Creating conditions for attractive work in the social care services – job crafting as a moderator of the relationship between job demands and resources to job satisfaction

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Introduction Creating conditions for attractive work is an important and a major challenge in the social care services sector. Support from supervisors and influence at work are regarded as facilitators, whereas heavy workload and role conflicts are considered to be undermining factors for social care service employees' job satisfaction. However, employees can themselves increase the benefit of resources or strategically respond to and reduce demands by job crafting. Using job demands – resources theory, we investigated whether matching approach and avoidance job crafting behavior (seeking challenges/reducing job demands) moderates the respective associations between job resources (i.e., boost effect) and job demands (i.e., buffer effect) and job satisfaction. Methods By using a web-based survey, cross-sectional self-reports of job resources (support from supervisors and influence) and job demands (workload and role conflict), job crafting, and job satisfaction were collected from 760 municipal social care employees (28% participation rate). Results The results of regression-based analyses showed that the effect of support from supervisors on job satisfaction was moderated (i.e., boosted) by job crafting (seeking challenges), whereas none of the other three tested interactions were found to be significant. Discussion We discuss our results in relation to efforts to increase job satisfaction and promote attractive workplaces in social care services; these are directed to address management, work conditions, and preconditions to support opportunities for employees to proactively craft their jobs.