Abstract
Organisations require employees who are engaged and empowered. Engaged employees are psychologically absorbed and show attentiveness in their work. Employees rely on work to obtain relational connections and access to resources for survival. The design of work has garnered much attention over the years through job crafting, which is self-initiated changes employees make and not manager led. The study explores job crafting, psychological empowerment, and work engagement of support staff within a call centre. The study follows a quantitative research approach. Data were collected from support staff at an organisation in the financial services industry based in Gauteng province in South Africa and comprised of a sample of 213 participants from a population of 473 employees (45% response rate). Several statistical techniques were employed to meet the research objectives. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted. Pearson product–moment correlation was employed to address this research, and multiple regression was further employed. The findings suggest that there is a significant positive relationship between all the variables. Task crafting and cognitive crafting predicted psychological empowerment; however, relational crafting did not predict psychological empowerment. Task crafting and cognitive crafting predicted work engagement; however, relational crafting did not predict work engagement. The implications for management and employees entail a re-evaluation of the organisational structure and promoting flexibility within call centre environments for support staff. Therefore, employees should consider crafting their jobs. This study can assist HR practitioners in call centres to evaluate how employees remain engaged and psychologically empowered. Recommendations for job crafting have been made in the form of diagrams and, when implemented, have the potential to enhance psychological empowerment and work engagement.