GPs are job crafting and it’s having a positive impact

“It’s time to harness the creativity of the workforce and trust people to make change to hit that sweet spot of optimising service delivery, it’s a win win”.”

— Stephen Bevan, Head of HR Research Development at the Institute for Employment Studies.

A new study has uncovered job crafting and flexible work design are having positive benefits for GPs across the UK. The Institute of Employment Studies (IES) has recently carried out a research project, testing this with 6 different GP practices across the UK, and the outcomes were compelling. This blog was informed by chatting with Stephen Bevan, one of the researchers involved in the study.

An important aspect to highlight in this study is that the researchers were keen to explore beyond the conventional methods of job design, for example, changing working days, hours or rotas. Although compressed hours were deemed the most attractive option to most people in the study, researchers were most interested in ideas beyond that. For example, how people can swap tasks with colleagues to suit their individual needs and benefit their own professional development.

What was the purpose of the study?

Originally, the team was asked to look at GP burnout. However, they quickly realised from the research that whilst there was some evidence of job crafting and flexible work design across the NHS, there are very few examples of this in general practice. Hence the desire to do this research.

Why GPs?

The Covid-19 pandemic put a huge strain on the NHS and left GPs feeling exhausted, burned out, and lots of practices saw GPs quitting as a result. It was evident that something needed to change. An underlying theme for GPs was the pressure they felt to continue delivering high quality care.

What did the study do?

With support from NHS England, IES put a call out to see if there were any GP practices in the UK interested in taking part in the study selection process. The institute was looking for 6 practices that met a range of different attributes, with the main criteria being a diverse practice with a variety of ages, races, genders, etc. Several conversations with practice managers took place to ensure that they could collect data without putting additional pressure on their already extremely busy workloads.

How did they carry out the study?

The researchers identified four to five people in each practice who had agreed to take part in the study, and carried out semi-structured interviews before and after their shifts.

A specific example of job crafting in general practice

GP practices often get hundreds of frequent callers for many different reasons. An advanced nurse practitioner took on the role of reaching out to patients before their conditions became acute. This involved monitoring and proactively contacting patients to ensure they felt looked after. As a result, this change in approach was a win-win for GPs and patients - preventing repeat callers, and crowding appointments, as well as ensuring patients didn’t deteriorate in health.

“Evidence tells us that individuals having autonomy and control in their jobs leads to better performance, retention, and wellbeing. ”

— Stephen Bevan

Key outcomes

There were a number of notable outcomes from the project:

• GPs felt empowered to explore ways in which they could get their work done in a different way.

• Transition to working patterns which allowed GPs to deliver care which accommodated flexible working and promoted physical and psychological wellbeing.

• Significant progress to more agile and responsive models of organising work 

• GPs were able to better define the boundaries between job roles and responsibilities 

• More opportunity for professional development, aligning to fulfilling work

Able to deliver their goal that patients would receive the highest level of care, leading to feelings of better job satisfaction.

Conclusion

Overall, this study has had a positive impact on GP surgeries across the UK, leading to a domino effect of benefitting the GP, the practise and of course the patient. The paper concludes: “although this has not created a perfect solution, most GPs would agree that they had made significant progress to more agile and responsive models of organising work”.

You can read the whole research paper here.

If you’re interested in learning more about job crafting or testing this within your organisation, please contact us at [email protected].

Job Crafting on Purpose.

A sense of purpose is a defining human need for us all. Yet, despite this universal personal requirement, the ‘why’ of work and the power of purpose is often overlooked when it comes to our jobs.

As lockdown eases and the way we work is transitioning, there has never been a better, or arguably more important, time to focus attention and discussions about the value and purpose of what we do.

How can organisations and HR leaders revive or recalibrate a sense of purpose and amplify engagement and performance along the way?

One evidence-based and practical way to do this is by purpose crafting. Purpose, or cognitive, crafting is a type of job crafting that involves shaping and reframing how we think about the value and purpose of our work.

The 4 key types of purpose crafting.

There are four key types of purpose crafting; broadening, narrowing, finding; and personalising purpose. 

Broadening

We can connect to the wider purpose of our work by looking at the bigger picture in terms of who benefits from the work that we’re doing.

An example of broadening is a customer service operator in a bank reframing their daily tasks from dealing with individual issues, to providing a key service to customers to support their financial welfare.

Narrowing

We can create a sense of purpose by focusing in on and recognising specific elements of our work which we find particularly meaningful and enjoyable.

Rather than broadening their focus, other employees may find value in focusing in on a specific aspect of their work they find particularly meaningful and enjoyable (narrowing purpose) – such as an HR business partner creating opportunities to contribute to wider business strategy.

Finding

We can connect to the purpose of our work by intentionally searching and creating opportunities to understand the impact of the work that we’re doing.

A project manager’s job crafting experiment to check in with projects they had delivered a year ago is an example of someone finding the purpose of their work. These check-ins allow them to not only hear stories about the benefits (and possible failings) of their work, but also give them other insights that will shape how they lead future projects.

Personalising

People can purpose craft by personalising elements of the work they do with the passions and interests that are important to them, which may traditionally only be displayed and showcased outside of work.

People can also ignite a sense of purpose by finding ways to connect their work with values, activities or beliefs that are meaningful and important to them on a personal rather than strictly professional basis. For example, getting involved in, or leading, sustainability or mental health initiatives or starting a weekly running group may allow people to bring outside interests into the organisation.

Bringing purpose crafting to life

Rather than giving or telling people what purpose is, leaders and HR should be concerned with creating opportunities for people to find and shape it for themselves. Here are three ways we’ve seen organisations help people find and join their personal purpose dots:

• Encourage people to connect with, and directly hear from, the benefactors of their work – through focus groups, testimonials, or simple feedback.

• Be explicit about discussing and defining the purpose and value of work – by defining purpose and value in job descriptions and in one-to-one discussions.

• Actively invite people to bring their passions to work – by introducing employee-led skill share workshops or encouraging people to involve.

Other case studies and examples of how organisations have brought job crafting to life can be found here.

We hope that we have inspired you to make a small change to your job that will make your work more tailored to you.

By writing this blog we (Tailored Thinking) are bringing our purpose to life by inspiring and enabling people to make positive changes to their work.

To learn more on the ‘why’ of work and connecting with the meaning and purpose then you can read more here.

Also, you can click here to learn more about job crafting.

5 reasons you need our job crafting guide

Job Crafting Guide 2021

Did you know that over 41% of the global workforce are considering leaving their current roles within the next year, according to recent research from Microsoft.

What if there was a way to make your current job better, so you didn’t have to look elsewhere?

Job crafting allows us to bring a personal approach to work. Making work more meaningful, enjoyable and productive.

Our job crafting guide enables people to bring job crafting to life and help make work better so we can make better work.

5 reasons why our guide can help you:

1. Bring the power of personalisation to your workplace

We personalise all aspects of our lives, including our cars, our clothes, our coffee cups and much more. When we personalise something we tend to value it up to 2x more [1].

Our guide shares how you can bring this personalisation advantage to our work.

2. An introduction to job crafting

If you’re new to the term job crafting then don’t panic.

The guide will provide you with an overview to the what, why and how of job crafting. We go into detail on what job crafting is and the different ways we can craft our work. We’ll also share with you the benefits of job crafting and how it can be brought to life.

The image below is a sneak peak from the guide, showcasing some of the benefits of job crafting.

The benefits of job crafting

3. Stories and examples of job crafting in action

Like people, job crafting comes in all different shapes and sizes.

The guide will provide you with a variety of stories from different sectors and walks of life. Ranging from customer service advisors to executive directors.

4. Ideas to bring job crafting to life

Job crafting happens when people have the space, opportunity and encouragement to personalise their roles.

The guide will provide you with the range of ways that we can bring job crafting to life and make work better.

5. Case studies

We like to provide you with case studies to show how job crafting works in action. Two organisations we partnered with are Connect Health and Virgin Money.

Connect Health are the largest, independent provider on integrated community MSK (musculoskeletal) and physiotherapy services in the UK.

Virgin Money serve 6.4 million customers across the UK through through a digital-first approach that offers leading online and mobile services, supported by telephone, branch and business banking centres.

So, what are you waiting for? You can grab the guide here.

If you want further information on job crafting or the services we offer then go to our website.

References

[1] Franke, N. and Schreier, M., 2010. Why customers value self-designed products: The importance of process effort and enjoyment. Journal of product innovation management, 27(7), pp. 1020-1031.