Evaluating the Effects of a Job Crafting Intervention on Employee Work-Life Balance

A Plan B Research Project by Amanda Christine DeLongchamp as part of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Psychological Sciences, 2020. This item has been modified from the original to redact the signatures present.In 2019, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology identified work-life balance interventions as one of the top 10 workplace trends (SIOP Administrative Office, 2019). No known research has been conducted using job crafting as an intervention to improve work-life balance. As a result, the current project seeks to contribute to scientific literature in producing additional findings about how job crafting may benefit employee work-life balance. The importance of supportive supervisory behaviors was also analyzed as it has been shown to encourage employee utilization of job crafting (e.g., Kim & Beehr, 2018; Wang et al., 2016) and improve perceptions of work-life balance (e.g., Hammer et al., 2009; McMullan et al., 2018). A quasi-experimental design was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the Crafting Work-Life Balance intervention on improving work-life balance among healthcare professionals. The intervention included general education about work-life balance, job crafting, goal-setting to identify specific job crafting actions, and accountability. Perceptions of work-life balance were hypothesized to improve with increased levels of job crafting following the intervention. Supportive leader behaviors of work-life balance were also expected to have a positive relationship with job crafting efforts to improve of work-life balance. Findings from the present study did not support the expected relationship between job crafting and work-life balance. However, these findings support the need for further research on the causal relationship between job crafting interventions and work-life balance. Until then, practitioners should be cautious when using job crafting to directly improve work-life balance