Although much is known about employee empowerment and work designs, numerous companies and management practitioners struggle to implement empowerment initiatives effectively because it is not known which approach best facilitates individual levels of psychological empowerment. Traditional job design theory focuses on the role of managers and portrays employees as passive grantees of empowerment. Employees may influence their own empowerment by taking an active role in work design. The primary purpose of this correlational study was to examine whether job crafting or idiosyncratic deals are more or less empowering than job design and how work locus of control influences these relationships. It was hypothesized that job crafting would be the strongest correlate with psychological empowerment. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was designed with measures adapted from existing instruments. A sample of 150 adults, drawn from various industries in the United States, completed a voluntary, online survey. Data analysis, which used Pearson correlations, revealed that job crafting had a stronger relationship with psychological empowerment than did idiosyncratic deals and management-driven job design for employees with high internal work locus of control. Findings from this study may help organizational leaders understand how employees with high internal tendencies are psychologically empowered when actively engaged in designing their own work. Employees may then feel empowered to advance the company's social agenda and make personalized contributions to the greater society, essentially becoming goodwill ambassadors for the organization.

Three ongoing trends are the background for this study: the aging population, the large retirements and the challenges of skill supply, which are particularly pronounced in the public sector. Partly because of the large retirements, the public sector is currently experiencing recruitment difficulties combined with increasing demand for healthcare services. The increasing demand for healthcare services, high number of retirements and challenges of skill supply causes professional groups such as assistant nurses to be particularly exposed to increased strain. Significant factors proposed to solve current and future recruitment needs is an extended working life with economic incentives for additional years of labour market participation. However, previous studies have also shown that workers become increasingly heterogeneous as they age, suggesting that an individual approach to older workers are necessary. Therefore, this study seeks to create a deeper understanding of the work-related needs of older assistant nurses, and how individual agreements can improve work-related fit. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with older assistant nurses working in elderly care. Results indicated that the needs of the occupation govern the working conditions, and risk creating an imbalance between resources and work requirements. Different perceived working conditions combined with individual health-related aspects were identified as causing heterogeneous work-related needs, affecting the basis for a prolonged working life. Through individual agreements between manager and employee, it has instead been identified to enhance work motivation, therefore promoting both willingness and ability to postpone retirement. The results have particularly shown that agreements in tasks and schedules can improve the work-related fit and contribute to an extended working life. However, the complexity of individual agreements has also shown to be a risk of injustice among employees. Therefore, it places high demands on the development of age management strategies and policies, but also on managers in terms of the implementation and design of individual agreements.