an eyelid for while waiting in line at a clinic. They are the...ok...you get the point...these are the folks that are right at the bottom rung of the organisational ladderReadMore