On Research: The importance of flexibility during times of crisis

How much flexibility do safety professionals have in times of crisis?

Nora Berghoff and a team of researchers recently explored this topic, using the term “job crafting,” in a study published in Volume 94 of the National Safety Council’s Journal of Safety Research.

Berghoff, a post-doctoral research associate at the Durham University Business School in the United Kingdom, spoke with Safety+Health about the study, titled “Crafting safety in the storm: An occupational health and safety professionals’ job crafting scale.”

The following is an edited transcript of the interview. Read the full study in JSR.

What’s this study about?

We developed a scale to assess how occupational health and safety professionals craft their jobs. We looked at how they adapt their tasks, their roles and their interactions in the workplace to better fit all aspects to changing circumstances. Specifically, we looked at the COVID-19 pandemic, but this could be adapted to many other crisis situations. In a nutshell, our study explored how OHS professionals adjusted their work during COVID-19 to meet the new safety demands in their organizations.

What drove your and your colleagues’ interest in this topic?

We started with a series of interviews with OHS professionals at different times during the pandemic. That quickly generated insights into how they’re coping with their role changes and how they can contribute to the resilience of their organizations. We know that OHS pros had to adapt quickly in their roles and their practices, but we also wanted to understand how they navigated these challenges. Therefore, we started looking at these proactive strategies in a quantitative way, and we realized existing measures didn’t capture the specificity of job crafting during COVID. So, that inspired the whole scale development process.

What are the biggest takeaways for workers and/or employers?

Job crafting can be a critical strategy for OHS pros, especially in times of crisis. If organizations give them the flexibility to adjust their roles, the whole organization can become more resilient. For OHS pros, these proactive adjustments will most likely improve their well-being, their engagement with work and their effectiveness. They can expand tasks to contribute value and align with an organization’s goals and priorities.

For employers, supporting job crafting can help in better adaptability into the everyday tasks for OHS pros. We would also like to recommend that employers emphasize the status and influence OHS pros can have in the organization. In our interviews, it was really interesting to hear the different narratives of OHS pros. They either got more attention for their work or the opposite. Giving them a seat at the executive table for safety decision-making can be really important for business continuity and an organization’s crisis response.

Did anything surprise you about the findings?

I think it was really surprising for us to see how much flexibility OHS pros showed, despite their roles being highly regulated in most countries. I think our research has highlighted how proactive and innovative OHS pros can be when they’re faced with unprecedented challenges. We were really happy to see how job crafting is consistently linked to positive outcomes, even in times of very intense pressure.

The Journal of Safety Research, a joint publication of the National Safety Council and Elsevier Ltd., disseminates peer-reviewed research in all areas of safety and health. Learn more at sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-safety-research.