Study On The Relationship Between Manufacturing Employees’ Job Crafting And Thriving At Work: The Moderating Role Of Mindfulness

Objective: China’s manufacturing industry employees have heavy workloads,long working hours and high work intensity,and their work and psychological transitions directly affect the production and operation activities of the manufacturing industry.Therefore,this study aims to investigate the thriving at work,which reflects the work and psychological state of employees,to understand the current situation of the thriving at work of manufacturing employees,the influencing factors and the interactions between the influencing factors,and to provide theoretical support for enhancing the thriving at work and promoting the occupational health of manufacturing employees.Methods: This study used a cross-sectional design to conduct a survey of working manufacturing employees in Jiangsu and Anhui,two regions in southern China with developed manufacturing industries,during March 2022,using a convenience sampling method with electronic questionnaires distributed by the human resources departments of the companies.The questionnaire consisted of a basic profile questionnaire,the Job Crafting Questionnaire,the Langer Mindfulness Scale-14(LMS-14)and the Thriving at Work Scale.A total of 810 employees participated in the survey and 638 valid questionnaires were returned,with a valid response rate of 78.80%.Independent samples t-test and one-way ANOVA were used to compare work profiles and demographic differences in manufacturing employees’ thriving at work,job crafting and mindfulness.Pearson correlation analysis was used to explore the correlation between manufacturing employees’ thriving at work and its influencing factors,stratified regression analysis was used to examine the predictors of thriving at work and the moderating role of mindfulness between job crafting and thriving at work,and SPSS macro PROCESS(Model 1;Hayes2013)was used to further assess the moderating effect of mindfulness.Results: In this study,the mean score of thriving at work among manufacturing employees was 55.22±8.44.There were significant differences in thriving at work among manufacturing employees in terms of age(F=4.399,p<0.05),marital status(F=9.239,p<0.001)and years of experience(F=6.629,p<0.001).The level of job crafting among manufacturing employees was significantly different in terms of gender(t=-2.797,P<0.01),age(F=3.910,P<0.05),marital status(t=3.131,P<0.01)and years of experience(F=5.401,P<0.001).There were significant differences in the level of mindfulness of manufacturing employees in terms of gender(t=-3.436,P<0.01),education level(F=8.787,P<0.001),years of experience(F=3.613,P<0.01),position(t=-3.126,P<0.01),and shift status(t=2.971,P<0.01).Job crafting significantly positively predicted manufacturing employees’ thriving at work(β=0.459,p<0.001),and mindfulness significantly positively predicted manufacturing employees’ thriving at work(β=0.235,p<0.001).The relationship between job crafting and thriving at work among manufacturing employees was negatively moderated by mindfulness(β=-0.064,P<0.05),meaning that mindfulness significantly weakened the positive effect of job crafting on thriving at work.Conclusion: Job crafting and mindfulness were each significantly and positively correlated with thriving at work among manufacturing employees.Specifically,the higher the level of job crafting and mindfulness of manufacturing employees,the greater their thriving at work.The mindfulness played a negative role in moderating the relationship between job crafting and thriving at work,i.e.the lower the level of mindfulness,the greater the role of job crafting in thriving at work.When carrying out relevant interventions,companies should not only take into account the differences in demographic and work characteristics such as employees’ age,marital status and years of work experience,but also guide employees to carry out appropriate job crafting according to the differences in their levels of mindfulness,so as to maximize the effect of job crafting and fully activate the thriving at work in manufacturing employees and enhance their workplace well-being and occupational health.