Employability Habits

People ask me what we can do as individuals to increase our personal employability. Whilst my focus with Conscha is working with companies to change the way we think about working, ageing and employment over the course of longer lives, I’m happy to share here in short blog posts what I call “Employability Habits”. 

Each “Employability Habit” is based on one of the six aspects that contribute to maintaining personal employability that I investigated in-depth in my research and are things we can all do as individuals that, over time, will increase our personal lifelong employability. Perhaps a quick definition of what I mean when I talk about lifelong employability. I’m referring to the ability to find suitable employment in the job market and earn a living now - and over the course of your long life. Do you have the skills, knowledge and capabilities that are in demand? Are you able to find, and keep, employment in a form that suits you at each stage of your life? Are you someone who is, as Prof. Dr. Norbert Thom puts it “able to go, but happy to stay”?

I know! The thought of squeezing six additional habits into our lives is not appealing. We are constantly bombarded with good advice about what we should be building into our daily habits. The good news is I’m not suggesting we all have to adopt all six employability habits, or do them all at once. You’ll find your doing some of this stuff already (I hope!). And you'll find that by consciously developing these habits you actually gain back control over your working life.

Simon Sinek talks about good leadership being a 'consistent accumulation and combination of lots of little things' – I would argue it’s not different for maintaining your lifelong employability. There is no silver bullet. Like anything worth doing in life it requires conscious effort to build and maintain your employability – you get out what you put in.

So watch this space in the coming weeks for information – and I hope for constructive comments and dialogue - about the Networking Habit, the Lifelong Learning Habit, the Knowledge Management Habit, the Health Habit, the Career Management Habit and the Age Diversity Habit.  If you'd like to find out about supporting your team and employees with this topic please get in touch: Philippa Dengler / www.conscha.ch