I chose two articles for this newsletter that I found interesting and timely. The first is a quick read from Gartner on improving Supply Chain Resilience. It provides a good, high-level framework for improving resilience through diversification.
The second article is a recent study reported in MIT/Sloan Management Review on “Job Crafting” as an approach to improve worker engagement and job satisfaction.
Job crafting has been around for 20 years. However with many remote workers feeling isolated, overloaded, and even concerned about their job security, job crafting, can give workers a greater sense of control and improve their performance.
Top Links
Diversifying Global Supply Chains for Resilience, Smarter with Gartner, September 3 ( 4 min read)
Diversifying to improve resilience will differ for each industry and situation. To develop the right strategy, six factors should be considered.
- Determine the level of risk your organization can absorb.
- Understand the risk in critical suppliers and if they are able to support your diversification strategy.
- Identify what we are trying to protect against, e.g. sole-sourcing risks, increasing labor costs, tariffs, lead times or regulatory burdens.
- Decide on tradeoffs, e.g. diversify going forward on new products or include legacy products.
- How is it paid for? Suppliers, absorb, pass-along to customers?
- Give consideration for national and trading bloc policies and incentives.
How Job Crafting Can Make Work More Satisfying, MIT/Sloan Management Review, September 17, 2020 ( 6 min read) (The full article is available for free when you provide an email address to MIT/SMR)
In a Gallup survey, over 65% of workers don’t consider themselves engaged and want their current roles to be more satisfying, meaningful, and fulfilling. Job crafting is one approach being used to improve engagement and satisfaction in the wake of COVID-19.
- Job crafting is a proactive, often unsupervised, modern take on job redesign that empowers workers to transform the jobs they have into the jobs they want.
- 1,000 business leaders and 2,000 of their workers around the world were interviewed to provide evidence for managers who wish to encourage their team members to craft their roles.
- Researchers found that most job crafting (76%) occurring post-pandemic has altered tasks rather than relationships or cognition.
Results:
- Improved well-being: 92% who engaged in job crafting post-pandemic experienced a more satisfying work life and increased personal satisfaction. This improved sense of well-being led to a 29% decrease in stress levels.
- Improved collaboration: 67% who job crafted felt inspired to stretch past their comfort zones and engaged in active cooperation with other colleagues, leading to a more connected workforce.
- Increased productivity: 72% who job crafted were highly productive at work compared with those who did not.
- Strengthened loyalty: Staff turnover within organizations using job crafting decreased by 29% because those seeking promotion looked internally before pursuing roles externally. Active crafters were more likely to stay put and adjust their roles rather than move elsewhere.
For past newsletters, go to https://sc-exec.com/newsletters/