A qualitative study of how anxious workers job craft to navigate workplace anxiety

Population studies show that anxiety levels in the United Kingdom (UK) and other countries are at record highs, prompting researchers to suggest we live in a new age of anxiety. Work-related anxiety has a long research history in organisational studies, most often as a strain resulting from stress processes. There is much less research on how employees take steps to manage their work-related anxiety in a more planned and reflective manner. We address this deficit from the perspective of job crafting by considering how work-related anxiety motivates employees to alter aspects of their jobs to regulate their anxiety. In doing so, we identify how workplace anxiety can be more proactively managed and offer novel insights into job crafting activities. Our data are based on qualitative interviews with 45 academics who reported experiencing high levels of work anxiety working in 7 UK business schools/schools of management. We found that academics engaged in the job crafting activities of physical/psychological distancing, seeking reassurance, uncertainty reduction and introducing controls. The effectiveness of these activities was enhanced when they were honed over time through a confidence-building learning process, and was inhibited by perfectionist tendencies. Our findings are relevant to employees in occupational groups beyond academics.