Job Crafting: How Employees Quietly Redesign Their Jobs for Meaning and Motivation — Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation: What Meta-Analyses Reveal About Performance
What if some of your team’s most meaningful performance improvements aren’t coming from formal redesigns—but from invisible, employee-initiated changes leaders never see?
Executive Summary
Most employees reshape their jobs long before any official redesign happens. This quiet, self-initiated behavior—known as job crafting—helps people align their tasks, relationships, and purpose with their strengths and values. Decades of research show that job crafting improves engagement, person–job fit, resilience, and wellbeing.
At the same time, the quality of motivation (intrinsic vs extrinsic) strongly predicts both performance quality and performance quantity. Meta-analyses from Self-Determination Theory (SDT) reveal that intrinsic and autonomous motivation produce better creativity, persistence, and wellbeing, while controlling forms of extrinsic motivation predict burnout and shallow compliance.
When organizations support autonomy, competence, and psychological safety, employees naturally craft their roles and develop intrinsic motivation. Leaders who understand these dynamics design environments where people can grow, contribute meaningfully, and perform sustainably.
The Hidden Work Design Paradox: Jobs Change Even When Job Descriptions Don’t
Organizations often assume work design happens through policy, HR updates, or structural decisions.
But in reality:
Employees continuously modify their jobs—quietly, informally, and often without asking for permission.
This “hidden redesign” explains why two people in identical roles may experience:
Different levels of meaning
Different engagement levels
Different performance outcomes
Different wellbeing trajectories
Employees aren’t passively shaped by roles—they actively shape their roles.
Understanding this paradox helps leaders recognize the powerful, often invisible ways people create meaningful work for themselves.
Job Crafting as Quiet Redesign
Job crafting occurs when employees reshape aspects of their jobs to make them more meaningful, engaging, or aligned with personal strengths. Wrzesniewski and Dutton identify three forms of crafting:
1. Task Crafting
Adjusting tasks to increase interest, value, or alignment with strengths.
Examples:
Taking on supportive tasks that energize
Reducing tasks that add little value
Rearranging workflows to improve flow or efficiency
2. Relational Crafting
Shaping interactions to improve connection, collaboration, or support.
Examples:
Seeking mentorship
Building relationships with energizing colleagues
Increasing client contact that feels purposeful
3. Cognitive Crafting
Reframing the meaning or purpose of the job.
Examples:
Seeing administrative work as part of a larger mission
Viewing technical tasks as contributions to customer wellbeing
Connecting everyday work to personal values
Individually, these shifts seem small. Over time, they transform the employee’s experience without any formal changes to the job description.
How Job Crafting Shows Up in Everyday Work
Most crafting behaviors are subtle and practical:
A marketer spends more time on creative work and less on repetitive tasks
A customer support analyst reframes their role as “helping people,” not “closing tickets”
A senior engineer mentors others because it adds purpose
A teacher builds stronger relationships with students to improve motivation
Crafting emerges naturally when people feel some control—especially in environments with autonomy and psychological safety.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in Practice
Motivation science clarifies why crafting matters so deeply.
Intrinsic Motivation
Emerges from genuine interest, enjoyment, curiosity, or personal meaning.
Predicts:
Creativity
Deep learning
Persistence
Higher-quality performance
Wellbeing
Extrinsic Motivation
Driven by external outcomes such as pay, pressure, recognition, or avoiding negative consequences.
Predicts:
Output quantity
Compliance
Short-term spikes in effort
What Meta-Analyses Reveal
Intrinsic motivation shows medium-to-strong correlations with quality of performance, especially for complex or creative tasks.
Extrinsic rewards more strongly predict output quantity.
Controlling rewards can crowd out intrinsic motivation, reducing long-term engagement.
Autonomy-supportive environments maintain or enhance intrinsic motivation even when rewards are present.
High-quality performance requires both ability and autonomous, self-endorsed motivation.
How Crafting and Motivation Reinforce Each Other
Job crafting strengthens intrinsic motivation because it enhances:
Autonomy (choosing tasks, shaping relationships)
Competence (using strengths, improving mastery)
Relatedness (forming meaningful relationships)
These are the three SDT needs required for deep, sustainable motivation.
In turn, intrinsic motivation fuels more job crafting:
Employees who feel energized are more likely to take initiative
Those who experience meaning are more likely to redesign their tasks
People who feel connected seek relational crafting opportunities
This creates a reciprocal cycle of growth, meaning, and performance.
Designing Work for Meaning and Sustainable Performance
Leaders who understand the crafting–motivation link can design environments that support both.
1. Provide Autonomy
Allow flexibility in workflows
Invite employee input
Avoid unnecessary micromanagement
2. Strengthen Competence
Offer skill-building opportunities
Give timely, constructive feedback
3. Build Relatedness
Create psychologically safe teams
Encourage mentoring and collaboration
4. Use Extrinsic Rewards Wisely
Incentivize performance without undermining intrinsic motivation
Reward mastery, growth, and meaningful contribution—not just output
5. Encourage Crafting Behaviors
Normalize small adjustments
Celebrate employee initiative
Allow experimentation with task and relationship redesign
Organizations that do this unlock quiet, continuous, self-driven improvement.
Real-World Examples of Job Crafting + Motivation
Conclusion
Job crafting and motivational quality are powerful, often overlooked drivers of performance and wellbeing.
Job crafting makes work more meaningful and better aligned with personal strengths.
Intrinsic and autonomous motivation produce deeper engagement and higher-quality output.
Extrinsic motivation plays a role, but must be used carefully to avoid undermining internal drive.
When organizations invite employees to shape their roles and support autonomy, competence, and relatedness, they create environments where people grow naturally and perform sustainably.
Ready to Strengthen Your Work Design and Motivation Frameworks?
Organization Learning Labs offers job crafting assessments, motivation diagnostics, and autonomy-supportive leadership programs designed to help organizations create meaningful, high-performance environments. Our research-backed tools reveal how employees reshape their work and how leaders can amplify intrinsic motivation for lasting results.
References
Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627–668.
Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self-determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 331–362.
Grant, A. M., & Parker, S. K. (2009). Redesigning work design theories. Academy of Management Annals, 3(1), 317–375.
Rudolph, C. W., Katz, I. M., Lavigne, K. N., & Zacher, H. (2017). Job crafting: A meta-analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 102, 112–138.
Van Wingerden, J., Bakker, A. B., & Derks, D. (2017). The impact of job crafting interventions on wellbeing and performance. Human Relations, 70(7), 1128–1151.
Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201.
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