The impact of job crafting and work engagement on academic librarians before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

The changes employees make to everyday tasks, relationships, and perceptions within work boundaries can be described as job crafting. Job crafting provides a mechanism to help employees focus on job redesign from the bottom-up, where the power rests with individual workers. This research employed a mixed methods approach using a convergent parallel design to examine job crafting behavior among academic librarians in the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, work engagement was also examined as a potential moderating variable. Respondents self-selected participation (n = 1330) in completing an online survey that included questions from two established instruments (Job Crafting Questionnaire, Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-9) and open-ended questions developed by the researcher. The study found that many academic librarians embodied crafting behaviors, especially task crafting. Moreover, overall job crafting and work engagement resulted in a strong positive relationship.