JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Today's labor market is highly demanding and skills and knowledge tend to be outdated fast. This also applies to the hospital context where ongoing changes affect the work of physicians, challenging their employability (i.e. their ability and willingness to continue working). In this high-pressure environment physicians could benefit from pro-actively managing or crafting their careers, however, they tend not to show this behavior. The new concept of career crafting concerns proactively making choices and adapting behavior regarding both short-term job design (i.e. job crafting), as well as longer-term career development (i.e. career self-management). However, so far, no intervention studies aim at enhancing career crafting behavior among physicians. Given that proactive work and career behavior have been shown to be related to favorable outcomes such as work engagement, well-being, job satisfaction and performance, we designed an intervention to support career crafting behaviour and employability of physicians.

Objective:

The objectives of this study were to describe (1) the development, and (2) the design of the evaluation of a randomized controlled career crafting intervention to increase job crafting, career self-management and employability.

Methods:

A randomized controlled intervention study was designed for 139 physicians in two Dutch hospitals. The study was designed and will be evaluated using the Intervention Mapping protocol. Participants were randomly assigned to either the waitlist-control group (received no training) or the intervention group. The intervention group received a 4-hour training and worked on four self-set goals. Then, a coaching conversation took place over the phone. Online questionnaires distributed before and eight weeks after the intervention assessed changes in: job crafting, career self-management and perceived employability, and changes in additional variables: job satisfaction, career satisfaction, work-home interference, work ability and performance. In addition, a process evaluation was conducted to examine factors that may have promoted or hindered the effectiveness of the intervention.

Results:

Study results are expected to be submitted for publication in the fall 2020.

Conclusions:

This study protocol gives insight in the systematic development and design of a career crafting training that is aimed to enhance job crafting, career self-management and employability. This study will provide valuable information to physicians, managers, policy makers and other researchers that aim to enhance career crafting.