In this chapter, we adopt a psychological perspective to the study of workplace innovation in Italy. Framing our contribution in the context of remote working and workplace innovation before, during, and after the COVID-19 emergency, we investigate how proactive behaviours (i.e., job crafting) transforming remote work processes resulted in different levels of work engagement during the pandemic. Three-wave longitudinal data were collected from a final sample of 35 remote workers (N=105 observations). Results from multilevel analyses with Bayesian estimator showed that remote working was associated with higher frequencies of behaviours aimed at actively distancing by one’s work role, which in turn was associated with lower work engagement. On the other side, employees reporting more efforts to optimise their work processes proactively reported higher engagement than those displaying less proactivity towards remote work organisation. These findings highlight the need for remote working solutions to account for individual proactivity in enacting remote work processes, since such behaviours are significant predictors of work engagement, a key factor to allow higher organisational performance and work-related well-being.
Workplace Innovation through Proactivity. Job Crafting and Work Engagement Dynamics among Remote Workers in Italy