Scientists Identify Two Distinct Types of Employees Who Redesign Their Own Jobs

Some employees quietly reshape their jobs from the inside. They seek out new skills, build relationships with colleagues, streamline frustrating obstacles, and volunteer for challenging assignments. This phenomenon, known as job crafting, has become one of the most studied concepts in organizational psychology, yet measuring it reliably across cultures has remained a stubborn challenge. A new study published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications now offers rigorous evidence that an Arabic version of the Job Crafting Scale works well among Saudi Arabian employees, and it reveals that workers fall into two distinct groups based on how actively they craft their roles.

The research, led by Yasir Ayed Alsamiri of the Islamic University of Madinah, together with Mohamed Ali of the Libyan Academy for Postgraduate Studies and Saeed A. AL-Dossary of the University of Ha’il, examined the psychometric properties, measurement invariance, and latent structure of the scale in a sample of 220 employees. The participants, 65 percent of whom were female with a mean age of 38.12 years, came from a broad range of educational and occupational backgrounds, giving the analysis a diverse foundation for testing how the instrument behaves in real-world conditions.

Job crafting is typically understood through four dimensions. Employees can increase structural job resources, for example by seeking autonomy or professional development opportunities. They can decrease hindering job demands by reducing emotionally draining or obstructive tasks. They can increase social job resources by cultivating supportive relationships, mentoring, or feedback networks. Finally, they can increase challenging job demands by deliberately taking on additional responsibilities or novel problems. The researchers set out to confirm whether this four-factor structure holds together statistically in their Arabic-language adaptation.

Using confirmatory factor analysis, the team found strong support for the hypothesized structure. The model produced good fit indices, with a comparative fit index of 0.96, a Tucker-Lewis index of 0.95, a root mean square error of approximation of 0.06, and a standardized root mean square residual of 0.08, all values within or near conventional benchmarks for a well-fitting measurement model. Every item loaded significantly onto its intended factor, and reliability estimates were acceptable across all four dimensions, with omega coefficients ranging from 0.74 to 0.83 and Cronbach’s alpha values from 0.73 to 0.83.

The validity story was more nuanced but largely encouraging. Convergent validity, which reflects how strongly items on the same dimension measure a shared underlying construct, was supported by acceptable average variance extracted values in the total sample, although some subgroup-specific estimates dipped below conventional thresholds. Discriminant validity, the degree to which the four dimensions remain distinct from one another, was supported through moderate inter-factor correlations ranging from 0.26 to 0.66, indicating that the dimensions relate to each other without collapsing into a single undifferentiated construct.

To test whether the scale actually captures something meaningful about employee psychology, the researchers examined its associations with resilience and psychological distress. The correlations were theoretically coherent, strengthening the case that job crafting connects to broader well-being constructs in ways consistent with prior research. The team also applied item response theory analyses, which generally supported acceptable item functioning, with most items demonstrating adequate fit and properly ordered response thresholds, meaning respondents answered the items in logically consistent ways.

One of the most important technical tests involved measurement invariance across gender. If a scale works differently for men and women, comparisons between the groups become scientifically questionable. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis confirmed configural, metric, and scalar invariance, the three progressive levels of invariance needed to justify meaningful group comparisons. In practical terms, the Arabic Job Crafting Scale measures the same constructs in the same way regardless of whether the respondent is male or female.

The study then moved beyond classical measurement into latent class analysis, a statistical technique that uncovers hidden subgroups within a population based on response patterns. Rather than treating job crafting as a smooth continuum, the analysis identified two distinct classes of employees. High Job Crafters, who made up 55.4 percent of the sample, actively engaged in all four crafting dimensions. Low Job Crafters, comprising the remaining 44.6 percent, showed lower levels of engagement across the board. This finding suggests that job crafting is not simply a matter of degree but may reflect qualitatively different behavioral profiles among workers.

What determines whether an employee lands in the high-crafting group? The researchers found that resilience and gender weakly predicted membership in the high-crafting class, while psychological distress showed minimal influence. This pattern is intriguing because it implies that personal resources such as resilience, rather than negative emotional states, may be the more relevant lever for understanding which employees take initiative in reshaping their work. For organizations, this hints at interventions aimed at building resilience as a pathway toward fostering proactive work behaviors.

The findings carry implications well beyond the laboratory. For human resource practitioners in Arabic-speaking contexts, the study provides preliminary support that the Arabic version of the Job Crafting Scale is a reliable and valid instrument, opening the door to studies of employee proactivity in a region where validated measures have been scarce. For the broader field, the two-class structure revealed by latent class analysis raises fresh questions about how organizations might identify and support low-crafting employees, and whether cultivating resilience could shift workers toward more active, self-directed engagement with their roles. The work was funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research at the Islamic University of Madinah and was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Psychological and Educational Research Center in Libya, with data collected in Saudi Arabia between July and September 2025.

Subject of Research: Psychometric validation and latent class analysis of job crafting behaviors among Saudi Arabian employees

Article Title: Unpacking job crafting: a psychometric and latent class analysis of employee crafting behaviors

Article References: Unpacking job crafting: a psychometric and latent class analysis of employee crafting behaviors. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41599-026-08856-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41599-026-08856-8

Keywords: job crafting, psychometrics, organizational psychology, confirmatory factor analysis, latent class analysis, measurement invariance, resilience, psychological distress, Arabic validation, employee proactivity, Saudi Arabia, item response theory