“‘I believe that Job Crafting means shaping your own position and also not being afraid of looking beyond the scope of your job description. So that both you and your employer can move forward.” Bart Koertshuis is the Company Lawyer at MCB, but more recently also ‘chief photographer’: “For me the subject ‘Job Crafting’ is most applicable. I came to work here in 2008 as the Company Lawyer, and studied photography in the evenings at art school. My graduation project was a photo report of my own office environment at MCB. From then on, I started to be more involved in photography and video for MCB, but I am increasingly involved in other marketing activities too. One thing just led to another.”
“In the first instance I only took photographs in my free time, on my Thursday afternoon off. But I was asked increasingly often to take photographs for marketing, the personnel magazines, annual report, you name it. But also to decorate the meeting rooms for example. I couldn’t fit it all into a Thursday afternoon anymore, so this is when I started shooting more pictures during work hours.”
“At the moment there is a nice balance between the legal work and photography. The legal work takes precedence of course, but there are peaks and troughs in work pressure. So when it’s less busy I’m able to get more involved in the photography. And taking photographs doesn’t need to take so long, especially not when it is just in between other things. And this is true for most of the assignments, although I spent eight afternoons on the web shop photographs. And I always finish the photographs at home in my own time.”
“When I was in my early forties, about ten years or so ago, I decided to give my career an extra dimension. I had heard myself saying too often ‘If I could choose, I’d become a photographer’, so I put together a plan to achieve this. During my course I discovered that the step from lawyer to photographer wasn’t as easy as it seemed, you see I was really not interested earning my living from wedding photography and the like. So the current combination is absolutely ideal, it grew quite organically.”
“From MCB things moved gradually, from the management I noticed that I received plenty of support and encouragement to execute the photo projects for MCB. The advantage is that as a colleague I know everyone and all the ins and outs, I can get close to the employees. I’m not seen as a stranger, but as a colleague with a camera. The external agencies that use my photographs say that they are often very personal. I think that is because I’ve proven my worth as a lawyer, this has created the space that I now have for photography.”
“Other examples of Job Crafting? There are other colleagues active outside MCB, but I’m not aware of anyone who has been able to deploy these activities for MCB in the way that I’m able to do so. But you never know how Job Crafting will develop at MCB, in any case I am very pleased with it.”
