Understanding the Impact of Individual and Team-Based Resources on Nurses' Work Engagement: The Mediating Roles of Individual and Team Job Crafting

Background: In the challenging healthcare sector, especially for nurses, sustaining high job engagement is vital for enhancing performance, reducing turnover, and ensuring quality patient care. Individual and team resources, such as self-efficacy, resilience, autonomy, social support, and a participative environment, help manage demands and boost motivation. Job crafting, where employees adapt tasks, relationships, and perceptions to fit their strengths and interests, is one strategy; for example, nurses may seek meaningful extra duties or reduce emotionally taxing responsibilities. Aim: This study aimed to investigate the effect of individual and team resources on nurses' work engagement, with a special emphasis on the mediating effect of job crafting at the individual and team levels.  Method: A descriptive correlational study design was used. Setting: This study was conducted at all inpatient and outpatient sectors at Zagazig University Hospitals. Subjects: Stratified random sample of 400 nurses working at Zagazig University Hospitals. Data collection tools: Five tools were used for data collection as follows: work experience and evaluation, shared leadership and team effectiveness scale, overarching work crafting scale, collaborative crafting scale, and the Utrecht work engagement scale. Results: The mean percentage score for individual resources was at a moderate level, while the scores for team resources, work engagement, individual job crafting, and team job crafting indicated high levels. Structural equation modeling revealed that individual resources had a direct and significant effect on nurses' work engagement. In contrast, team resources exerted a direct but non-significant influence on nurses' work engagement. Individual job crafting demonstrated a positive and significant effect on nurses' work engagement in the direct correlation, but through the structural equation model, it has a significant and negative effect on nurses' work engagement. Conversely, team job crafting had a strong and significant positive effect on work engagement. Conclusion: Individual job crafting partially mediated the association between individual resources and nurses' work engagement. However, team job crafting completely mediated the association between team resources and nurses' work engagement. Recommendations: Hospitals' administrators and nursing managers should foster a supportive work climate through encouraging open communication, recognizing achievements, and providing consistent feedback to boost morale. Also, enable job crafting opportunities by providing nurses with autonomy, flexibility, and time to participate in both individual and team-based work redesign.