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Employability and Industrial Mutations


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href="#ulink_f69715fb-8875-5b99-a58c-d2784393fb87">Figure 2.2. The Van der Klink et al. model (2016)

      As we can see, developing employability means developing the real capacity of individuals to make choices. This capacity is the result of a process that is built throughout life, and not only when the prospect of unemployment arises during a crisis. The challenge for the company and for human resources management is to ensure that this freedom remains compatible with the interests of the organization. Practices in this area are highly codified in French companies.

      2.2.1. Assessing employability

      To engage in proactive approaches to developing employability presupposes, first, that it is possible to evaluate this employability. A first approach, adopted in particular by researchers, consists of understanding employability through the perceptions that individuals have of it, hence the notion of “feeling of employability” or self-perceived employability. Assessing employees’ actual employability is more difficult, as it can only be observed in the context of career paths. Finally, assessing employability-capability presupposes the inclusion of a biographical dimension that makes it possible to observe the choices made by individuals throughout their career.

      2.2.1.1. Perceived employability

      2.2.1.2. Measuring “real” employability through the analysis of individual trajectories

      The use of self-perceived employability can be misleading and lead some employees to take risks or, on the contrary, to excessive immobility. But then, how can we measure what would be real, effective, objective employability? Evaluating the actual return to employment is a possibility, but this would mean distinguishing between returns to employment deemed satisfactory by the individual and situations where the job is degraded or constrained, not corresponding to the person’s aspirations, which is frequent, particularly in the case of restructuring (Mazade 2010). Could we instead assess the probability of returning to work? To do so, we would have to identify more precisely which dimension of employability is at the origin of this (the person, the context or the system). We could also, at the risk of being reductive, propose an evaluation of employability by considering the resources identified as being at the origin of employability: economic, educational and social capital and so on.

      In any case, effective employability cannot be validly understood without a situation: only an analysis of individual trajectories is likely to provide objective and precise elements on the employability of individuals. Employability cannot be assessed without creating (on a real scale or in a simulated manner) a mobility/transition/adaptation situation. A qualitative analysis of trajectories would lead to an interest in adaptation situations, to question the feelings of individuals, to understand the strategies they develop, to identify the contextual elements that facilitate or hinder their movements and, ultimately, to understand their employability in all its complexity.

      2.2.1.3. Measuring employability-skills through mixed approaches

      The exercise of evaluating employability prior to any form of development action is arduous. However, human resource management as a set of managerial techniques is entirely based on methods of evaluating phenomena that are known to be multidimensional, ambiguous and subjective: social climate, motivation, competence and potential are all equally vague quantities that are nevertheless the subject of measurement systems. The examination of evaluation systems often helps to identify the meaning given to the underlying concept. As already mentioned, it is mainly perceived employability that makes employees mobile. The aim of coaching and career development counseling methods is to build an appreciation of the universe of possibilities. The skills assessment meets this objective. Conversely, on the employer’s side, what makes workers employable is probably not very far from what makes them “recruitable”. Internally, the evaluation of employability is based on more or less tacit methods of detecting talent or measuring potential. In the outplacement units, methods are also used to direct workers towards a particular system. In the end, therefore, it is the examination of the conventions of judgment used by the actors in the internal or external labor markets that should be the focus of attention. There is a great deal of uncertainty, but the players generally know how to overcome it. Moreover, beyond impersonal criteria, the systems often provide for negotiation methods around which perceptions can be agreed. Interviews – whether they are “professional”, “recruitment”, “evaluation”, “orientation” or “dismissal” – precisely aim at reducing this uncertainty.

      2.2.2. Developing employability

      Beyond its measurement, how can employability be developed and what are the levers that organizations can use? If we consider that employability stems from the resources available to individuals, combined with activation levers (or conversion factors), and placed at the service of a project, then organizations can play on these three dimensions.

      2.2.2.1. Making resources available

      The resources needed by individuals are provided by the individuals themselves, by the institutional environment, and also by their work context or by HRM practices.

      The financing of training programs leading to the recognition and validation