Written by: Nada Matijevic, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
How can you stay relevant and maintain career development and job satisfaction as the future of work changes rapidly, becomes unpredictable, and makes career planning more complex?
There’s no denying that the future of work is already upon us. We see unprecedented disruption and change, from the prominence of technology and AI and the green transition to increased globalisation, competition and workplace demands. Add to this scenario more unexpected events, like a Pandemic, and we’re seeing fast-forwarded changes in how, when and where we work and the reshaping of occupations and skills needs.
Maintaining The Right Skills For Your Chosen Occupation
We’re already seeing imbalances between occupational demand for skills and the availability of skills in the labour market, with recruiters finding it hard to source suitably skilled candidates for some roles. The OECD website provides an interactive tool to determine your location's skill imbalances. Projected occupation and skill level employment changes globally show a significant shift from the world of work we know, with demand for some occupations and skill levels decreasing and others increasing. This is what employment projections look like in Australia by 2026.
From what can be gleaned from today’s not-too-distant future, we can only imagine what the world will look like ten to fifteen years from now. With all these changes, there’s added pressure and uncertainty about keeping up and planning for the future. Unsurprisingly, the pace of change is already causing more stress and anxiety and impacting our well-being.
Can We Become Complacent With Our Past Education, Skills And Experience?
To assume our roles will lead to linear and predictable career development pathways would be risky. To put it bluntly, doing the same things the same way puts us at risk of being left behind. Our thinking and development must be more dynamic to succeed in this changing environment. How we make the shift can determine whether we merely survive or thrive. While the emphasis here is on career planning and development, the impact is equally relevant for business owners and many hybrid career scenarios. So in this context, it might help to reframe the term “career” as it applies to your vocational plan.
The Theory Of Work Adjustment (TWA)
While other relevant factors and career development theories are at play, let’s look at career development and work satisfaction using The Theory of Work Adjustment by Dawis & Lofquist. It examines the interaction between the person and the work environment through four adjustment style variables and the adjustment and accommodation between them.
How the person and environment manage these four adjustment style variables determines their correspondence in needs and satisfaction and affects employee demand, retention, career development, satisfaction and tenure in that work environment.
Furthermore, imbalances between the person’s needs and abilities and the work environment initiate a continual work adjustment process.
The four TWA variables as they relate to you, the person:
Flexibility: Your tolerance of any dis-correspondence and how flexible you’re willing to be when there’s a mismatch between you and your environment. For example, if there’s a misalignment between your values and the organisation’s, a mismatch of skills and responsibilities or other forms of disharmony or conflict.
Activeness: Your tendency to actively change and act to reduce the dis-correspondence and dis-satisfaction.
Reactiveness: Your willingness to self-adjust to deal with the incoherence.
Perseverance: Your degree of resolve and persistence to adjust and accommodate before choosing to exit the environment.
Since it’s about the interaction between the person and the environment, the outcome also depends on how the environment (employer or labour market) manages these variables. Looking deeper makes it easier to understand why specific transferrable and employability skills are in high demand by employers, such as adaptability and resilience, communication and interpersonal and people skills.
The Increased Focus On Emotional Intelligence
Successful outcomes result from a dynamic interaction between you and your environment, and it takes Emotional Intelligence to succeed in today’s increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world.
As well as a need to develop specific skills related to a role or vocation, career success requires self-awareness, self-management, motivation, social awareness, empathy, and relationship management. According to Daniel Goleman, a leader in the field, these pillars of Emotional Intelligence can impact success more than IQ.
What You Can Do To Be Future Ready
1. Work on developing your Personal Competence
Raise your self-awareness: The work environment must meet your needs and values and engage your capabilities to maintain your satisfaction, whether now or in the future. Your mission is to be clear on what these are for you and to know the difference between the must-haves, negotiables and things to avoid. That’s where self-awareness and awareness of your needs, values, strengths and motivators come in. And why it’s best to start here before you begin planning for the future.
Get clear on your vision for the future and the best-aligned career goals and direction rather than randomly upskilling to future-proof your career. Understanding your needs and capabilities will provide the clarity and guidance to help identify the best-aligned career path and environment possibilities.
Improve your self-management: How long you will tolerate any dis-correspondence before doing something about it, how you go about addressing it, and how you manage your emotions, impulses and interactions with others are related to your thresholds and self-management. And the effectiveness of your self-management affects your motivation, adaptability, flexibility and resilience, and the outcome’s success.
Develop a growth mindset: Get comfortable with change. Be willing to elevate yourself through lifelong learning: Be broad-minded and expansive through continual exploration, growth and development. Be prepared to evolve and transform to be future-ready and able to seize opportunities.
2. Tune in to the market’s changing needs:
A clear Future of Work trend is the increasing importance of education, training and the growth of occupations requiring higher-level skills. Other predominantly lower-level skills occupations are declining.
a. Be proactive and dynamic:
Do your market research up-front and actively monitor market trends and environmental changes to stay informed about changing needs and challenges so you can spot opportunities, reassess your goals and upgrade your skills to help you achieve them. Then, as you interact with your environment, you’ll be able to identify skills gaps and opportunities, take action to restore equilibrium and harmony or make a different career choice to regain balance, meet your needs, match your capabilities with market needs, and achieve growth, career development and satisfaction.
b. Develop your technical competencies and skills:
Developing and upgrading skills aligned with your chosen career direction and objectives is essential.
Developing highly valued transferrable and employability skills will provide options and help you transition to different roles, organisations, and career pathways.
Most importantly, a growth mindset and the willingness to expand your potential will help you be adaptable to the changing environment, so you can elevate or reinvent yourself to stay relevant and in demand.
3. Develop your social competence and interaction with others
Social awareness and empathy to read the room or environment and relate. To see the situation more clearly.
Relationship management and influence to help you adjust your approach to interact more effectively to engage and influence others and to reach a better outcome.
Of course, the organisation or work environment has requirements regarding the capabilities and skills it needs and the reinforcers it provides to affect your satisfaction. So the success of the interaction also depends on the Emotional Intelligence of the parties you’re dealing with and their adjustment style variables and organisational constraints. Sometimes, rather than banging your head against an immovable wall, moving on and looking elsewhere might be what’s best for you.
Summary
Career planning for the future doesn’t need to be scary and unnecessarily stressful. You don’t need to feel out of control and surrender the fate of your career development and job satisfaction to the environment or take a passive “wait and see what happens” approach. Instead, remember that it’s a dynamic interaction where you play a big part in influencing the successful outcome.
Staying relevant and future ready will take a shift in self-definition, interaction with the labour market, and continual adjustments to keep up with the changing environment.
Understand your capabilities and comfort zone and be prepared to expand them. First, get comfortable with change and growth to enhance your personal and social competence and occupational skills and amplify your impact and opportunities. Next, research the market, find your niche and then formulate a plan to achieve your objectives. Finally, take action, and respond to the market’s changing skills needs relating to your goals and vision for the future.
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Nada Matijevic, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Nada Matijevic is a results-driven Career Consultant to professionals and executives who want to elevate their careers and lives. She provides coaching, guidance and tailored programs to enable people to identify their stand-out capacity for brilliance. She helps them define their career and life objectives, develop their personal brand and marketing toolkit and to chart and navigate their own path to their own version of success. Nada is passionate about helping her clients take on their most important leadership role of shaping a career and life they can thrive in so they are not dependent on external forces, or on chance, to determine their future for them.
