At the moment there is a lot of attention for job crafting. In the survey ‘Purpose and meaning in the workplace’ (by Dik, Byrne, Steger 2013) jobcrafting is defined as ‘the process of employees redefining and re-imagining their jobs designs in meaningful ways.’

That sounds interesting, doesn’t it? Nowadays a lot employees decide to keepworking for their current company. Finding a new job is often hard and might feel as taking risks in terms of the loss of financial security. So, perhaps you’d better decide to stay for a while and make your own adaptations to the job you already have.

What do you need for that, Meta Program-wise?

First, you need the belief that you can have influence on the way your job is being done. So, if you don’t have this belief yet or you lost it somewhere, find a career coach who can help you to put on internal reference and self control. You have more impact on your work environment and your employer than you think, really!

Then, analyze what element of job crafting you are going to work on. According to the theories, there are 3 ways to do this:

• Changing tasks,
• Changing relationships and
• Changing perceptions.

So, a lot of options for the people who like to have several possibilities! When you prefer the metaprogram procedures, you can choose either one of the opportunities and make your own strategy.

Changing tasks

Look at the things you actually do in your day. Just put on use and write down everything you do. After that, analyse what the essence is of all those tasks, and how they fit in the structure  of the company. For example: which tasks are for clients, for collegues, for your own talentmanagement?

Put on your options glasses and look for tasks you can add. Perhaps put on the metaprogram external reference and ask collegues to think it over with you.

You can also emphasize tasks. What is your core business? And how can you make this more visible and get more attention for it? How does it feel when your customers are going to ask for you because you are the expert in it? Having the latest information about the product, knowing specific details, and so on?

Changing relationships

When you use people, external reference, and kinestetic senses you might become astonished what you can reach. What is your goal in relationship to your customers, colleagues, managers? And what would you like to avoid? Do you want to be known as friendly and helpful, of more result driven and focused on doing business? Do you like working alone, or in a team, or in proximity, depending on the task?

You might as well consider building new relationships. Go out networking, put on your external reference and activities and give it a go! Use LinkedIn to register your new contacts and to keep in touch with them on line.

Or perhaps it is possible to reframe a certain relationship and look at the roles you have. In a meeting you can ask to be the chairman, so to be able to develop internal reference and towards. As well as procedures and perhaps past, present ànd future, depending on the subjects of the meeting.

Changing perceptions

In NLP this is a huge one. Because you can always change the way you look at your job, how you feel about it, and what you are saying to yourself on your way home. Remember the cleaning man of the space shuttle who said to himself while cleaning the environment at NASA: “I’m helping to get that man on the moon!” Wow, this has lots to do with your past, present and future ideas of how you want to do your job. What is the pattern you work in? Where are you standing nowadays in the team, and where do you want to be in the next year? Put on change as a Meta Program, structure to look for the patterns and decide (selfcontrol) to expand the way you look at your job. What other options are possible? Are there general things you overlook? Are their details to discover you never thought about?

Enough ideas to get you craft your job! As the survey mentioned before says: ‘In a world where meaningfulness may be in short supply, job crafting can be an important process through which employees cultivate meaningfulness and, in so doing, create valuable outcomes for themselves and their organizations.’

Good luck!