Job crafting, meaningful work and performance: a moderated mediation approach of presenteeism

This study aimed to (1) analyze the relationship between the three job crafting dimensions (task, cognitive and relational crafting) and performance; (2) explore whether meaningful work fully mediates the links between the three job crafting dimensions and performance; (3) analyze if presenteeism moderates the indirect effect of meaningful work in the relationship between job crafting and performance. To achieve these goals, we collected data with 146 workers from a town hall. We analyzed the proposed moderated-mediation model using the PROCESS macro. The results showed that (1) the meaning in work mediated the relationship between the three job crafting dimensions and performance; (2) presenteeism moderated the mediated relationship between job crafting and performance via meaningful work, that is, lower levels of presenteeism were positively related to performance, in particular, when the levels of meaning in work were lower. These results show the importance of empowering employees to craft their work, as it appears to increase employees’ performance, by enhancing the meaning attributed to the work. Promoting health conditions, at work, also seems to be relevant for performance once it may decrease levels of presenteeism. The cross-sectional design should be regarded as a limitation, and we assessed all the variables through self-reported measures. The present study contributes to the literature by analyzing the relationship of job crafting to performance via meaningful work, within the public administration context. Moreover, this study adds to the literature the conditional effect of presenteeism which has not been discussed in prior studies. This study aids in bridging this gap.