Engaging Overqualified Employees: The Role of Job and Nonwork Crafting

The present study examined the relationship between perceived overqualification and work engagement through basic need satisfaction at work and further incorporated job crafting and nonwork crafting to understand the indirect role of need satisfaction. In study 1, a new measure for targeted nonwork crafting was developed and validated. The final scale provided adequate reliability and validity evidence, and predicted life satisfaction and job satisfaction above and beyond the measures of intrinsic motivation and recovery experiences. The main study included a total of 321 full-time employees who had been working in their current job for at least 3 months and represented diverse occupations and industries. Results indicated that basic need satisfaction at work explains the negative relationship between perceived overqualification and work engagement. However, job crafting and targeted nonwork crafting do not moderate the indirect effect of basic need satisfaction at work. Supplemental analyses revealed that job satisfaction emerges as a reactive response to unmet needs at work while targeted nonwork crafting serves as a buffer for the relationship between perceived overqualification and burnout. These findings underscore the importance of considering motivational implications of overqualification on work outcomes and integrating cross-domain variables to the overqualification research