Purpose The frequent turnover of academic instructors (lecturers) to other organizations and countries despite the autonomies their job offer them necessitated; this study aims to examine the relationship between job crafting (JC) and embeddedness of lecturers to their jobs. Design/methodology/approach A survey research design was adopted. This study is carried out in the south-east region of Nigeria. The population of the study consisted of 8,051 academic staff of six randomly selected public universities in the region and a sample size of 367 was determined using Krejcie and Morgan (1970) formula. The primary and secondary source of data were used in data collection and were analysed using regression analysis at a 5% level of significance. Findings Result revealed that task crafting has a statistically significant positive relationship with employee job fit (r = 0.949, R2 = 0.900, F = 2699.473, p-value < 0.05), that relational crafting has a statistically significant positive influence on employee links (r = 0.982, R2 = 0.964, F = 8112.281, p-value < 0.05) and that there is a statistically significant positive correlation between cognitive crafting and sacrifice links (r = 0.962, R2 = 0.926, F = 3729.900, p-value < 0.05). Practical implications This study’s practical implication is that it will aid in making academics in Nigeria embedded in their jobs by encouraging them to craft their jobs so as to give them more meaning. In the field of research, this study helps to close the literature gap existing in JC and the role it plays in embedding academics in their jobs, hence, opening up a whole new research area with empirical data to back it up. For management, the study will help in knowing how to appropriately harness the potential of JC in making employees more engaged in their jobs. Originality/value Many studies have been carried out in the past in areas of JC and employee performance, non to the best knowledge of the researchers has been extended to studying JC as it relates to the embeddedness of academics to their jobs in Nigeria, this study is, therefore, a new addition to academic literature in this area.