The job demands model (JD-R) is a relatively young model to describe the delicate balance between many factors at work that help or hinder productivity, employee engagement and employee wellbeing[i]. It’s no secret that these are some of the things that lead to team and organisation goal achievement, business success, or sometimes business survival.
Everyone needs to know about this model. Managers, team leaders and business owners employing staff need to keep a close eye on this fine balance. If you don’t, you risk disengagement, loss of talent, lost productivity, lost customers, and so on. For the small business owner, this could be a death knell. Similarly, employees and the self-employed should take heed of this model because there are some things that you can do to tip the balance in your favour, bringing you job satisfaction and a sense of meaning and purpose, and keep on top of your wellbeing at work.
So, what’s it all about?
Job demands are characteristics of a job and the working environment or the context in which the job is performed. They include the tasks themselves, the workload, working conditions, job design, customers, patients, clients, and co-workers. They’re all the things that cause a person in their job to exert mental (or physical) effort and have the potential to cause strain or deplete energy.
Job resources on the other hand, are all the things that support and steer individuals to task and goal achievement, and engagement with their work and with the organisation. They include the basics like pay, and more complex things like role clarity, autonomy, timely feedback, challenging assignments, and a supportive team and manager.
Too many demands and too little resources will result in stress and burnout, diminished performance, low engagement, etc.
Too little demands and too many resources can result in low motivation, cruising, low performance (due to diminished drive).
Put another way, the model suggests that the interaction, balance or congruence between demands and resources has an impact on job strain and employees’ motivation.[ii]
What does this mean for managers and business owners?
In many situations, job demands can’t be impacted, or there are no quick-fixes: hiring freezes, psychosocial hazards that are inherent in the work, emotional labour, staff shortages, squeezed cashflow, business growing pains, supply-chain issues, inability to invest in new technology, customer and client demands.
Some fixes take time and money, for example outdated or slow technology can be a source of strain. Removing repetitive and mundane tasks and replacing with AI or automation, takes time and investment. Sometimes the process of removing a demand can create a temporary new demand.
I’m not saying you should throw your hands in the air or ignore job demands when they are excessive, in fact it’s super important that you are acknowledging these things very publicly. There are some job demands that absolutely must not be ignored, and they include:
- under performance by some people which increases the strain on others,
- toxic working relationships,
- clients whose behaviour or demands have been allowed to get out of hand,
- poor job, system, or process design.
If you are a manager, team leader or business owner, these are your responsibilities to manage. And given that autonomy and the ability to contribute ideas and have an impact on decision-making is a job resource, involving your employees in resolving some of the excessive work demands, for example, can tip the balance even further by bolstering employees’ experience of job resources.
But while you’re boxing on and forging ahead with all these job demands swirling around, the good news is that the balance can also be tipped by focusing on job resources.
The other piece of good news is that the availability and abundance of job resources can be influenced by you as manager, and, this is the interesting bit, by the employees themselves. Sometimes employees will do things proactively to increase their job resources (in which case you need to be supportive), and sometimes you might need to steer them in the right direction. You might do this by delegating more and giving challenging tasks, or by seeking to understand their beliefs and values, in an attempt to find some alignment. When done by the employee, it’s called job crafting. It’s such a big topic that it requires its own blog post. Here’s a sneak preview though, there are three main ways that you as an employee or even a manager, can undertake job crafting:[iii]
- Changing tasks – number, scope, type, nature, complexity.
- Changing the interactions with others – number of people, types of interactions, the people themselves, relationships. Have a look at our social intelligence training to find out how you can boost skills in this area.
- Changing cognitive boundaries, or changing the way the employee views the job, their understanding of it, or the meaning that they take from it.
Another way to boost job resources, by improving the resources of individuals, is by providing stress management training and time management training.
Another useful application of this model is as a diagnostic tool. If you are experiencing high turnover, customer complaints, returns, reworks, and you can see low morale, you can turn to the model. Similarly, if you notice signs of burnout in your people (physical and mental exhaustion, increased cynicism, and diminished performance[iv]) then you should absolutely turn to the model to guide your enquiries as to what’s going on – starting with getting a good handle on all of the work demands. Even just the process of acknowledging what you are observing, and starting to ask people what’s up, goes some way to increasing job resources.
Once you’ve got down to the biggest strain items, you can work with your people to prioritise them (biggest impact to lowest impact) then work together to come up with solutions, one of which may be job crafting – initiated by employees and/or encouraged and supported by you.
It could be argued that some aspects of work could sit in the demands or resources side of the model, depending on what they are. A lack of clear direction and no feedback could be a job demand, whereas clear goals and timely feedback are a job resource. So, bear in mind that you may be part of the problem, which makes it imperative that you are part of the solution.
Other ways that you can increase job resources is through training opportunities and wellbeing programs – especially the intersection of the two, with training on stress management, beating burnout, and time management. Click here to explore our offerings.
[i] Bakker, A.B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The job demands-resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22, 309-328.
[ii] Tims, M. & Bakker, A.B. (2010). Job crafting: Towards a new model of individual job redesign. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology/SA Tydskrif vir Bedryfsielkunde, 36(2), Art. #841, 9 pages. DOI: 10.4102/sajip.v36i2.841
[iii] Wrzesniewski, A. & Dutton, J.E., (2001). Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work. The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp179-201.
[iv] The Maslach Burnout Inventory was created by Dr Christina Maslach. It gives us three factors that help to identify burnout.
Photo by Michael Judkins: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-and-black-rock-formation-1113552/
