ASIP-WI-24 Highly Regulated Job Crafting - Ariana

Scenario: Ariana is a Chartered Professional Accountant currently thriving in the public sector of accounting at a local firm in North Bay. Over the last 5 years, Ariana has crafted her role considerably while finding herself improving the firm's workplace processes along the way. She is well-respected and valued at her firm by clients, coworkers, and the partners themselves.

Ariana has heard others in the accounting profession state that accounting is too rigid and systematic to allow space for workplace innovation, including job crafting. For example, there is a general impression that work on organizational financial audits has little variation from year to year.

However, in Ariana's view, "you do what you need to do to get the job done while confirming that the financials are reasonable and fairly stated and abide by the regulations". For her, this means that there can be some room for different processes, templates, and methods but with a similar purpose and end result. Read through Ariana's crafting efforts (listed below) and identify what type of job crafting she has instigated.

• Ariana has taken her strengths and applied them to this concept. She has crafted tasks and opportunities outside the requirements of her job to satisfy her needs and play to her strengths. For example, she found that by adjusting firm-standard spreadsheets to include more detail, the status of the work items on her projected job schedule can be better monitored within each project. This also helps to better allocate resources within each project for future years, which is not a requirement of her job but is something she has crafted to incorporate her own strengths.
• Ariana also created a template for electronic notes that help her coordinate through the client files she is working on. She colour-coordinates the notes by section, importance, communication, and completion. This reminds her, or the next person who works on that client file, of tasks or issues that can be avoided or need to be dealt with in the future, with solutions and time allocations. This streamlined work process has improved productivity within the workplace.
• One of Ariana's other strengths is her relationships and connections with others. Ariana took it upon herself to manage the productivity of client files and provide updated templates, notes, spreadsheets, and material to help her coworkers and to support the training of new staff. This gave her the satisfaction that she was making a difference by helping others around her with what she found to be a better practice of work. With time, people looked to her for advice and followed in her footsteps of crafting their positions to fill their needs while still completing the requirements of their jobs as well.

By integrating aspects of the strengths she appreciates, Ariana had made her job more enjoyable. What she has implemented has been a model for others to follow and she continues to be greatly respected in her office. With increasing productivity and more precise projections for the allocation of resources and files, the firm can better understand and achieve goals and increase profits for the future.

Instruction: Think about Ariana's case study, select your answer to the question, and click the blue "Check" button. 

Attribution: This activity is used in the Arts & Science Internship Program's open educational resource, "Workplace Innovation Skills for Employment Success", available through eCampusOntario's Open Library in Spring 2023.

This project is made possible with funding by the Government of Ontario and through eCampusOntario’s support of the Virtual Learning Strategy. To learn more about the Virtual Learning Strategy visit: https://vls.ecampusontario.ca.