How Department Leaders Employ Team-Level Job Crafting to Mitigate Faculty Burnout

Purpose: Burnout impacts a substantial proportion of faculty at academic centers due to high job demands with limited job resources. Although individual-level interventions can be beneficial, organization-level interventions are needed to reduce burnout and enhance work engagement. Department leaders could provide unique insight into how organizational factors influence faculty since they manage departments while serving as direct supervisors to faculty. The purpose of this study was to explore how department leaders support their faculty and allocate job resources and demands among them. Methods: The authors interviewed 17 infectious disease department leaders at academic centers in the United States during 2022. Using a theory-informed inductive approach to qualitative data analysis, they used the job demands-resources theory of job crafting to explain how leaders altered job demands and resources for faculty in their department. Results: Job crafting typically describes an employee-driven, individual-level process to improve work conditions by decreasing hindering job demands (i.e., factors that require energy and lead to exhaustion), increasing structural and social job resources, and increasing challenging job demands (i.e., factors that require energy but motivate employees). In contrast, the authors found that department leaders engaged in job crafting at the department level to allocate job demands and resources among their faculty. They not only worked to adjust their department’s total job demands and resources but also redistributed them among their team to improve each individual’s work experience. However, leaders had less control over hindering job demands and structural job resources than challenging job demands and social job resources. Conclusion: Leaders engaged in team-level job crafting to improve the work experience of faculty in their department. Developing this skill in department leaders could reduce burnout and promote work engagement among faculty.