Keywords

Definition and Evolution of the Construct of Employability

Employability is a key individual resource that can be enhanced to help people face with greater confidence a constantly changing labour market characterized by unpredictability and insecurity (Di Fabio & Kenny, 2015; Guichard, 2013a; Savickas, 2011a). Employability should not be confused with employment (Fugate, Kinicki, & Ashforth, 2004). Employability involves taking into account what employment possibilities people perceive they have and what factors influence this perception in terms of self-belief and views on the labor market (Rothwell & Arnold, 2007).

The literature provides various definitions of employability (Di Fabio & Palazzeschi, 2013) involving factors such as maintenance of work (Hillage & Pollard, 1998); personal resources (Fugate et al., 2004); employability orientation (Van Dam, 2004); occupational expertise, anticipation of work, optimization of opportunities, balance between personal and professional needs (Van der Heijde & Van der Heijden, 2006); sustainability of work, qualifications, future-oriented perspectives (Rothwell & Arnold, 2007); meta-competences (behavioural adaptability, self-knowledge, career orientation awareness, sense of purpose, self-esteem) (Coetzee, 2008); and internal and external factors (De Cuyper & De Witte, 2011).

Hillage and Polland (1998) consider employability as the ability to find a first job, keep it, and find a new job if required, based on the interaction between personal characteristics (e.g. career management skills, job search skills, strategic approach) and context (e.g. characteristics of the labor market). Career management skills include self-awareness of interests and abilities; opportunity awareness (knowledge of the opportunities offered by the labor market and the personal characteristics needed to enter the labor market); and decision-making skills (developing strategies to achieve what one wants to become). Job search skills are those skills required to access formal and informal networks. Strategic approach refers to adaptability to labor market developments and realism about the job opportunities offered by the labor market including understanding of the need for professional mobility. Context relates to knowledge about the demands of the labor market locally and nationally as well as knowledge of recruitment and selection processes. This first definition of employability is based on the concept of maintenance of work while the following definition focuses on the importance of individual resources in finding and maintaining a job.

Fugate et al.’s (2004) definition of employability sees employability as a psychosocial construct with three dimensions: professional identity, personal adaptability, and human capital. These dimensions act synergistically to facilitate identification in the labor market and the creation of career opportunities. Professional identity concerns work experience and aspirations, including the “who I am” or “who I want to be” of an individual as a worker. Personal adaptability concerns the ability and the willingness to change personal characteristics (e.g. knowledge, attitudes, skills) in order to adapt and respond better to environmental demands. Human capital is seen as a set of factors that can affect career and development opportunities such as age, education, training, professional experience, and cognitive ability. On the basis of this definition of employability, Fugate and Kinicki developed a questionnaire, the Dispositional Measure of Employability (DME, Fugate & Kinicki, 2008). Later, in addition to individual resources, the attitudes of employees were considered important factors in employability orientation. This was articulated by Van Dam (2004) as follows, “the attitudes of employees toward interventions aimed at increasing the organization’s flexibility through developing and maintaining workers’ employability for the organization. Employability interventions often imply a change in the employee’s current work situation” (Van Dam, 2004). In other words, in order to be or become employable, employees may have to change their work content, jobs, or departments and take part in training and development programs. Van Dam (2004) also developed a questionnaire, the Employability Orientation Scale (EOS).

Van der Heijde and Van der Heijden (2006) formulated a definition of employability based on individual perceptions of specific aspects of employment such as occupational expertise, anticipation, optimization, personal flexibility, corporate sense, and balance between personal and professional needs. Occupational expertise concerns any work experience of the person; anticipation and optimization concern understanding what factors may promote one’s employability; personal flexibility concerns adaptability to all kinds of changes in the internal and external labor market; corporate sense concerns a sense of belonging to the organization; and balance concerns meeting the needs of the individual and those of the organization (e.g. balancing family and work or balancing working time and rest time). On the basis of their definition of employability, Van der Heijde and Van der Heijden (2006) developed the Competence-Based Measurement of Employability.

The next definition of employability introduced the concept of sustainability, the importance of adequate qualifications, and a future-oriented perspective. In 2007, Rothwell and Arnold referred to employability as the perceived ability to achieve appropriate, sustainable employment in relation to one’s level of qualification. As part of a future-oriented perspective, employability can be considered as the skills of individuals to proactively meet the challenges of the labor market. Rothwell and Arnold (2007) looked at employability in terms of university students. They distinguished four components of employability, each consisting of two aspects: beliefs about self (commitment to studies and academic performance and confidence in one’s skills and abilities); beliefs about one’s university (perceptions of the status of one’s university and its reputation in one’s field of study); beliefs about one’s field of study (status and credibility of one’s field of study and demands in the labor market for people with qualifications in one’s field of study); beliefs about the status of the labor market (one’s perception of the state of the labor market and one’s awareness of opportunities in the labor market). On the basis of this definition of employability, Rothwell, Herbert and Rothwell, (2007) developed the Self-Perceived Employability Scale for Students.

In his definition of employability, Coetzee (2008) introduced the concept of meta-competences (behavioral adaptability, self-knowledge, career orientation awareness, sense of purpose, self-esteem) in terms of which people are proactive agents in managing their own career paths. Behavioral adaptability in meta-competences refers to behaviors that enable one to be flexible and adaptable in different contexts; self-knowledge refers to awareness of self and one’s own interests, values, and competences; career orientation awareness refers to awareness of being oriented to the development of one’s own career; sense of purpose refers to awareness of having a personal goal to achieve; and self-esteem refers to having a positive value of self. On the basis of this definition, Coetzee (2008) developed the Employability Attributes Scale (EAS, Bezuidenhout & Coetzee, 2010).

The definition of employability was later extended by the inclusion of external factors. De Cuyper and De Witte’s (2011) definition of employability is based on the individual’s perception of available job opportunities, which is influenced by internal factors (e.g. individual training to increase employability) and external factors (economic conditions, labor market structure) and includes the ability to obtain and maintain a desired job.

More recently, in their definition of employability, van der Klink et al. (2016) highlighted the importance of personal values, work meaning, and the well-being of individuals and introduced the concept of sustainable employability. Sustainable employability “means that, throughout their working lives, workers can achieve tangible opportunities in the form of a set of capabilities. They also enjoy the necessary conditions that allow them to make a valuable contribution through their work, now and in the future, while safeguarding their health and welfare. This requires, on the one hand, a work context that facilitates this for them and on the other hand, the attitude and motivation to exploit these opportunities” (p. 74).

The evolution of the definition of employability has thus moved from maintenance of work through personal resources, attitudes, and meta-competences to external factors and the focus on personal values, work meaning, and the well-being of individuals.

Employability is therefore a key individual resource in the 21st century and gives rise to important reflections on careers, work, and the meaning of life (Bernaud, 2015; Di Fabio, 2014c; Guichard, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2013a, 2013b; Savickas, 2011a, 2013, 2016). More particularly, in the current unstable and uncertain world of work, people need to improve their qualifications and individual resources in order to increase their employability. They need also to reflect deeply on their own personal value systems so that they can meet the challenges of the post-modern era and achieve satisfaction and well-being.

Measures of Employability

In line with the evolution of the definition of employability, different authors developed different instruments to measure employability. A review of these instruments (summarized in Table 7.1) is presented with the measures discussed in chronological order.

Table 7.1 Overview of instruments used to evaluate employability
Full size table

The Employability Orientation Scale (EOS, Van Dam, 2004) consists of seven items with responses on a Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The scale was developed in accordance with the construct of employment orientation: “employees’ attitudes toward developing their employability for the organization” (Van Dam, 2004, p. 29). Examples of the items: “If the organization needs me to perform different tasks, I am prepared to change my work activities”; “I find it important to develop myself in a broad sense, so I will be able to perform different task activities or jobs within the organization”; “In the case of organizational changes, I would prefer to stay in my department with my colleagues”. The scale is one-dimensional with good internal consistency.

The Competence-Based Measurement of Employability (CBME, Van der Heijde & Van der Heijden, 2006) consists of 47 items on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree. The instrument was developed in accordance with Van der Heijde and Van der Heijden’s (2006) definition, which listed five dimensions of perceived employability: occupational expertise (example of item: “I consider myself competent to engage in in-depth, specialist discussions in my job domain”); anticipation and optimization (example of item: “I take responsibility for maintaining my labor market value”); personal flexibility (example of item: “I adapt to developments within my organization”); corporate sense (example of item: “In my organization, I take part in forming a common vision of values and goals”); balance (example of item: “My work and private life are evenly balanced”. The psychometric properties of the instrument were verified through independent studies conducted on employees and their immediate supervisors. The five-dimensional structure was confirmed through confirmatory factor analysis, and the instrument demonstrated good reliability as well. Predictive validity was supported by the positive relationship between the CBME and increase in hierarchical level and/or any significant increase in job responsibilities; financial success in terms of current gross income (per month); and the number of periods of unemployment of longer than one month throughout an individual’s career.

The Self-Perceived Employability Scale for Students (SPES, Rothwell, Herbert, & Rothwell, 2007; Italian version Di Fabio & Bucci, 2015; Di Fabio & Palazzeschi, 2013) consists of 16 items with response options on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The scale was developed in accordance with Rothwell and Arnold’s (2007) definition, which states that employability is the perceived ability to achieve appropriate, sustainable employment in keeping with one’s level of qualification and which distinguishes four aspects of employability in relation to university students: beliefs about self, beliefs about one’s university, beliefs about one’s field of study, and beliefs about the state of the labor market. Examples of items: “I regard my academic work as top priority”, “Employers are eager to employ graduates from my university”, “My degree is seen as leading to a specific career that is generally perceived as highly desirable”, “There is generally a strong demand for graduates at the present time”. The psychometric properties of the instrument were verified by independent studies conducted on university students. The scale was one-dimensional and demonstrated good reliability. The SPES showed itself to be a valid and reliable instrument (also in an Italian context) in respect of university students (Di Fabio & Palazzeschi, 2013) as well as high school students (Di Fabio & Bucci, 2015).

The Dispositional Measure of Employability (DME, Fugate & Kinicki, 2008; Italian version by Di Fabio & Bucci, 2017) consists of 25 items with responses on a Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The measure was developed in accordance with Fugate et al.’s (2004) definition, which states that employability is a multidimensional, psychosocial construct with five dimensions: Work and career resilience (example of item: “I am optimistic about my future career opportunities”); Openness to changes at work (example of item: “I feel changes at work generally have positive implications”); Work and career proactivity (example of item: “I stay abreast of developments relating to my type of job”); Career motivation (example of item: “I have participated in training or schooling that will help me reach my career goals”); Work identity (example of item: “I define myself by the work that I do”). Three independent studies were conducted on employees to establish the validity of the DME. The five-dimensional structure of the DME was confirmed using exploratory factor analysis (Study 1) and confirmatory factor analysis (Study 2). A third study confirmed the stability of the DME and indicated its construct validity by showing longitudinally that employability correlated significantly with employees’ positive emotions and affective commitment during organizational changes. All the studies indicated also the reliability of the DME.

The Employability Attributes Scale (EAS, Bezuidenhout & Coetzee, 2010) consists of 49 items on a six-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = never true for me to 6 = always true for me. The scale was developed in accordance with Coetzee’s (2008) definition of employability, which introduced the concept of meta-competences. The scale is designed to detect seven dimensions: career self-management, cultural competence, self-efficacy, career resilience, sociability, entrepreneurial orientation, and proactivity. Exploratory factor analysis (Coetzee, 2010) and inter-item correlational analyses indicated that the EAS items meet the psychometric criteria for construct validity. In terms of reliability (internal consistency), Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for each subscale were satisfactory in Coetzee’s study (Coetzee, 2010).

The instruments discussed above thus adequately measure the different aspects of employability according to the different definitions. Perhaps what is lacking is a more comprehensive tool that can reveal the full complexity of the employability construct. Also, new scales need to be developed in line with more recent definitions of employability.

Empirical Studies on the Antecedents and Outcomes of Employability

The literature review focused on employability antecedents as well as employability outcomes (subjective as well as objective outcomes).

Many of the contributions to the literature deal with the definition of employability, yet few studies have empirically tested the antecedents of employability (Wittekind, Raeder, & Grote, 2010). The antecedents of employability considered in the literature include human capital and labor market opportunities, education, support for career and skill development, current level of job-related skills, willingness to change jobs, willingness to develop new competencies, opportunity awareness, self-presentation skills, personality traits, and emotional intelligence (EI).

In their groundbreaking study on the antecedents of employability, Berntson, Sverke, and Marklund (2006) compared human capital and labor market opportunities as predictors of perceived employability. A study by Wittekind et al. (2010) analyzed the antecedents of perceived employability longitudinally. Here the antecedents were education, support for career and skill development, current level of job-related skills, willingness to change jobs, willingness to develop new competencies, opportunity awareness, and self-presentation skills.

Some studies analyzed the relationship between personality traits and perceived employability. Wille, De Fruyt, and Feys (2013), in a study involving Flemish college students, found positive associations between perceived employability and Agreeableness, Openness, and Emotional Stability in respect of personality traits. These associations were evaluated on the basis of four items adopted from the Career Worries Scale of the Career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory (CASI; Holland & Gottfredson, 1994).

A study carried out on Italian university students (Di Fabio & Bucci, 2013) found a positive relationship between perceived employability (measured with the Self-Perceived Employability Scale for Students; Rothwell et al., 2007) and Extraversion and Conscientiousness, thereby underlining the role of personal characteristics in perceived employability and also indicating the need for future in-depth analysis to better understand the relationship between perceived employability and personality and personality traits.

In their article on the relationship between employability and career success, Hogan et al. (2013) highlight the importance of social skills and emotional intelligence. The EI construct is particularly interesting because EI can be increased through specific training (Di Fabio & Kenny, 2012b, 2016; Di Fabio & Saklofske, 2014b) and operates differently from personality traits, which are considered stable in the literature (McCrae & Costa, 1987).

In another study, Dacre Pool and Qualter (2013) analyzed the relationship between the emotional self-efficacy and employability of working graduates.

The relationship between EI and perceived employability has received particular attention in studies in the Italian context. An interesting feature of these studies is that the relationship between EI and perceived employability tended to be investigated taking into account the effect of fluid intelligence and/or personality traits. A study by Di Fabio and Bucci (2013) set out to determine whether, in Italian university students, self-perceived emotional intelligence according to the Bar-On (1997) model related to perceived employability, taking into account the effect of personality traits.

Another study (Di Fabio, 2014b) among Italian university students used the trait emotional intelligence model of Petrides and Furnham (2000) and ability-based emotional intelligence according to the Mayer and Salovey (1997) model.

A recent study (Di Fabio & Kenny, 2015), again among Italian high school students, examined the relationship between two variables, namely self-reported emotional intelligence according to the Bar-On (1997) model and support from friends and teachers, in terms of three adaptive career outcomes (resilience, employability, and career decision-making self-efficacy).

The results of the studies discussed in this chapter are promising in that they suggest that career readiness can be promoted through EI—a variable that can be enhanced through specific training (Dacre Pool, & Qualter, 2013; Kotsou, Nelis, Grégoire, & Mikolajczak, 2011; Nelis, Quoidbach, Mikolajczak, & Hansenne, 2009). On the basis of a preventive approach and a primary prevention framework (Di Fabio et al., 2016; Di Fabio, Kenny, & Minor, 2014), it is possible to increase EI and thereby promote employability, reinforce people, create new strengths (Di Fabio, 2014a; Di Fabio & Kenny, 2015), and support work placement and job transitions in the 21st century (Guichard, 2013a; Savickas, 2011a).

As in the case of the antecedents of employability, few empirical studies have been done on the outcomes of employability, and those that have been conducted have focused on subjective outcomes (De Cuyper, Bernhard-Oettel Berntson, De Witte, & Alarco, 2008; De Cuyper, Notelaers, & De Witte, 2009; Lu, Sun, & Du, 2016). Very few studies up till now have covered the objective outcomes of employability (Berntson & Marklund, 2007; McQuaid, 2006).

In the past, subjective employability outcomes were studied mainly in organizational contexts, and the examined outcomes were life and job satisfaction (De Cuyper et al., 2008, 2009), affective commitment (De Cuyper et al., 2009), emotional exhaustion, and turnover intention (Lu et al., 2016).

De Cuyper et al.’s (2008) study on job satisfaction revealed a positive relationship between employability (measured according to the four items of De Witte, 2000) and employees’ well-being in terms of life satisfaction, thereby underlining the importance of feeling employable for an individual’s well-being in his/her own life. Follow-up research (De Cuyper et al., 2009) conducted among temporary agency workers and permanent workers showed that employability correlated positively with job satisfaction and negatively with affective organizational commitment.

Lu et al. (2016) investigated the effects of employability on employees’ emotional exhaustion and turnover intention in a Chinese setting, focusing on the moderating role of perceived career opportunity (PCO).

A study by Silla, De Cuyper, Gracia, Peirò, and De Witte (2009) investigated the relationship between job insecurity and well-being (psychological distress and life satisfaction) and the potential role of perceived employability in this relationship.

Few studies are recorded in the literature on the objective outcomes of employability. Among these are job search success and subsequent health as positive outcomes.

A study by McQuaid (2006) examined the relationship between unemployed persons’ employability and job search success, while a study by Berntson and Marklund (2007) investigated the relationship between perceived employability and subsequent health.

It is important to continue studying the antecedents and outcomes of employability. Regarding antecedents, it could be useful to study variables that can be increased through specific training to promote employability. Regarding outcomes, it could be useful to analyze subjective outcomes such as the different types of well-being (hedonic and eudaimonic well-being) and also new objective outcomes.

Conclusions

The evolution of the definition of employability begins with the maintenance of work (Hillage & Pollard, 1998) through personal resources (Fugate et al., 2004), employability orientation (Van Dam, 2004), occupational expertise, anticipation, optimization, and balance between personal and professional needs (Van der Heijde & Van der Heijden, 2006). The definition then moves to qualifications and future-oriented perspectives (Rothwell & Arnold, 2007), then to meta-competences (Coetzee, 2008), and, finally, to the more recent consideration of internal and external factors (De Cuyper & De Witte, 2011), the introduction of the concept of sustainable employability. This last definition includes the importance of personal values, work meaning, and the well-being of individuals. These more recent definitions of employability take into consideration external factors relating to the labor market as well as internal factors relating to values and life meaning in the 21st century.

Regarding the measures of employability, new scales need to be developed on the basis of the more recent definitions of employability, for example De Cuyper & De Witte’s (2011) definition that covers simultaneously the role of internal and external factors, and also the definition of sustainable employability (van der Klink et al. 2016) that includes the importance of personal values, work meaning, and the well-being of individuals in relation to career, work, and life meaning (Bernaud, 2015; Di Fabio, 2014c; Guichard, 2013a; Savickas, 2011a).

The analysis of the studies presented in this chapter helps widen reflection on employability as an individual strength (Di Fabio, 2015; Di Fabio & Bucci, 2015, 2016; Di Fabio & Cumbo, 2017; Di Fabio & Kenny, 2015; Di Fabio & Palazzeschi, 2012, 2015a, 2015b, 2016; Di Fabio & Saklofske, 2014b) that can be enhanced through specific training (Van der Heijden, Boon, van der Klink, & Meijs, 2009; Nelis et al., 2011; Sanders & de Grip, 2004) to enable people to better face the challenges of the 21st century (Bangali & Guichard, 2012; Di Fabio, 2014b; Di Fabio & Maree, 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2016; Guichard, 2013a, 2015, 2016a, 2016b; Maree, 2007, 2013; Maree & Di Fabio, 2015; Rothwell & Rothwell, 2017; Savickas, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c).

The review of the studies highlighted the need to continue with research particularly on the antecedents of employability (Dacre Pool, 2017; Singh et al., 2017), especially emotional intelligence, which can be increased through specific training (Di Fabio, 2015; Di Fabio & Kenny, 2012a, 2012b; Di Fabio & Palazzeschi, 2009, 2012, 2015a, 2015b; Di Fabio, Palazzeschi, Asulin-Peretz, & Gati, 2013; Di Fabio & Saklofske, 2014a, 2014b).

A key antecedent of employability that warrants further research is intrapreneurial self-capital (ISC) (Di Fabio, 2014a, p. 100). ISC reflects individual intrapreneurial resources that enable people to deal with frequent changes and transitions by creating innovative solutions when confronted with constraints imposed by the environment (Di Fabio, 2014a). ISC is a higher order construct comprising seven specific constructs that are fundamental to dealing with the challenges of the 21st century world of work. (1) Core self-evaluation refers to self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control, and the absence of pessimism (Judge, Erez, Bono, & Thoresen, 2003). (2) Hardiness refers to commitment, control, and challenge (Maddi, 1990). (3) Creative self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief that he/she can face and solve problems creatively (Tierney & Farmer, 2002). (4) Resilience refers to the perceived ability to cope with and continue to withstand adversity (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000) and to implement adaptive strategies to deal with discomfort and adversity (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004). (5) Goal mastery refers to continuously developing one’s skills (Midgley et al., 2000). (6) Decisiveness refers to the perceived ability to make decisions timeously in any life context (Frost & Shows, 1993). (7) Vigilance refers to the careful and adaptive searching for relevant information in decisional processes (Mann, Burnett, Radford, & Ford, 1997). ISC is thus a promising employability antecedent that warrants in-depth longitudinal study.

Employability outcomes also warrant more in-depth study, especially subjective outcomes where both hedonic (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) and eudaimonic well-being could be considered from a positive psychology point of view (Ryan & Deci, 2001; Waterman et al., 2010).

In relation to hedonic well-being, employability has been studied in particular in relation to life satisfaction (De Cuyper et al., 2008), and it would therefore be interesting also to examine its contribution to positive affects (Watson et al., 1988), which are another aspect of hedonic well-being. The role of employability could also investigated in relation to eudaimonic well-being variables such as meaning in life (Morgan & Farsides, 2009), authenticity (Wood, Linley, Maltby, Baliousis, & Joseph, 2008), the subjective experience of eudaimonia (Waterman et al., 2010), existential fulfillment (Längle, Orgler, & Kundi, 2003), and flourishing (Diener et al., 2010).

Regarding the objective outcomes of employability, employability activities need to be identified that can help one manage one’s professional path (Van Dam, 2004); enhance one’s professional knowledge and competences (Van der Heijde & Van der Heijden, 2006); and create and maintain multiple interpersonal relationships (Lent, Lopez, Lopez, & Sheu, 2008).

It is hoped that this chapter will broaden the discussion on employability, especially regarding its importance in relation to career construction (Savickas, 2005, 2015) and life construction (Guichard, 2013a) in the 21st century. Employability is clearly a key individual resource that can be enhanced to help people adapt better to the current constantly changing and unpredictable labor market and thereby achieve well-being, self-realization, and career success.