Can everyone craft a sustainable career?
Author: Jos Akkermans
Modern careers are more dynamic and complex than ever before due to ongoing societal changes, such as digitalization, automation, and the erosion of the traditional “lifetime employment” perspective of working with one organization for life. We see these changes in practice but also research on careers. Indeed, virtually all of the most popular theories and concepts in career research focus on how individuals can effectively manage today’s volatile career landscape. This research has offered valuable insights into how individuals can, for example, successfully engage in career decision-making, career transitions, and employability development (for an overview, see Akkermans et al., 2021). But here, we also observe an important tension in career research and practice. On the one hand, there is widespread consensus that careers are more difficult to manage than ever. Yet, on the other hand, there has been an increasingly exclusive focus on the individual “career crafter” at the expense of looking at other, external factors involved in career development.
It is crucial to adopt a broader perspective on modern careers that considers not just the individual career agent but also their broader context and possible changes over time. These three elements – person, context, and time – are central to the perspective of sustainable careers (De Vos et al., 2020). A sustainable career allows people to preserve and renew their (career) resources over time. The individual career actor has a central role – after all, there are as many careers as individuals. However, individual career actions always evolve in a broader context and can change over time. For example, what people consider to be “successful career strategies” may be culturally dependent. And people’s nonwork situations may play a critical role in their work and career. Such factors may also change over time; for example, family-related issues may become more prominent in the mid-career stage for many people. In short, to truly understand modern careers and guide people in those careers, we must adopt a holistic view that goes beyond only the individual career actor.
Career sustainability is a combination of three factors: happiness, health, and productivity. Happiness can, for instance, be about feeling successful and engaged in your work and career. Health focuses on, for example, physical and mental health. Productivity can be about performance and employability. All three are crucial. If someone is exceptionally productive but compromises their health to do so, this will lead to serious problems at some point in their career. Similarly, if someone enjoys their work tremendously but does not perform well, they might lose that job. Although these factors might not look all that surprising, it is essential to point out that they are rarely studied and coached together, as the different indicators are typically discussed within specific disciplinary silos. We argue that we need to break those silos to understand people’s career sustainability.
Process Model of Sustainable Careers. Source: De Vos, A., Van der Heijden, B. I. J. M., & Akkermans, J. (2020). Sustainable careers: Towards a conceptual model. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 117, 103196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2018.06.011
Clearly, happiness, health, and productivity cannot be at a maximum at all times. However, all three should be considered and balanced to some degree during people’s careers. Here lies an important implication for career guidance professionals, who can help people understand and intervene on any or all of these three factors. Another important note about sustainable careers is that they are idiosyncratic, meaning they can differ for different people. Perhaps achieving many promotions is highly important to one person, whereas establishing a healthy balance between work and private life is key for another. Helping individuals understand their core values and what makes a career sustainable for them is another crucial contribution that career guidance professionals can make.
Crafting a sustainable career is, thus, about creating a balance between happiness, health, and productivity. This is not as straightforward as it may seem. One important reason is the unpredictable nature of careers in the modern career landscape. Although research and practice tend to focus heavily on how individuals can plan and control their career paths, there is ample evidence that major disruptions can shape our careers to a significant extent. Recent research in this area has focused on career shocks, which are disruptive events that trigger career reflection (Akkermans et al., 2018, 2021). Examples of career shocks are an unexpected layoff (as a negative shock) or promotion (as a positive shock). The combination of these two elements is critical. An event without any immediate reflection does not constitute a shock. Neither does career reflection without a clear external trigger. Perhaps the best example of this is the recent COVID-19 crisis (see also Akkermans et al., 2020). For many people in the hospitality and tourism industries, the pandemic was a significant negative career shock. For others, for example, in software development, it was a positive shock. For yet others, it was not a career shock at all. In conclusion, a career shock is only a shock if an event triggers career reflections.
Research shows that career shocks have a clear impact on careers. For example, such shocks can impact career success, employability, career transitions, and many other career-related outcomes (for an overview, see Akkermans et al., 2021). These findings underline the importance of being aware of career shocks as a crucial topic in career development and supporting people in anticipating and dealing with such shocks.
There are several lessons to learn from research on career shocks that are valuable to career guidance professionals. First, the occurrence and impact of a career shock is a consequence of the interplay between the individual and their context. For example, healthcare workers might experience very different career shocks (e.g., patients dying) than those working in academia (e.g., having a paper rejected). And someone who unexpectedly loses their job but has another job they can focus on is likely impacted differently than another who loses their job but has nothing to fall back on. Second, the impact of a career shock can differ over time. For instance, some career shocks may have an immediate impact on people, whereas others take a while before they affect change in people’s career plans and actions. Similarly, some events may constitute relatively minor career shocks at first, but when they accumulate over time, they may eventually become a massive shock. Third, the effects of career shocks are not always straightforward. Although we can assume that in many cases, negative shocks will lead to negative career outcomes and positive shocks to positive career outcomes, this does not always apply. For example, being fired from one’s job may ultimately lead someone to find alternative employment that fits them even better. Or getting an unexpected promotion when someone is not quite ready for it may eventually lead to a burnout. Taken together, these three lessons are valuable to consider for career guidance professionals to optimally understand which career shocks people experience and how they can support them with these complex events and processes.
So, can everyone craft a sustainable career? Research indicates that everyone should, at least to some degree, be able to achieve a certain degree of career sustainability. However, this is not purely up to the individual, as many other factors – such as career shocks – play a role in modern career paths. This is also where career guidance professionals come in because they have a critical role in supporting people – across career stages and occupations – to craft sustainable careers and deal with career shocks effectively.
About the author:
Dr. Jos Akkermans is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management and Organization, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research broadly focuses on career development, with special interests in career shocks, sustainable careers, employability, and career success. Jos is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Vocational Behavior. He is also a Past Division Chair for the Academy of Management Careers Division. He has published his research in various scholarly journals, including the Journal of Vocational Behavior, Applied Psychology, the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, and Human Resource Management. Jos has also co-edited several special issues, for example about sustainable careers (JVB), career shocks (CDI), and school-to-work transitions (JCD).
About this blog:
This blog post is based on a key note held by the author at the Austrian Euroguidance conference "Skills for the future" on 9 November 2023.
Jos Akkermans at the Austrian Euroguidance conference 2023 (c) OeAD/APA-Fotoservice/Hörmandinger
References
- Akkermans, J., Richardson, J., & Kraimer, M. L. (2020). The Covid-19 crisis as a career shock: Implications for careers and vocational behavior. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 119, 103434. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2020.103434
- Akkermans, J., Rodrigues, R., Mol, S. T., Seibert, S. E., & Khapova, S. N. (2021). The role of career shocks in contemporary career development: key challenges and ways forward. Career Development International, 26(4), 453-466. https://doi.org/10.1108/CDI-07-2021-0172
- Akkermans, J., Seibert, S. E., & Mol, S. T. (2018). Tales of the unexpected: Integrating career shocks in the contemporary careers literature. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 44, e1503. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip.v44i0.1503
- Akkermans, J., Spurk, D., & Fouad, N. (2021). Careers and career development. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology, 1-40. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.557
- De Vos, A., Van der Heijden, B. I. J. M., & Akkermans, J. (2020). Sustainable careers: Towards a conceptual model. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 117, Article 103196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2018.06.011
