tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/career-19688/articlesCareer – The Conversation2023-10-27T13:12:53Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2147592023-10-27T13:12:53Z2023-10-27T13:12:53ZWhy young workers are leaving fossil fuel jobs – and what to do if you feel like ‘climate quitting’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556292/original/file-20231027-21-tz9saf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C8%2C5542%2C3692&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/businessman-carrying-brown-cardboard-box-resignation-1982059736">C_Production/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Are you frustrated with your employer’s lack of commitment to sustainability? Maybe “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-01-05/how-to-quit-your-job-to-fight-climate-change">climate quitting</a>” is for you. Climate quitting means leaving your job due to concerns about your employer’s impact on the climate or because you want to work directly on addressing climate issues.</p>
<p>If you’re contemplating leaving your job over climate concerns, you’re not alone. <a href="https://www.paulpolman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/MC_Paul-Polman_Net-Positive-Employee-Barometer_Final_web.pdf">Half of Gen Z employees</a> (people born between the late 1990s and early 2010s) in the UK have already resigned from a job due to a conflict in values. And <a href="https://www.paulpolman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/MC_Paul-Polman_Net-Positive-Employee-Barometer_Final_web.pdf">48% of people aged 18–41</a> say they are willing to take a pay cut to work for a company that aligns with their sustainability values.</p>
<p>Oil and gas companies in particular are <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-oils-talent-crisis-high-salaries-are-no-longer-enough-194545be">finding it difficult to attract new talent</a>, in part because they have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/24/do-not-work-for-climate-wreckers-un-head-tells-graduates-antonio-guterres">losing credibility</a> amid the growing climate crisis. This trend of climate quitting only adds to the industry’s talent challenges.</p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</p>
<p>You may be interested in:</p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-you-can-future-proof-your-career-in-the-era-of-ai-207580">How you can future-proof your career in the era of AI</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/three-mindfulness-and-meditation-techniques-that-could-help-you-manage-work-stress-208328">Three mindfulness and meditation techniques that could help you manage work stress</a></em></p>
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<p>Our research has involved interviewing dozens of people – including many who are still in the early stages of their careers – who have left the oil and gas industry because of their environmental concerns. The industry is often blamed for its contribution to the climate crisis, making it an ideal case to study climate quitting – despite its own efforts to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332221002335">downplay its role</a> in global warming.</p>
<p>Leaving your job is never an easy decision, and the climate quitters we spoke to revealed that they had actually enjoyed many aspects of their jobs. They were paid well, found their work intellectually rewarding and had opportunities for career development and travel. So, what is motivating people to quit their jobs over climate concerns?</p>
<h2>The urgency of the climate crisis</h2>
<p>Based on the results of a <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/worriesaboutclimatechangegreatbritain/septembertooctober2022#:%7E:text=Those%20most%20likely%20to%20report,with%20no%20qualifications%20(62%25)">survey from 2022</a>, people aged 16–29 are the age group most prone to feeling “very worried” about climate change. Interviews from our ongoing research confirmed this trend.</p>
<p>Most of the people we interviewed talked about the accelerating pace and urgency of tackling the climate crisis. Many mentioned the <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2021">International Energy Agency’s 2021 Report</a>, which proclaimed that new oil and gas exploration must stop immediately if we are to meet our climate targets. </p>
<p>But our interviewees report that their employers’ actions and priorities did not align with this sense of urgency to transition. Some reported that their employers were ignoring these warnings – even <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/14/shell-drops-target-to-cut-oil-production-as-ceo-guns-for-higher-profits">rolling back their prior climate commitments</a>.</p>
<p>One of our interviewees said: “I really did not want it on my conscience that I was making the world worse, that I was using the talents and skills that I acquired for many years of study to make the world worse and bring us on the brink of a climate disaster.”</p>
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<img alt="Four workers standing on an offshore oil rig." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556294/original/file-20231027-21-e0dgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556294/original/file-20231027-21-e0dgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556294/original/file-20231027-21-e0dgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556294/original/file-20231027-21-e0dgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556294/original/file-20231027-21-e0dgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556294/original/file-20231027-21-e0dgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556294/original/file-20231027-21-e0dgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Oil and gas firms’ actions often do not align with the urgent need to transition to cleaner energy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/anchor-handling-activity-during-rig-move-1734559574">m.afiqsyahmi/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Organisational hypocrisy</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0170840617736938">study we carried out in 2021</a> found that many companies in the energy sector go for clean rhetoric instead of green action and dilute their responsibility to take climate action. Our interviewees witnessed hypocrisy too, or a difference between what their corporate employers publicly announced regarding the clean energy transition and what they prioritised internally.</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629622003036">research</a> has found that oil and gas employees are often able to live with this dissonance. But the people we interviewed reported a growing sense of discomfort and value conflict at work, which ultimately got them thinking about leaving.</p>
<p>This comes as no great shock. A <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-012-1489-x">study from 2012</a> found that when employees in the oil and gas industry perceived their employers to be only pursuing environmental actions or claims in order to present a climate-friendly public image, they lose trust and identification with their employers.</p>
<h2>Failure to create change from within</h2>
<p>Our prior research finds that people often join organisations <a href="https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/from-movements-to-managers-crossing-organizational-boundaries-in-">with the specific goal</a> of trying to get their employers to better address climate change and sustainability, by <a href="https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2020.1423">taking on new roles</a> such as sustainability managers. However, many of the interviewees from our unpublished research ultimately decided to quit following their failed attempts to affect change from within. Some had joined sustainability task forces at work, while others tried to move into roles that were focused on the clean energy transition. But, by and large, they did not feel that they were having the impact that they desired.</p>
<p>This is probably because most oil and gas companies dedicate only a <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0263596">small fraction</a> of their investments and operations towards fossil fuel alternatives. This means there are few internal opportunities for climate-conscious employees.</p>
<h2>Taking on a climate job</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629622003036">Research</a> finds that it’s often easier for oil and gas employees with climate concerns to overcome their sense of value conflict and dissonance by changing their own minds rather than changing their jobs. But with new opportunities in the renewable energy sector, there is increasingly a place for energy experts to go. </p>
<p>The career trajectories of our interviewees conform with grave predictions for talent in the fossil fuel industry. A <a href="https://www.getireport.com/">survey of 10,000 energy professionals</a> in 2022 found that 82% of respondents would consider switching out of oil and gas within the next three years. Half of these people said they hoped to move into renewables. </p>
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<img alt="Two workers at a solar farm." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556295/original/file-20231027-15-314zz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556295/original/file-20231027-15-314zz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556295/original/file-20231027-15-314zz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556295/original/file-20231027-15-314zz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556295/original/file-20231027-15-314zz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556295/original/file-20231027-15-314zz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556295/original/file-20231027-15-314zz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Many people are leaving their jobs to work directly on the climate crisis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/solar-power-station-736731844">Mark Agnor/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>If you’re considering this type of move, there is a growing community of organisations with the mission to mobilise for climate quitting – including <a href="https://workonclimate.org/">Work on Climate</a>, <a href="https://terra.do/">Terra.do</a> and <a href="https://www.mcjcollective.com/">My Climate Journey</a>. They provide mentoring, support networks, job boards and training to help people move into climate jobs.</p>
<p>It may be time for oil and gas firms to finally reconsider their business decisions in the wake of employees’ concerns about the climate crisis and in pursuing value alignment in their work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214759/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grace Augustine receives funding from The British Academy and Leverhulme Trust. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Birthe Soppe receives funding from the Norwegian Research Council through the research centre INTRANSIT. </span></em></p>The oil and gas industry is struggling to retain talent – here’s why.Grace Augustine, Associate Professor in Business & Society, University of BathBirthe Soppe, Associate Professor of Organisation Studies, University of InnsbruckLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2153892023-10-19T13:18:25Z2023-10-19T13:18:25ZFootball and big money: what some professional players in Ghana told us about handling their finances<p>Footballers are among the best paid sportsmen in most parts of the world. </p>
<p>The unfortunate reality, however, is that the retirement <a href="https://www.theghanareport.com/top-5-players-who-went-broke-after-making-millions-in-football/">experiences</a> of many former professional footballers have been awful. Within the sports media landscape, there have been <a href="https://www.moneynest.co.uk/bankrupt-footballers/">reported cases</a> of once-wealthy footballers who have gone bankrupt soon upon retirement. Notable examples in Ghana are former Black Stars players Sammy Adjei, John Naawu, Joe Odoi, Prince Addu Poku and Amusa Gbadamoshie. </p>
<p>According to some <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?output=instlink&q=info:0Ha1K3SHR4kJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&scillfp=13443085754161180526&oi=lle">academics</a> this unfortunate situation stems in part from the fact that the danger of falling into a professional void is high. This is because, like most sports, football confers skills that are not easily transferable to non-sporting occupations. The availability of jobs in football is also very limited. So most footballers earn a very high income during their active career period and face a high degree of income uncertainty upon retirement.</p>
<p>The lifestyle of footballers (during the active playing period and upon retirement) has also been highlighted by several <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?output=instlink&q=info:cxNwMuOE4DsJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&scillfp=5439326496234156066&oi=lle">reports</a> as a key driver of the financial mess that some footballers have got themselves into. </p>
<p>Again, there have been reported cases of footballers engaging in irresponsible financial behaviour. Examples include gambling, spending on luxurious brands, lavish parties and generally maintaining an expensive and unsustainable lifestyle. A lack of financial knowledge has often been associated with this kind of financial behaviour.</p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://ugbs.ug.edu.gh/ugbsfaculty/profile-faculty_member/godfred-matthew-yaw">professor</a> of accounting who, with others, has conducted a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23750472.2023.2248150">study</a> to investigate the level of financial literacy of professional footballers in Ghana and ascertain its impact on their financial behaviour and financial wellbeing. </p>
<p>We found low levels of financial literacy, and poor financial behaviour, among footballers. The results suggest that to promote responsible financial behaviour among footballers, enhancing their financial literacy is key. We found very strong support for the argument that responsible financial behaviour, proxied in this study by savings and investment behaviour, is key to attaining financial wellness in life.</p>
<h2>The study design</h2>
<p>Financial literacy has been described as the ability to use the needed knowledge and skills to manage one’s financial resources effectively to improve welfare in the future. </p>
<p>Financial behaviour, on the other hand, can be <a href="https://www.grin.com/document/934971">described</a> as the “ability to regulate planning, budgeting, checking, managing, controlling, searching and storing daily funds”. It covers spending and saving habits, borrowing patterns, budgeting and access to financial products. </p>
<p>Using questionnaires, we surveyed 300 footballers who competed in the 2020 Ghana Premier League.</p>
<p>The questionnaire had two sections: one on the demographic details of the respondents; the other on their financial literacy, financial behaviours and financial wellbeing.</p>
<p>Currently, the Ghana Premier League has 18 registered clubs. At the time of the study, these clubs employed 480 registered footballers. Compared with clubs in Europe, England, Asia and even many other parts of Africa, the net worth of Ghanaian clubs is very <a href="https://www.fifa.com/en/media-releases/fifa-publishes-global-transfer-report-2021">low</a>. Revenues from international transfers – an important funding source for most Ghanaian clubs – have been very low over the years. For instance, the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) in its 2021 report on international transfers <a href="https://www.fifa.com/en/media-releases/fifa-publishes-global-transfer-report-2021">recorded</a> that Ghanaian football clubs together made a net profit of only US$50 million in the last decade.</p>
<h2>Footballers’ finances</h2>
<p>Our study revealed that the population of footballers was largely youthful. Nearly 90% were 30 years old or below, which is similar to footballers in other countries. This is expected as footballers are mostly active in their prime years. About 86% had some form of education, mainly up to senior high school level. The majority of the respondents were married and close to 58% of them had three or more dependants aside from their nuclear family. Thus, most of the footballers were providers for families although 39% said they lived with their parents or friends. On average, these footballers earned GHS2,000 net monthly income (US$177 at the time of the study), which, compared to other professionals, is low. </p>
<p>Overall, we found that the footballers had a low level of financial literacy. They ranked setting of long-term goals high but their interest in seeking financial knowledge was very low. It was therefore not surprising that most of the footballers seemed uncertain about where their money was spent.</p>
<p>We found that the footballers, generally, did not exhibit responsible financial behaviour. Very few had any interest in products such as bonds, stocks, mutual funds and insurance policies. But they seemed diligent in comparing prices when purchasing a product or service in a shop.</p>
<p>Interestingly, footballers were optimistic about their financial wellbeing. Most of those surveyed were confident in their capacity to meet current financial needs, had a very positive outlook on their future financing needs and made choices to enjoy life. The average footballer is always hopeful of securing lucrative contracts in future. </p>
<h2>Better performance</h2>
<p>Efforts to enhance the financial wellbeing of footballers can begin with investing in training programmes to make them financially literate. Second, football clubs can engage financial coaches to provide practical guidance to players during their active playing days to help shape their financial behaviour. </p>
<p>Given that financial wellbeing is closely <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JHASS-05-2021-0101/full/pdf">associated</a> with psychological wellbeing, such initiatives could have a positive effect on the performance of players on the field.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215389/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Godfred Matthew Yaw Owusu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most Ghanaian footballers have poor levels of financial literacy and financial behaviour.Godfred Matthew Yaw Owusu, Professor of Accounting, University of GhanaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1922032022-11-01T17:48:46Z2022-11-01T17:48:46ZWhy putting your artistic calling on hold might not always be such a bad idea<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492082/original/file-20221027-28385-7yclcl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is it ever too late?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/trombone-player-trombonist-playing-jazz-musician-2059728944">Alenavlad</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a boy, Terry loved music and taught himself trombone, guitar and the tuba. Right through school and university he played in the evenings in jazz groups, musical theatre and marching bands. He started work as an accountant in his early twenties, but his wide social circle in the music world meant he was still out playing gigs every evening. </p>
<p>Even as his blossoming career began to take him around the world, he still found opportunities to indulge his passion. However, as time went on and his career took over, finding time for music became harder and harder. In the end, it petered out completely.</p>
<p>Similarly, Jenny was a gifted flautist and played with a national youth orchestra. But juggling her work as an administrator alongside her family made it hard for her to continue. For a while, she would take her children to summer music camps where they could play together. But eventually following her divorce and a sense that her music was becoming a bit “stale”, she stopped playing altogether and sold her flute. She didn’t play again for 18 years. </p>
<p>It wasn’t until they retired that both Terry and Jenny got back into their music in a serious way. Jenny was introduced to jazz by her new partner and then, following his death, was inspired by his example to join a band and experiment with different genres. Terry took early retirement, joined an orchestra and picked up all his old instruments.</p>
<h2>Our findings</h2>
<p>These stories came out of a recent <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00187267221095759">research project</a> that I co-authored. We spoke to a total of 33 people in the UK, all of whom had felt “called” to music in early life but then abandoned it in favour of other work, only to return to their music later. Rather than being singers, violinists or ukulele players they became IT managers, civil servants and pharmacists.</p>
<p>Did any of them regret the choices they made? Although some had missed music for a while, with the benefit of hindsight, none regretted the choices they had made. As Terry said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think it would have lost some of its lustre if I’d made a go of it and it wouldn’t have been an escape from the day job, it would be the day job. At some point I wonder if it would have become a chore.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Oliver, a clarinet player turned leadership development expert turned retiree musician, took a similar view. He talked about a musician he knew who played in the orchestra pit of The Lion King every night who would now “panic at being asked to play anything else”.</p>
<p>Jenny spoke for many of our participants when she said music was “like breathing”, but they also saw pursuing a musical career as fraught with risks. They talked about the lack of job security, the antisocial hours, the low pay, the hours of practice and lack of control over what music they could play. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492083/original/file-20221027-13-eta3rj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Career woman looking out an airport window thoughtfully" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492083/original/file-20221027-13-eta3rj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492083/original/file-20221027-13-eta3rj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492083/original/file-20221027-13-eta3rj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492083/original/file-20221027-13-eta3rj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492083/original/file-20221027-13-eta3rj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492083/original/file-20221027-13-eta3rj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492083/original/file-20221027-13-eta3rj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Should I have taken my chance?’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/passenger-traveler-woman-airport-waiting-air-180785885">Maridav</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead, most had pursued careers that built on other strengths and interests and that brought them a greater sense of security. From the vantage point of retirement, people could see the benefits of pursuing their calling in their later years instead.</p>
<p>Some, like Ron, went so far as to do a master’s degree and then a doctorate in music after he retired. Others, like Fiona, took the opportunity to explore new types of music, go to music summer schools, chair a local music society and play with a range of different groups. </p>
<p>While all the musicians aspired to be good at what they did, pressures from teachers, peers and family were lifted in later life. In retirement, music was about having fun, experimentation and companionship, and it didn’t matter what went wrong. Our participants enthused about the new-found joy and freedom of following their calling in their later years.</p>
<p>Amy said: “When I’m singing I’m in the moment, and that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter what I look like, what anybody thinks of me.”</p>
<p>As Jack added:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Being good used to matter a lot to me when I was younger and that scared me off. But now you just give it a go – if it works, it works, if it doesn’t, have a laugh! </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this way, what it means to follow your calling becomes transformed over the life course from the serious, pressured experience of youth to the joy and freedom of retirement.</p>
<h2>Caveats</h2>
<p>It was easier for some than for others to resume their music. Those who completely abandoned music for some time – in Jack’s case 40 years, for example – certainly struggled more to get back into it. Yet even those in Jack’s position instinctively knew music was not completely lost to them:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You think of passions as something red hot and steaming, but they’re not always. Sometimes they simmer and they’re always there, always at the back. There’s this sort of beat.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Picking up their calling to music in retirement gave structure and purpose to people’s lives and meant retirement was not just about “gardening”, but about personal growth and fulfilment. It meant that life continued to have a sense of purpose and meaning.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492084/original/file-20221027-18659-tnbsk2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Old man smiling as he plays the piano" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492084/original/file-20221027-18659-tnbsk2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492084/original/file-20221027-18659-tnbsk2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492084/original/file-20221027-18659-tnbsk2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492084/original/file-20221027-18659-tnbsk2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492084/original/file-20221027-18659-tnbsk2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492084/original/file-20221027-18659-tnbsk2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492084/original/file-20221027-18659-tnbsk2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Reelin’ in the years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/senior-man-learning-play-piano-2176718759">Caftor</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our participants were lucky because they all enjoyed good physical and mental health and the financial resources to afford to spend time on music. Of course, not everyone is in this position. </p>
<p>But for many who missed the boat first time around and didn’t follow their calling, the message is that it can still happen in a different way. As Gordon, a trombone player in his youth who became a senior IT executive and now chairs his local choral society, said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People say, ‘keep your passion as your hobby but not your career because it will be more satisfying’. I think in retrospect that was probably sound advice.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192203/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Bailey is a member of ReWAGE, and of the Work Insights Group which is part of the Involvement and Participation Association. This article is based on research conducted in collaboration with Dr Jane Sturges. </span></em></p>We are all told to follow our calling. Here’s what happens if you pursue a more ‘sensible’ career instead.Katie Bailey, Professor Of Work and Employment, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1709912022-01-06T13:17:50Z2022-01-06T13:17:50ZCollege students with young kids – especially mothers – find themselves in a time crunch<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435950/original/file-20211206-25-1dfbznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C0%2C7004%2C4689&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mothers in college have less time to study than students without children. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/woman-with-baby-son-working-royalty-free-image/968890474?adppopup=true">10'000 Hours/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>We found that college students who have children had significantly less time for college than their childless peers – about 4.3 hours less per week, to be specific – and that this <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2018.1442983">“time poverty”</a> is greatest for mothers of preschool-age children. That’s according to a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211011608">2021 study of 11,195 U.S. college students</a>. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211011608">study</a> found other trends as well. Student parents also often had to care for children while they were studying. The most “time-poor” parents sacrificed a great deal more of their free time for their studies than childless students who had more time and could complete an academic degree more rapidly.</p>
<p>Among all student parents, those with the youngest children – and mothers in particular – had the least time for college and were likelier to enroll in college part time.“ For example, parents with children less than a year old spent a higher proportion of their free time – time left over after all necessary tasks – on their education than any other group. This was perhaps an attempt to make up for the fact that they had less time for their studies. </p>
<p>In addition, despite having less available time for their studies in the first place, mothers on average spent more time on their education than fathers. For example, among parents with children ages 1-5, mothers had 8.4 fewer hours per week to spend on their studies than fathers with children of the same age. Still, these mothers spent almost two more hours per week on their education than fathers. </p>
<p><iframe id="UUPxN" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/UUPxN/12/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>This time difference matters, because college students with children are more likely to drop out and take longer to complete their degrees than college students without children, even though on average they have <a href="https://www.publicnewsservice.org/2021-03-19/education/report-college-students-with-children-have-slightly-higher-gpas/a73603-1">higher GPAs</a>, according to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2018.1442983">a study we published in 2018</a>.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211011608">our 2021 study</a>, having less time for college explained much of the difference in time spent on education between college students who have children and those who don’t, as well as between mothers and fathers. It also explained differences among these groups in part-time enrollment. </p>
<p><iframe id="zmGDh" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/zmGDh/11/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>However, mothers and fathers who lived with other adult family members who could help with child care were able to devote more time to their college work. They also spent less time studying while simultaneously caring for children, and they enrolled in college full time more often. Each additional adult family member living with a student parent increased the time they spent on their studies by over 1.5 hours each week. It also increased the time student parents spent studying without children present by 5 percentage points and their probability of enrolling full time by over 2 percentage points. This suggests that access to child care is critical to the progress of student parents.</p>
<p>Improving outcomes for student parents is important not just for students but for their families. One reason for this is that achieving a college degree is linked to <a href="https://scholars.org/contribution/helping-parents-get-college-education-helps-children-succeed">better economic and educational outcomes for their children</a>.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>We don’t yet know which kinds of supports might work best to improve outcomes for college students who are parents, but there are several potential solutions. </p>
<p>On-campus child care at colleges in the U.S. currently serves only about <a href="https://iwpr.org/iwpr-general/improving-child-care-access-to-promote-postsecondary-success-among-low-income-parents/">5% of student parents’ needs</a> and <a href="http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/4.8-million-college-students-are-raising-children">has declined over the last several decades</a>. </p>
<p>One possible approach could be to invest more systematically in on-campus child care centers at colleges to support student parents. Another approach could be to increase federal financial aid awards to automatically cover the costs of child care that student parents need in order to study or attend class. </p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>Time poverty may be a challenge also for students who are not parents. Currently, we are looking at time poverty rates for other groups, such as students who enroll in online courses, women and students of color, to explore the extent to which time poverty is unequally distributed, and whether it may explain inequitable college outcomes for these groups. This may help us to understand whether different groups finish college at different rates because of differences in how much time they have to devote to their studies.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170991/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Wladis receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>College students with children have slightly higher GPAs but often take a longer time to graduate and are more likely to drop out of school.Claire Wladis, Professor of Urban Education, CUNY Graduate CenterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1709012021-11-07T08:43:52Z2021-11-07T08:43:52ZBenin’s groundbreaking new abortion law will save the lives of many women<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429705/original/file-20211102-10001-5vkef7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Benin's new abortion law considers a woman's socioeconomic situation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anton_Ivanov/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Benin’s parliament <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/27/activists-hail-new-benin-law-abortion">has voted</a> to legalise abortion in most circumstances. This is a groundbreaking move by the west African country given that <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/abortion-subsaharan-africa">92% of women</a> of reproductive age on the continent live in countries which have restrictions – some moderate, some severe – on abortions. Moina Spooner, from The Conversation Africa, asked reproductive health expert, Ramatou Ouedraogo, to unpack the significance of this ruling.</em></p>
<h2>What does Benin’s new abortion law say?</h2>
<p>Benin’s <a href="https://www.gouv.bj/actualite/1518/encadrement-avortement-benin-parlement-adopte-modificative/">new abortion law</a>, which amends a <a href="https://www.prb.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Loi-n%C2%B0-2003-04-du-03-Mars-2003-Relative-a%CC%80-la-Sante%CC%81-Sexuelle-et-a%CC%80-la-Reproduction.-Be%CC%81nin.pdf">previous one</a>, now states that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>upon the request of the pregnant woman, voluntary termination of pregnancy can be allowed when the pregnancy is likely to aggravate or cause a situation of material, educational, professional or moral distress incompatible with the interest of the woman and/or the unborn child…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The voluntary termination of the pregnancy is not to happen after 12 weeks of amenorrhea, the absence of a period.</p>
<p>Before this amendment, a woman could get her pregnancy terminated if the pregnancy would threaten her health or life, in case of foetal malformation, or when the pregnancy was a result of incest or rape. The new law expands this to protect a woman’s education or career. </p>
<p>In 2017, only six out of 53 African countries, <a href="https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_POPU_1802_0225--abortion-around-the-world-an-overview.htm?contenu=article">permitted</a> abortion at the woman’s request during the first trimester of pregnancy. They were Cape Verde, South Africa, Tunisia, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Angola up to 10 weeks of gestation.</p>
<p>Zambia, like Benin, <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/factsheet/ib_aww-africa_0.pdf">includes</a> socioeconomic reasons in its abortion laws. </p>
<p>Benin’s new law will provide more women with access to safe abortion in instances that they may not want, or be able, to continue with a pregnancy.</p>
<p>For instance, a student who gets pregnant and fears dropping out of school as result, can request for her pregnancy to be terminated to give her chance to complete her studies. Previous studies <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00038-020-01359-6">have shown</a> that continuation of studies is <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00038-020-01359-6">a common reason among girls and young women terminating pregnancy</a>. </p>
<p>The same applies to a woman who already has three or four children that she is struggling to feed, and feels her current financial and material conditions cannot accommodate another child. </p>
<p>The new law opens the door for such women to access safe abortion, instead of resorting to unsafe methods <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/anthropologiesante/2872">and risking their lives</a>.</p>
<h2>Why has this stance been taken in Benin?</h2>
<p>I will say that Benin took this stance mainly to protect and save the lives of women, and the long-term advocacy around this.</p>
<p>As seen <a href="https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_POPU_1802_0225--abortion-around-the-world-an-overview.htm#xd_co_f=MmEwZThhMjZiZDVlYzE3NzY5NzE2MjUxMjg5ODExMTQ=%7E">across the world</a>, laws don’t necessarily prevent women from seeking abortion services. Rather, they’ll find a clandestine, and possibly deadly, alternative. This is especially the case for women who lack resources and are economically vulnerable. This is <a href="https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ogi/2014/402456/">because</a> women with more wealth, a higher education level and strong network are more likely to access safe abortion than those with less resources.</p>
<p>Although there’s not been a nationwide survey of abortion in the country – assessing the rate, cost and consequences of unsafe abortions – a few studies were able to show the burden and consequences of unsafe abortion in the country. The Ministry of Health <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wLeNmOTzPY">estimates</a> that 15% of maternal deaths in the country result from unsafe abortion. And <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11380296/">data on complications associated with clandestine abortions</a> and practices related to family planning use show that <a href="https://partenariatouaga.org/grossesses-non-desirees-et-avortements-des-taux-alarmants-chez-les-femmes-et-filles-au-benin/">unsafe abortions are a growing trend</a>. </p>
<p>The ongoing ethnographic study that the <a href="https://aphrc.org/">African Population and Health Research Center</a> (where I work) is conducting in Benin in collaboration with Rutgers as part of the <a href="https://rutgers.international/programmes/she-makes-her-safe-choice/">‘She makes her safe choice programme</a>’ concurs with such findings. It shows that women and girls are desperate, and so transgress the law. </p>
<p>They risk death and stigma, to get rid of pregnancy that threatens their lives and livelihoods. For instance, casual labourers – such as domestic workers and sexworkers – reported that unwanted pregnancies could be be detrimental to their jobs. They would have to stop working, thereby having no means of subsistence for themselves, and the new child. </p>
<p>Through our work we’ve seen how civil society organisations, health workers – such as gynaecologists and midwives (who are often encounter women who seek medical attention after unsafe abortions go wrong) – and international and national NGOs such as the <a href="https://www.abpf.org/">(Beninese Association for the Promotion of the Family)</a> engaged in long-term, and sometimes quiet, advocacy. </p>
<p>They used their experience to convince parliamentarians of the fact that pro-choice abortion laws will not encourage women to go for abortion. Rather, they will save the lives of those who will seek abortion regardless of the restrictions in place.</p>
<h2>How does this approach compare with other countries in the region?</h2>
<p>The Benin approach is somewhat groundbreaking in the Africa region.
Benin goes beyond the <a href="https://au.int/en/treaties/protocol-african-charter-human-and-peoples-rights-rights-women-africa">Maputo Protocol</a>, which has been the policy goal in the region for all the states, to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>protect the reproductive rights of women by authorising medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the foetus. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Democratic Republic of Congo has been the most progressive country in the francophone region, as <a href="https://www.prb.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/safe-engage-case-study-maputo.pdf">they gazetted the Maputo Protocol in 2018</a>. Apart from that, all the countries are still in the advocacy process for enforcing at least the Maputo protocol. </p>
<p>This development in Benin demonstrates that African policy makers are capable and willing to make laws that take into consideration women’s reproductive health and rights.</p>
<h2>What will be the implications of this ruling?</h2>
<p>This is a progressive step with regards to a woman’s reproductive health and rights. Making the decision to have an abortion has always been a hard decision for women. From my experience, women usually consider abortion as a last resort. It is a very difficult and emotional experience, which has been worsened by legal restrictions. </p>
<p>The implication of this ruling is that it brings relief for women in their decision making process. It will provide access to safe medical pregnancy termination from public and private health facilities. By accessing I mean cost and availability. Clandestine procedures are known to be expensive. On the other hand the services will be moving from hidden to publicly available in health facilities. In some cases, access to safe abortion ensures that serious consequences of unsafe abortion are averted. </p>
<p>However, it is important to note that the ruling of the law on its own is not enough for women to access the medical abortion services. There is a lot to do including developing policies for the implementation of the law, working with health professionals to reduce the number of those who are likely to refuse to offer such services using conscientious objection.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170901/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ramatou Ouedraogo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Benin’s new abortion law will take a woman’s educational, professional and material situation into consideration.Ramatou Ouedraogo, Associate Research Scientist , African Population and Health Research CenterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1487202020-12-27T20:41:40Z2020-12-27T20:41:40ZHere’s why you’re checking work emails on holidays (and how to stop)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373506/original/file-20201208-19-1abl6yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C5%2C997%2C660&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-using-tablet-computer-while-relaxing-270714437">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Finally, the holidays are here — the break you’ve been waiting for. You want to leave work behind, kick back and enjoy time with family and friends. </p>
<p>But you’re still checking work emails and taking work calls. Even if you are at a remote location that screams holiday, you’re still thinking about work, or even doing work, although you promised yourself this time would be different.</p>
<p>If this sounds familiar, you’re not the only one <a href="https://securitybrief.com.au/story/aussie-workers-struggling-to-switch-off-while-on-holiday">struggling to switch off</a> on holidays. </p>
<p>One reason is you, like many others, might derive a strong sense of self from your work.</p>
<h2>Work helps shape your identity</h2>
<p>Humans crave answers to the question “who am I?”. One place we find these answers is in the activities we do — including our work. Whether we work by choice, necessity, or a bit of both, many of us find work inevitably becomes a source of our identity. </p>
<p>We develop <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4419-7988-9_29">professional identities</a> (“I’m a lawyer”), <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/258189?origin=crossref&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">organisational identities</a> (“I’m a Google employee”), or as we discovered in our research, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018726719851835">performance-based identities</a> (“I’m a top performer”). </p>
<p>Such identification can be beneficial. It has been linked with <a href="https://iaap-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1464-0597.00020">increased motivation and work performance</a>, and even <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10990992/47/7">better health</a>. But it can also prevent us from switching off.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-our-obsession-with-performance-is-changing-our-sense-of-self-120212">How our obsession with performance is changing our sense of self</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Your work identity can make it harder to switch off</h2>
<p>We all know people who are mentally “on holidays” even before the holidays have started. But for others, switching off from work is not so easy. Why?</p>
<p>One factor is our identity mix. We all have multiple identities, but the range and relative importance of our identities <a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/19416520.2014.912379">vary</a> from person to person.</p>
<p>If work-related identities occupy a central place in how we see ourselves, they’re likely to shape our thinking and behaviour beyond work hours — including during holidays. In other words, we stay mentally connected to work not because the boss or the job necessarily requires it, but because it’s hard to imagine other ways of “being ourselves”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1093283823951855616"}"></div></p>
<p>Equally important to why some of us struggle to switch off on holidays are <a href="https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.89.5.657">environmental cues</a>. That relaxing chair by the pool or the company of family tell us we’re off work. But email alerts or phone calls, or even the simple sight of our laptop, can activate work identities and associated mindsets and behaviours. No wonder our plans for switching off are doomed.</p>
<h2>Yes, but what can I do about it?</h2>
<p>It’s worth considering all that obvious advice you’ve heard on the benefits of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/click-here-happiness/201801/5-ways-do-digital-detox">digital detox</a>. </p>
<p>This is even more important in the new normal of working from home in 2020 and beyond. For many of us, the office and home are now one and the same, meaning we have to work even harder to protect non-work time from work-related incursions.</p>
<p>From an identity perspective, though, there’s a lot more we can do.</p>
<p>First, we can scan the environment and remove any cues that might activate our work identity (beyond switching off email alerts). This might be something as simple as hiding your laptop in a drawer.</p>
<p>At the same time, introduce cues to activate other identities. For instance, if you’re a tennis player or an aspiring artist, keep your gear visible so your brain is primed to focus on those aspects of your self. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Tennis bag, racket, ball and shoes lying around at home" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Keep your tennis gear visible so your brain is primed to focus on your identity as a tennis player.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sport-fitness-healthy-lifestyle-objects-concept-344017223">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, research suggests we can engage in “<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/job.2318">identity work</a>” and “<a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09534811011017180/full/html">identity play</a>”. That’s deliberately managing and revising our identities, and even experimenting with potential new ones. Imagining and trying new and more complex versions of ourselves takes time, but it can be an effective antidote to an overpowering work identity. </p>
<p>But simply trying to not think about work over the holidays is likely to do more harm than good. Much research shows trying to suppress certain thoughts <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.51.1.59?utm_source=thearchive.me&casa_token=7EMuUEUjcZIAAAAA:oonIM3-aA-zdrfjL7Le0VHaC9_Mnn08E-zBWich68hLk4LcP6eEdfea8iTegKa63K-x4Wee8smOJmgE">tends to have the opposite effect</a>, making us not only have the thought more, but also feeling worse afterwards. </p>
<p>A better approach may be to <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/nz/blog/two-takes-depression/201102/introduction-acceptance-and-commitment-therapy">accept the thought</a> for what it is (a simple mental event), and naturally let your mind move to the next carriage in your train of thought.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/were-all-going-on-a-summer-holiday-well-some-of-us-34075">We’re all going on a summer holiday – well, some of us ...</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In the long term, it’s worth reflecting on whether you might be <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02678373.2012.712291">over-identifying</a> with work. </p>
<p>One way to test this is by assessing how you feel about doing the unthinkable of completely unplugging for a while. Does that make you anxious? </p>
<p>What about the idea of retirement — that final “holiday” we’ve worked towards our entire life? This too <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-13403-009">can be challenging for identity reasons</a>: giving up work can feel like giving up a part of ourselves. We can prevent that, and ensure we enjoy retirement and all other holidays, by considering what else we could use as equally valid sources of identity.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the aim is to see ourselves as the complex creatures we indeed are, defined by more than just our work, so we can make the most of our precious time away from it.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Disclaimer: We wrote part of this article on holidays. Academics <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2017/01/30/academics-can-and-should-stop-equating-their-identity-work-essay">are perhaps the best (or worst?) example</a> of over-identifying with work. Time for us to really practise what we preach.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148720/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our work is often so closely tied to our sense of who we are, many of us struggle to switch off on holidays. But it’s never too late to hide the laptop.Dan Caprar, Associate Professor, University of SydneyBen Walker, Lecturer (Management), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1261942020-01-16T19:03:00Z2020-01-16T19:03:00Z‘What subjects do I choose for my last years of school?’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310116/original/file-20200115-151829-1q4twbn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=765%2C72%2C4421%2C3935&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Locking yourself into one career path too early may be risky.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>We are being asked to do work experience this year, in a field we might like to work in. We are being asked to think about choosing electives that are directing us towards our career choices.</p>
<p>I have no idea what I want to do! I haven’t yet found anything I am particularly good at. I feel like I am being left behind. That others are making choices about their lives that I am not prepared for yet. Is this normal?</p>
<p>Lachlan, year 10</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Key points</h2>
<ul>
<li>Many young people feel this way – it is normal!</li>
<li>locking yourself into one career path too early can be risky</li>
<li>it’s important to be flexible and learn transferable skills</li>
<li>ask lots of questions from people around you.</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/i-need-to-know-66587"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290837/original/file-20190904-175686-polw3q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=90&fit=crop&dpr=2" width="100%"></a></p>
<p>Hi Lachlan, many young people feel undecided about their career pathway. One <a href="https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/file_uploads/EEJSC_58-04_Text_WEB_RwD0HN5C.pdf">study found</a> around one in five teenagers were uncertain about a clear career goal.</p>
<p>The questions you ask are about more than just which subjects to choose in the last years of school. They point towards the bigger decision about what sort of person you want to become. And that is a big decision to make all at once.</p>
<p>Careers advisors, teachers and parents often talk about <a href="https://www.ncver.edu.au/__data/assets/file/0021/9516/factors-affecting-aspirations-2711.pdf">career choice</a> as a matter of logical decision-making and planning, but it <a href="https://www.ncver.edu.au/__data/assets/file/0021/9516/factors-affecting-aspirations-2711.pdf">also involves</a> feelings, imagination and knowledge about yourself and the world.</p>
<p>These are constantly evolving so it isn’t surprising you feel confused.</p>
<h2>It’s important to be flexible</h2>
<p>You say some of your friends already have clear ideas about their futures. But being too rigid can be just as risky as not having a decision. If you set your career sights too narrow, or too early, on just one type of career you might not have a back-up plan. </p>
<p>What happens if it doesn’t work out? Does that mean you will feel like a failure before you even start? You might miss out on possibilities that don’t fit that narrow vision but that might suit you perfectly.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yoEezZD71sc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Watch Tim Minchin explain to students at his old university why “You don’t have to have a dream.”</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some <a href="https://mccrindle.com.au/insights/blog/job-mobility-australia/">research suggests</a> today’s graduates will average five separate careers and around 17 different employers in their working life. This means an important skill these days is the ability to adapt. </p>
<p>The careers you have in the future might be quite different from each other, drawing on new skills and interests developed over time. Changes might happen because a workplace closes, or a new career becomes possible, or you want to move or develop a new interest.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/choosing-a-career-these-jobs-wont-go-out-of-style-111425">Choosing a career? These jobs won't go out of style</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>So while having a good idea about you want to do will give you a goal to work towards, it is important to be flexible too. Think of plans as provisional. Be ready to adjust your thinking and recalibrate them as you get more experience. </p>
<ul>
<li>Develop short-term, medium and long-term goals. You’ll find great resources to help with this at <a href="https://headspace.org.au/young-people/how-to-make-a-career-plan-template/">Headspace</a>. </li>
</ul>
<h2>Learning your interests takes time</h2>
<p>You say you don’t know what you’re good at yet. That’s OK too. Learning to recognise your skills, interests and values takes time. Talking to other people can help including friends, family, people you know through sport or other communities you are part of. </p>
<p>School subjects don’t test some of the important skills for a successful working life, such as the ability to get along with different people or flexible thinking, so you may not know you have them yet.</p>
<p>It is helpful to think about <a href="https://www.fya.org.au/report/the-new-work-mindset-report/">clusters</a> of jobs that draw on similar sets of skills. Particular skills (such as attention to detail) or interests (such as working outdoors or caring for others) can translate from one area into another. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lack-of-workers-with-soft-skills-demands-a-shift-in-teaching-73433">Lack of workers with 'soft skills' demands a shift in teaching</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Work experience in customer service or retail sales will develop your skills in communicating with other people, being organised and understanding record-keeping. These are building blocks for success in many other careers. </p>
<p>Learning skills in one context that you can carry to a different one means you are adaptable – one of most important qualities for success. The more you can learn on the job, no matter which job it is, the better off you will be. </p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.youthcentral.vic.gov.au/jobs-and-careers">Youth Central’s Career Profiles</a> give lots of detail about how interests turn into careers, and the pathways people took to get there.</li>
</ul>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kRJW-Sg4hjM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Watch Eddie Woo explaining why “the advice to follow your passion is a terrible idea…”</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>There are many pathways</h2>
<p>Many young people may choose to pursue a career they already know. Perhaps a friend or family member already does this sort of work. That’s a great start but it can also be <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315736921">limiting</a>. </p>
<p>Many careers have changed in recent years. Some are disappearing while <a href="https://www.ceda.com.au/CEDA/media/ResearchCatalogueDocuments/Research%20and%20Policy/PDF/26792-Futureworkforce_June2015.pdf">new careers</a> are always on the horizon, so going with something a parent does may not be suitable anymore. Some of the fastest <a href="https://www.seek.com.au/career-advice/browse/high-growth">growing</a> career areas include the personal care (such as aged care), health and technology sectors. </p>
<p>Take every opportunity your school offers to explore the world of work. There might be industry tasters, VET immersion days, career expos or fairs, presentations, mentoring programs, workplace and university visits, or school-university partnership programs.</p>
<p>When it comes to subject selection, you might decide to combine vocational training with mainstream academic subjects that will help you work towards a university course. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-stress-your-atar-isnt-the-final-call-there-are-many-ways-to-get-into-university-125429">Don't stress, your ATAR isn't the final call. There are many ways to get into university</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>There are also pathway courses and alternative entry programs into univesities if you don’t quite get into what you want. There is no decision now that will lock you in to only one possibility for your future. Do stay at school though as that will set you up well for whatever comes in the future. Keep your options open.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://myfuture.edu.au">My Future</a> has fantastic resources including quizzes that will help learn more about what might suit you. You can also match up school subjects with career pathways.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Work experience is a good way to develop skills</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youthcentral.vic.gov.au/jobs-and-careers/volunteering-and-work-experience">work experience</a> you do at school need not match exactly what you will end up doing in the future, but it gives a great taste of full-time work. </p>
<p>Most young people find it is the most useful career related activity they do at school because it is <a href="https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/eejsc/Career_Advice_Activities/EEJSC_58-04_Text_WEB.pdf">hands on</a> and puts them in direct contact with employers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/unpaid-work-experience-is-widespread-but-some-are-missing-out-new-study-70737">Unpaid work experience is widespread but some are missing out: new study</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Try for something that draws on some of your current interests and skills, but remember this is an opportunity to try things out. A good report from an employer about your willingness to learn might be really helpful in lots of ways, including helping you get part-time work so you can continue to increase your experiences and responsibilities.</p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126194/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susanne Gannon works for Western Sydney University. She receives funding from ARC. </span></em></p>Today’s graduates may average five separate careers and around 17 different employers in their working life. This means an important skill these days is flexibility and the ability to adapt.Susanne Gannon, Associate Professor, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1231342019-09-30T11:24:05Z2019-09-30T11:24:05ZFor male students, technical education in high school boosts earnings after graduation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294465/original/file-20190926-51405-11q406e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students in the electrical program at H.C. Wilcox Technical High School in Meriden, Connecticut practice their skills.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Connecticut Technical Education and Career System</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Job prospects for young men who only have a high school diploma are particularly <a href="https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm">bleak</a>. They are even worse for those who have <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/beyond-bls/mens-declining-labor-force-participation.htm">less education</a>. When young men experience joblessness, it not only threatens their financial well-being but their <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/02/12/why-are-out-of-work-men-so-unhappy-in-the-us/">overall well-being</a> and <a href="https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2012/12/how-does-employment--or-unemployment--affect-health-.html">physical health</a>.</p>
<p>Could a high quality and specialized technical education in high school make a difference?</p>
<p>Based on a <a href="http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai19-112">study</a> I co-authored with 60,000 students who applied to the Connecticut Technical High School System, the answer is: yes.</p>
<p>To reach this conclusion, we studied two groups of similar students: Those who barely were admitted to the Connecticut Technical High School System and those who just missed getting in. Students apply to these high schools and submit things such as test scores, attendance and discipline records from middle school. Then, applicants are ranked on their score and admitted in descending order until all seats are filled. We compared those whose score helped them get the last space in a school, to those who just missed being admitted because the school was out of space.</p>
<p>This enabled us to determine whether there was something special about Connecticut’s Technical High School System education that gave students an advantage over peers who also applied, but didn’t get into one of the system’s 16 technical schools across the state. </p>
<h2>Widespread appeal</h2>
<p>Connecticut Technical High School System is a popular choice for students - about 50% more students <a href="http://www.cttech.org/admissions.html">apply</a> than can be admitted.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294464/original/file-20190926-51463-ipmcs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294464/original/file-20190926-51463-ipmcs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294464/original/file-20190926-51463-ipmcs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294464/original/file-20190926-51463-ipmcs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294464/original/file-20190926-51463-ipmcs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294464/original/file-20190926-51463-ipmcs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294464/original/file-20190926-51463-ipmcs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294464/original/file-20190926-51463-ipmcs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students in the Precision Machining program at Vinal Technical High School in Middletown, Conn., gather around their teacher for instruction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Connecticut Technical Education and Career System</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The system functions such that students can apply to attend a school in the tech system instead of their assigned public school. Statewide, the system schools – which offer specialized instruction in a variety of career fields – serve about 10% of the high school students. Most students who don’t get into the tech schools stay in their public high school.</p>
<p>What we found is that students who were admitted to the Connecticut Technical High School System went on to earn 30% more than those who didn’t get admitted. We also found that the tech school students were 10 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school than applicants who didn’t get in – a statistically significant finding.</p>
<p>Our research suggests that expanding a technical high school system like the one in Connecticut would benefit more students. I make this observation as <a href="https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/bio/shaun-dougherty">one who examines</a> outcomes associated with career and technical education.</p>
<h2>The track record</h2>
<p>Career and technical education has already been shown – at least on an individual or small scale level – to positively impact <a href="https://www.mdrc.org/publication/career-academies-long-term-impacts-work-education-and-transitions-adulthood">earnings</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775718300876">high school graduation rates</a>. </p>
<p>Career and technical education does this without taking away from <a href="https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/EDFP_a_00224">general learning</a> in traditional subjects like math and English. But based on my experience, it has never been clear as to whether career and technical education makes a difference on a system-wide level rather than at just one or among a few select schools.</p>
<p>Our recent study finally answers that question because we studied an entire state technical high school system. Specifically, it shows that, yes, career and technical education can give students the same benefits that it has already been shown to give on a smaller level even if it’s scaled up. This has implications for school districts and states, especially as <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/education/429661-is-career-and-technical-education-more-than-another-fad">growing interest</a> in what works in career and technical education.</p>
<h2>The appeal of technical education in Connecticut</h2>
<p>Once admitted into the Connecticut technical high school system, all students take career and technical education coursework instead of other electives, such as world languages, art or music. Typically, coursework is grouped into one of 10 to 17 programs of study, such as information technology, health services, cosmetology, heating ventilation and air conditioning, and production processes, among others. Traditional public high schools in the state, on the other hand, tend to offer at most four career and technical programs through elective courses.</p>
<p>In the Technical High School System schools in Connecticut, students explore various programs of study during their first year. Then – with help from an adviser – students select a program of study. Within these programs, students take at least three aligned courses and often more. They also have more opportunity to align academic and technical coursework materials, so that math and English content can often be integrated into technical courses. Chances for work-based learning and job exposure can also be enhanced in these settings, which may contribute to their impact.</p>
<h2>Better outcomes</h2>
<p>To figure out if these technical schools were making a difference, we looked at admissions from 2006-2007 through 2013-2014 for 60,000 students.</p>
<p>We found that – compared to students who just missed being admitted – technical high school students <a href="http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai19-112">had</a>:</p>
<p>• Better 9th grade attendance rates; absenteeism rates fell by 14%</p>
<p>• Higher 10th grade test scores (like moving from the 50th to the 57th percentile, which is a <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mkraft/files/kraft_2019_effect_sizes.pdf">significant jump</a> for high school test scores)</p>
<p>• A greater likelihood of graduating from high school, about 85% versus 75% for those who just missed being admitted</p>
<p>• Higher quarterly earnings, over 30% higher</p>
<p>• While we found a lower likelihood of attending college initially, no differences were seen by age 23</p>
<p>As educators, elected officials and parents search for more effective ways to give young men in high school a better shot at being able to earn a living, our study suggests that Connecticut might have already figured it out.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123134/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shaun M. Dougherty receives funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A180511 to Vanderbilt University. The study team and project are part of the CTE Research Network, which seeks to expand the evidence base on the impact of CTE programs on student outcomes. The network is supported by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education with funds provided under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act through Grant R305N180005. The study was conducted in cooperation with the State of Connecticut Departments of Education and Labor through the P20Win Process.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen L Ross receives funding from receives funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A180511 to Vanderbilt University. The study team and project are part of the CTE Research Network, which seeks to expand the evidence base on the impact of CTE programs on student outcomes. The network is supported by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education with funds provided under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act through Grant R305N180005. The study was conducted in cooperation with the State of Connecticut Departments of Education and Labor through the P20Win Process.</span></em></p>Students who get admitted to Connecticut’s career and technical education high schools are more likely to graduate and earn significantly more than peers who barely missed the cut.Shaun M. Dougherty, Associate Professor of Public Policy & Education, Vanderbilt UniversityStephen L Ross, ProfessorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1230662019-09-24T10:12:08Z2019-09-24T10:12:08ZZero-hours contracts have a devastating impact on career progression – Labour is right to ban them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293668/original/file-20190923-54763-1tzn3to.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/confectionery-factory-on-production-cookie-65266003?src=xnseV6PXcQiCGIpNsLXOrA-1-30">shutterstock/RedTC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labour has reaffirmed its plans to rid the UK of <a href="https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/fair-deal-work/">zero-hours contracts</a>. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell pledged at <a href="https://theconversation.com/labour-party-conference-what-to-expect-as-party-debates-its-brexit-position-and-election-plan-123933">the Labour Party conference</a> to ban the controversial contracts “to make sure every employee has a guaranteed number of hours a week”.</p>
<p>The number of people working on a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/contract-types-and-employer-responsibilities/zero-hour-contracts">zero-hours contract</a> has increased by <a href="https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/work/zero-hours-contract-uk-statistics-job-growth-since-2012/">358% since 2012 – and represents almost 3% of the UK workforce</a>. </p>
<p>Zero-hours contracts do not guarantee a minimum number of hours – meaning the worker is effectively “on call” to work as and when they’re needed. The work offered is unstable with no long-term guarantee of hours or future employment. And this can be a major challenge to career progression. </p>
<p>Despite the <a href="https://www.tuc.org.uk/blogs/780000-workers-are-stuck-zero-hours-contracts-time-ban-them-outright">insecurities</a> associated with this type of contract, workers on zero-hours contract are classed as “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46264291">employed</a>”, which is why the UK can claim the joint <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/august2019">highest employment rate</a> since records began, with 76.1% of people in work. </p>
<h2>Long-term insecurity</h2>
<p><a href="https://fullfact.org/economy/employment-since-2010-zhcs/">It’s been argued</a> that zero-hours contracts are used mostly by those in full-time education along with semi-retired people. But figures show that more than <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/emp17peopleinemploymentonzerohourscontracts">23%</a> of people on zero-hours contracts have worked for their employer for more than five years. </p>
<p>As part of our <a href="http://researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk/portal/files/12097546/Report.pdf">research</a>, we interviewed 35 zero-hours contract workers and heard how this precarious employment situation was affecting their career prospects. They told us how working on zero-hours contracts meant ending their aspiration for a career progression. As one of our interviewees explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve got no promotional prospects at all. When I first took the job on I went in to see the principal of the college and I said I’d really like to find out what the promotion possibilities are as I’d really like to be on a permanent contract at some point in the future. And I was basically told there really aren’t any.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>No training or development</h2>
<p>Zero-hours contracts are not designed with <a href="https://social.hays.com/2017/01/04/six-signs-your-boss-cares-about-your-career-progression/">training and development</a> in mind because the workers are considered to be temporary – needed only when necessary. So the opportunity to take on extra responsibilities – which are relevant for any career progression – are not made available to workers. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-getting-rid-of-shit-jobs-and-the-metric-of-productivity-can-combat-climate-change-123541">How getting rid of 'shit jobs' and the metric of productivity can combat climate change</a>
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<p>Those on zero-hours contract are often given <a href="https://www.tuc.org.uk/blogs/zero-hours-contracts-and-health-and-safety">minimal training</a> and some are asked to pay for their training themselves. This lack of training and development restricts the kinds of jobs workers can do and limits their choices. So irrespective of the length of time a person has been working with an employer, they make no progress, as explained by one of the people we interviewed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no career progression…[I’ve] been in the job for six and a half years. Since then the role hasn’t changed, no promotion. I’ve got no promotional prospects at all. I asked if I could perhaps go on a course, and I got an absolute no for that one. </p>
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<p>Most zero-hour contract workers are not offered job appraisal, nor investments in longer-term development, or opportunity to discuss their career prospects. One of the people we spoke with explains more:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Zero hours contracts don’t lend themselves to career development at all, because it’s very rarely you have an appraisal or probationary meeting or anything like that. You don’t really have regular meetings, because I guess the employer feels like you can just quit at any point anyway, so what’s the point?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Workers also often lack the discretion and autonomy to contribute to the decision making of the business or organisation and feel unable to give feedback on job satisfaction. One of our interviewees explained how they had lots of ideas about how to improve the organisation, but that no one was interested in listening to them:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I like being proactive and coming forward with creative solutions, but I feel like I’ve put forward a couple of proposals to the management [but] I don’t think they want to know necessarily. So I don’t feel like I’ve got a proper voice within the organisation. I feel quite vulnerable…if I make too much of a fuss I’m worried they might throw me out. I need to tread very, very carefully.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Every worker needs to be able to progress in their jobs and be offered opportunities to progress. This is particularly important given that, more generally, a lack of career progression is one of the <a href="https://engageemployee.com/lack-career-development-key-reason-employees-leaving-jobs/">key reasons</a> most employees leave their job. </p>
<p>Any employment contract that abuses this important workers’ right should be banned. And Labour’s plans to rid the UK of zero-hours contracts is one step closer to ensuring every worker gets a guaranteed number of hours each week, which will allow more people to gain security and fulfilment from their day-to-day working lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123066/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ernestine Gheyoh Ndzi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>People on zero-hours contract are often given minimal training and some workers are even asked to pay for their training themselves.Ernestine Gheyoh Ndzi, Senior Lecturer, Law Department, York St John UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1032762018-10-25T10:49:03Z2018-10-25T10:49:03ZFirst-generation college students earn less than graduates whose parents went to college<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240950/original/file-20181017-165891-1ylpr14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">First-generation college students face uneven prospects well after college.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/graduates-wear-graduation-gownsceremonies-university-1007276779?src=eRQTGXFqNha6UtcR8TVrtg-1-0">Nirat.pix/www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When discussions take place about first-generation college students, often the focus is on how <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/04/institutional-change-required-better-serve-first-generation-students-report-finds">disadvantaged</a> they are in comparison to their peers whose parents went to college.</p>
<p>Research we <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11162-018-9523-1">recently conducted</a> shows that first-generation college students experience another form of disadvantage that lasts long after they graduate – and that is: how much they earn.</p>
<p>We are sociologists who focus on topics of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DE8cCDAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">career progression</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=iGlfsJcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">class inequality</a>.</p>
<p>Using data from the federal <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/b&b/">Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study</a> for 1992-93 graduates, we found that first-generation college students earn substantially less 10 years after graduation than college graduates whose parents went to college. This is the most recent data available that follows young people for 10 years after they graduate – a time when young adults’ incomes typically become more stable.</p>
<h2>Substantial wage gaps</h2>
<p>Our research found that first-generation men and women go on to earn, respectively, 11 percent and 9 percent less per year – or US$7,500 for men and $4,350 for women – than their peers whose parents also graduated from college.</p>
<p>Even when we compare students who have the same characteristics and experiences – such as socio-demographic background, having children or not, the type of institution they attended, major and grade-point average – first-generation men and women still earn, respectively, 6 percent and 3 percent less than men and women college graduates whose parents went to college. This second comparison rules out the possibility that differences observed in the first comparison are due to differences in the individual attributes of the two groups.</p>
<p>The wage gaps are uneven across universities and majors. Colleges and universities that are somewhat selective show the largest wage advantage for graduates whose parents went to college. More elite and less selective schools report smaller gaps.</p>
<p>When it came to majors most associated with subjective criteria, such as arts and humanities, we found a wage gap among men as high as 17 percent. In other words, men who are first-generation and study arts and humanities don’t earn as much as their peers who study the same thing and whose parents went to college. However, for men with STEM, vocational and education majors, the gap is between 3 and 4 percent and not significant.</p>
<p>So, what drives wage differences between first-generation college graduates and graduates whose parents went to college? It is mostly labor market factors. First-generation graduates more often landed in jobs in the public and not-for-profit sectors, which tend to pay less than jobs in the private and for-profit sector. They were also less likely to work in urban areas, where wages are higher.</p>
<p>It is also interesting what won’t do much to change the wage gap between first-generation college graduates and their peers whose parents went to college: getting first-generation students to attend more elite colleges. Our research shows that elite college attendance would only lower the wage gap between first-generation college graduates and their peers among men, and even then only about 8 percent, or $600 annually. </p>
<p>Our findings suggest that <a href="https://www.jkcf.org/research/opening-doors-how-selective-colleges-and-universities-are-expanding-access-for-high-achieving-low-income-students/">well-intentioned efforts</a> to push first-generation students to attend the most prestigious colleges or to pursue higher-paying majors may not do much to change the wage gap that we discovered. First-generation students are already well-represented in several high-paying majors, such as business and health, so changing what first-generation students major in would not reverse the wage gap.</p>
<p>We also do not find much evidence of post-hiring discrimination by employers. In other words, first-generation college graduates with the same traits as their peers are paid the same amount when they enter the same occupations. </p>
<h2>Taking different jobs</h2>
<p>The issue is first-generation college students are not getting the same kind of jobs as their peers whose parents went to college. </p>
<p>Compared to their peers whose parents got a college degree, first-generation men are 4 percent less likely to be in the for profit sector and 3 percent more likely to be in state and local government. First-generation men are 4 percent more likely to be in clerical jobs and 3 percent more likely be in blue-collar jobs. They are 7 percent less likely to be in STEM professions. </p>
<p>This could be because first-generation college graduates are not familiar with the same types of jobs or don’t have the same kinds of networks as their peers whose parents went to college. It could also arise from where the jobs are located – first-generation graduates may live in different areas where there are fewer or worse job opportunities. They may also have a lower ability to relocate.</p>
<p>The difference in the kinds of jobs that first-generation graduates get could also arise from how employers in each field hire. For instance, <a href="https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/class-advantage-commitment-penalty-the-gendered-effect-of-social-">prior research</a> has shown that that <a href="https://www.sociologicalscience.com/articles-v5-24-562/">elite employers value</a> elite attributes more than working class attributes. One example is putting sailing on a resume versus track and field – elite employers are <a href="http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/RiveraTilcsik.pdf">more likely to hire someone who sails</a>.</p>
<p>Though the gap is small for first-generation students with the same bachelor’s degrees, labor market sectors, jobs, locations, hours worked and demographic traits as their peers whose parents went to college, we still believe that this gap deserves attention, especially for those concerned with creating a meritocracy. While meritocracy means equal rewards for individuals who have reached the same colleges or jobs, we cannot ignore the fact that inequality by social origin plays a role in who reaches those colleges and jobs in the first place.</p>
<h2>Will wage gaps continue?</h2>
<p>One of the shortcomings of our research is that we look at students who graduated over 25 years ago. Data is currently being collected for how much those who graduated in 2008 are earning 10 years after graduation, but it will be a couple of years before it becomes available.</p>
<p>This more recent data will be key to understanding how the wage gap has changed over time. If it shows that a wage gap still exists 10 years later for both groups, it means that colleges, researchers and others concerned with fairness for first-generation college students must look at more than what kind of experience those students have in college. They will need to look at changing what happens after college – that is, what kind of jobs students get and how much money they earn.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103276/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>First-generation college students earn substantially less than their peers whose parents went to college, new research shows.Anna Manzoni, Associate professor, North Carolina State UniversityJessi Streib, Assistant Professor of Socoilogy, Duke UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1018532018-08-24T07:06:43Z2018-08-24T07:06:43ZDon’t blame women for leaving fields like engineering. Blame bad attitudes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233242/original/file-20180823-149469-ubmpc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are reasons why feminists use the slogan “the personal is political”, especially when men make arguments using the age old idea that “biology is destiny”. </p>
<p>Manglin Pillay, the CEO of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering, recently resorted to these types of <a href="https://probonomatters.co.za/2018/08/mysogynistic-views-lands-saice-ceo-manglin-pillay-in-hot-water/">arguments</a> about the dearth of women in engineering. </p>
<p>Citing some <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/does-gender-equality-result-in-fewer-female-stem-grads">research</a> Pillay essentially argued that women were better suited to care for children than to work in the Science Technology Engineering and Maths (STEM) field. He said this explains the under-representation of women in the engineering field. He wrote that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fact that more men occupy high profile executive posts is tremendous not because of gender but because of appetite for work load and extreme performance requirements at that level… </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He further noted that women do not occupy high positions in the engineering fields because they:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>choose to have the flexibility to dedicate themselves to more important enterprises like family and raising of children…“</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The article caused an uproar. Pillay has since <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Companies/Industrial/science-and-technology-minister-slams-engineering-body-ceos-comments-on-women-20180807">apologised</a> for his sexism after an outcry from many women including the Minister of Science and Technology, <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Companies/Industrial/science-and-technology-minister-slams-engineering-body-ceos-comments-on-women-20180807">Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane</a>, also a woman.</p>
<p>Regardless of the apology, we need to understand what kinds of attitudes inform Pillay’s thinking. He is not alone in this thinking and an apology doesn’t mean that attitudes have changed. And there is a chance that Pillay misused the concerned research as experts in the field come to different <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/does-gender-equality-result-in-fewer-female-stem-grads">conclusions</a>.</p>
<p>Pillay’s arguments boiled down to blaming women for the fact that there are so few of them in engineering field. </p>
<p>This is nonsense. </p>
<p>The results of a <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00875/full">study</a> on the experiences women face as engineers in the workplace in the US sheds light on the factors that explain the situation. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2017, involved a sample of 1464 women engineers who had left the field. It showed that their decision to leave jobs in the engineering field were related to a number of key factors.</p>
<p>Firstly, poor and unfair working conditions. This included inequitable compensation as well as inflexible work environments that make work-family balance difficult. Secondly, dissatisfaction with effective use of their math and science skills, and lastly the lack of recognition at work and adequate opportunities for advancement.</p>
<p>These findings show that work life balance and the glass ceiling for women are indeed the problems – not a lack of ambition or a biological need to mother children. </p>
<p>The problem therefore is not with women, but with the workplace and fairness in the family. If companies attend to these problems women will stay, and progress.</p>
<h2>The numbers tell a story</h2>
<p>While reproductive rights apply to both men and women, pregnancy is often viewed only as a woman’s "problem”. It’s left to women to fight for maternity leave, often against incredible odds given that many companies see it as a costly imposition. </p>
<p>Labour legislation in South Africa <a href="http://www.labour.gov.za/DOL/legislation/acts/basic-guides/basic-guide-to-maternity-leave">now provides</a> for paid maternity leave – six weeks paid leave, and a total of four months unpaid. But many companies adhere only to the prescribed minimum, and also often make it <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/52482/Motsiri_Sir_2015.pdf?...1...y">difficult</a> for women to take this leave. </p>
<p>But research shows that companies that take a more generous approach reap the rewards.</p>
<p>Take the US experience. The 100 best companies in the US listed by <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3064070/why-offering-paid-maternity-leave-is-good-for-business">Working Mother magazine</a> shows that companies that offer up to 16 weeks of paid maternity leave have a much higher retention rate of women. And they have lower staff turnover.</p>
<p>Accenture, a company that has doubled its maternity leave to 16 weeks saw 40% fewer women leave the company within a year after the increase. <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3064070/why-offering-paid-maternity-leave-is-good-for-business">KPMG</a> increased its maternity leave from 8 to 18 weeks and its retention rate of women also increased. KPMG states that it is cheaper to pay an additional 10 weeks of leave and coaching for new parents than paying for a new staff member which is the equivalent of 78 weeks’ salary.</p>
<p>There is therefore a business case to be made for maternity leave. Young couples now look at what companies offer when it comes to childcare arrangements and those with good maternity leave policies are more attractive. </p>
<p>Flexitime is another important way of keeping women in certain professions and making it easier for them to combine childcare responsibilities with work. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrealoubier/2017/11/16/the-future-of-women-engineers/#5f97232bac3c">Forbes</a> magazine calls flexible working conditions a non-negotiable for engineers. </p>
<h2>How to retain women</h2>
<p>Important <a href="https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/human-resources-people-organization-why-paid-family-leave-is-good-business.aspx">lessons</a> can be learnt from successful companies that have achieved high retention rates of women and increased staff morale and productivity. </p>
<p>Apart from increasing paid maternity leave, these companies have successfully develop policies that support women when they return to work. They have done this by developing values that recognise the long term gain of having women stay, and move up the management ladder. But these values have to be modelled at the top management level, such as the position in which Pillay is an incumbent.</p>
<p>What shouldn’t be happening in 2018 is that men in Pillay’s position continue to send the message to women engineers that they can’t measure up because they are women.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Gouws receives funding from the National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>Under representation of women in the science and engineering career fields is a result of poor work life balance.Amanda Gouws, Professor of Political Science and SARChi Chair in Gender Politics, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/931552018-05-21T10:15:31Z2018-05-21T10:15:31ZLed a privileged working life? Then you’re likely to have a pretty good third age<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215082/original/file-20180416-46652-hp5702.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/home">via shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new language is emerging to describe those who would have traditionally been called retired but are increasingly engaging in other forms of activity in later life. New terms for this phase of life include the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/jan/19/workandcareers.changingjobs">third age</a>, the <a href="http://phillipsfinancial.org/2016/08/are-you-ready-for-an-encore-career-reasons-to-unretire/">encore stage</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/041c69e0-cf82-11e7-9dbb-291a884dd8c6">unretirement</a>. But while some commentators predict a rosy picture of new found freedoms, others focus on problems caused by financial difficulties.</p>
<p>The truth is that our lives in older age vary as much as they do at any other time of our lives. This is in part because how your life shapes up in older age will depend a lot on the path you followed earlier in your life. This is what we found in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001879117300799">our recent research</a> that examined the links between individual life histories and later life outcomes through interviews with 50 older men and women.</p>
<p>We found that the aspects of your life that are particularly important to experiences of retirement are your employment and family caring history and your access to resources, particularly financial ones. Also important are your social networks, cultural capital such as education, and your physical and mental health in your younger and middle age.</p>
<p>Access to all these is intertwined. So if a person has access to greater financial resources throughout their lives, they’ll also be able to access more social and cultural resources – which helps to maintain <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3036711/">physical health</a>. Social networks and education also help to shape careers and enable people to amass greater financial capital. The nature of these links often lead to cumulative advantages or disadvantages, making retirement easier for those in a privileged position and harder for those who start out more disadvantaged. For example, periods of ill health, or family caring responsibilities for a relative, or for children, can change the course of people’s lives.</p>
<h2>Different trajectories</h2>
<p>Our research found that people who have had similar career histories share similar retirement expectations and experiences, but that this relationship is also influenced by other factors such as gender and class. For example, the people we interviewed who had secure professional careers – whose employment histories are illustrated in the graph below – were more likely to look forward to their retirement and experience this as a positive period of their lives. </p>
<p>In contrast, from our research, it was clear that those who had a delayed or interrupted start to their career, for example due to caring responsibilities, felt more hesitant and uncertain about retirement. They also expressed concern about losing their professional identity, and had financial worries that insufficient pension contributions would stop them from sustaining their lifestyles.</p>
<p>People who have followed more precarious or fragmented career paths with periods in and out of work, or in different types of employment, including self-employment, can also face financial instability in retirement. This is because they haven’t built up sufficient pension entitlement to enable them to have a comfortable retirement income. </p>
<p>We found that women were particularly vulnerable to this, as they had often had more fragmented career histories and historically had been discouraged from contributing to a work place pension. For example, between 1948 and 1977 the “<a href="https://www.savvywoman.co.uk/2015/03/history-of-the-state-pension-10-things-you-need-to-know-about-how-it-affects-women/">married woman’s stamp</a>” allowed married women to pay a lower rate of national insurance, but didn’t give them the same pension entitlements. This meant that some of them had to continue in paid employment, longer than they might have chosen to.</p>
<p>Some women in our sample moved into more professional roles as a result of either retraining or doing a degree after having children. But many of these women still feared that they would face financial hardship in retirement, particularly if they were divorced. That said, our study found that women who worked in administrative employment but have also been very involved in family networks were more optimistic about retirement. They felt it allowed them greater opportunities to spend time with family and friends. In contrast, men who have followed semi-skilled careers were more concerned about identity loss and inactivity in retirement.</p>
<h2>Long-term thinking</h2>
<p>Our research provides another argument in support of policies that aim to raise people’s education and skills throughout the course of their lives in order to improve their opportunities for employment and ultimately their quality of life in older age. Those policies which raise the skills base of a region or country will also have much wider benefits for society.</p>
<p>The more positive attitudes towards retirement we heard from those who maintain strong family and other social networks throughout their careers also highlight the importance of workplace practices that facilitate greater work-life balance. In other words, organisations can support individuals by not demanding so much of their time that they are unable to develop healthy relationships outside work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93155/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Holly Birkett is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona Carmichael and Joanne Duberley do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What your career history means for your retirement future.Holly Birkett, Lecturer in Organisational Studies, Department of Management, University of BirminghamFiona Carmichael, Professor of Labour Economics, University of BirminghamJoanne Duberley, Professor of Organisation Studies, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/823052017-09-07T23:23:44Z2017-09-07T23:23:44ZWorth reading: Tried and true manuals for success<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185192/original/file-20170907-9603-4fg5uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Recommended books offer a path to success for everyone, writes Michael Armstrong.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: The Conversation Canada asked our academic authors to share some recommended reading. In this instalment, Michael Armstrong, an operations research professor at Brock University who has written for</em> The Conversation Canada <em>on topics as diverse as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-well-do-students-perform-when-retaking-courses-82559">student success rates in school</a> to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/picketts-charge-what-modern-mathematics-teaches-us-about-civil-war-battle-78982">mathematics of Civil War battle</a>, shares the top three books that he recommends for guidance on making the most of your career at any age.</em></p>
<p>Here are three books that I often recommend to my students and friends. All are practical guides that have stood the test of time. The first will help you start your career, the second will help you succeed in it and the third will help you profit from it.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185187/original/file-20170907-9563-1ycay0g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185187/original/file-20170907-9563-1ycay0g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185187/original/file-20170907-9563-1ycay0g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185187/original/file-20170907-9563-1ycay0g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185187/original/file-20170907-9563-1ycay0g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185187/original/file-20170907-9563-1ycay0g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185187/original/file-20170907-9563-1ycay0g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185187/original/file-20170907-9563-1ycay0g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>What Color is Your Parachute?</em> by Richard N. Bolles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Handout)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2><em><a href="http://www.jobhuntersbible.com/books/view/what-color-is-your-parachute-2016">What Color Is Your Parachute?</a></em></h2>
<p><em>A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers</em></p>
<p>by Richard N. Bolles (Non-fiction. Paperback, 2016 and others. Ten Speed Press.)</p>
<p>This is a popular guide for job seekers. Like most such books, it gives advice on the mechanical details of job hunting, such as good ways to organize a resume. </p>
<p>More importantly — and less commonly — it helps people figure out what they want to do with their lives. What kind of career will best fit your personality? Will you be happier working with people or with data? </p>
<p>The book is an obvious fit for graduates seeking their first job. But it could also help teenagers choose the best education to pursue after high school, or adults trying to make their careers more satisfying.</p>
<p> </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185190/original/file-20170907-9585-dbrqyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185190/original/file-20170907-9585-dbrqyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185190/original/file-20170907-9585-dbrqyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185190/original/file-20170907-9585-dbrqyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185190/original/file-20170907-9585-dbrqyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185190/original/file-20170907-9585-dbrqyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185190/original/file-20170907-9585-dbrqyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185190/original/file-20170907-9585-dbrqyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know</em> by Ritti, Levy, Toucher.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Handout)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2><em><a href="https://chicagobusinesspress.com/book/ropes-skip-and-ropes-know-9">The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know</a></em></h2>
<p><em>Studies in Organizational Theory and Behavior</em></p>
<p>by R. Richard Ritti, Steve Levy and Neil Toucher (Non-fiction. Hardcover, 2016 and others. Chicago Business Press.)</p>
<p>Don’t let the academic-sounding subtitle deter you. This is a highly readable book. It consists of short stories or parables that illustrate how people behave and interact at work. </p>
<p>Every workplace has an official structure and formal rules. But workplaces contain people with individual personalities and relationships. This book will help you understand the unofficial structures and unwritten rules, before they get you into trouble. </p>
<p>I often recommend <em>The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know</em> to people starting their first job. It would be especially good for someone promoted to their first management or supervisory role.</p>
<p> </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185191/original/file-20170907-9585-xrc0pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185191/original/file-20170907-9585-xrc0pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185191/original/file-20170907-9585-xrc0pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185191/original/file-20170907-9585-xrc0pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185191/original/file-20170907-9585-xrc0pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185191/original/file-20170907-9585-xrc0pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185191/original/file-20170907-9585-xrc0pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185191/original/file-20170907-9585-xrc0pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>The Wealthy Barber</em> by David Chilton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Handout)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2><em><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2674.The_Wealthy_Barber%22%22">The Wealthy Barber</a></em></h2>
<p><em>The Common Sense Guide to Successful Financial Planning</em></p>
<p>by David Chilton (Non-fiction. Paperback, 2002 and others. Stoddart.)</p>
<p>Once you receive your first paycheque, you’ll want to read this beginner’s guide to personal finance. It covers the basics of investing: retirement savings, mutual funds, etc. It also introduces a lot of other financial topics: savings versus spending, insurance that you do or don’t need, and so on. </p>
<p>This probably isn’t the only financial guide you’ll ever need, but it is a good first one. I typically recommend it to recent graduates starting their careers. But it also suits mature adults dealing with money issues for the first time, perhaps after the death or divorce of their spouse.</p>
<p>Have an enjoyable and productive fall!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82305/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. Armstrong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Practical reads to propel you to professional success.Michael J. Armstrong, Associate professor of operations research, Brock UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/715552017-01-24T19:18:08Z2017-01-24T19:18:08ZGame over: how professional athletes can have a career after sport<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154017/original/image-20170124-8088-1ii7djw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some professional players find it difficult to change their routine to adjust to other careers when they retire.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When we interviewed “Barry” – a former ice hockey player in <a href="https://www.nhl.com/">the National Hockey League</a> – he was still struggling to come to terms with the fact that his career as a professional athlete was over. At 59, he was still waking up every morning believing that he could get back on the ice:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The anxiety and depression and stuff. It was very tough and I still struggle with it… I did try to [take my own life], I was just fed up and nothing was going right and I decided to put some alcohol in my body and drive.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His life after professional sport has been punctuated by several failed marriages, a series of dead end jobs and staring into the bottom of a bottle. Barry (whose name we have changed for privacy reasons) is currently sleeping on a friend’s sofa. This is a man who was a prolific goal scorer, adored by thousands.</p>
<p>Fortunately, Barry’s story is not typical. We interviewed 27 retired male players and 24 current male players, coaches and administrators in rugby union, ice hockey and Australian Rules Football. We also analysed blogs, websites, news stories, autobiographies and biographies of ex-players in the same sports. </p>
<p>A key finding in our study is that players need to start thinking about what to do after sport almost as soon as they start playing.</p>
<p>There are plenty of stories of professional athletes leading fulfilling lives beyond sport. However, some elite players do struggle with the transition to a post-sport career. </p>
<h2>Why some professional athletes struggle</h2>
<p>Being a professional athlete is all encompassing. To give it up is a struggle. But athletes have to let go and move on at some point, leaving behind a tight knit camaraderie and public adulation few could imagine. </p>
<p>Talking to current players, it’s clear what it means to be part of a winning team, to play your heart out in a sport you love. You can see it in their eyes, the drive, the passion: they’ve got “the best job in the world” and they’re the “luckiest guys alive”.</p>
<p>Our research and other studies highlight the stress and struggle of retirement. The common struggles are due to a loss of a sporting identity, team mateship and the need to organise their own life rather than to have it organised for them.</p>
<p>Some of the professional athletes we studied struggled to find another “calling” or something else to be passionate about. The day to day life changes from the regular routines of a training schedule were also a challenge. One of our study participants said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I just can’t believe I won’t be throwing the ball around in the sun in pre-season anymore. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How to be successful after sport</h2>
<p>We found that most players, especially as they get to their late twenties, do start to think about a future outside of sport. They realise that “the dream job” isn’t going to last forever. They have to decide what comes next and when. For some, a career-ending injury changes everything in a split second. </p>
<p>Our study has shown that in order to make a successful transition, players need to develop personal resilience, skills, an education and professional relationships. </p>
<p>Players who did succeed had resilience, optimism and confidence. They also had a strong internal drive and were open to new experiences. While some players might naturally have more of these traits than others, it can be developed through relevant support and coaching. </p>
<p>Successful careers after professional sport also demand marketable skills and competencies, as well as formal education. For example, we found that those who had studied for a degree or a trade whilst playing transitioned much better than those who had focused exclusively on their performance as a player. Interestingly, players who marketed the skills they had learned in their sport, such as team building and leadership, fared much better than those who didn’t. </p>
<p>Finally, players need broad personal and professional relationships. Those who transitioned more easily had extensive social networks, which helped them find opportunities and experiment with new roles outside of sport. </p>
<p>Family and friends were also a vital source of support. In fact, many current and former players said that they could never have “survived” without their family and friends. </p>
<p>Players’ socioeconomic status, ethnicity, family and education also have a strong influence. </p>
<p>In rugby, Aussie Rules and, to a lesser extent, ice hockey, there is now widespread recognition that players need support. This is why many clubs and players associations are working together to put people, systems and processes in place to ensure that all players can enjoy fulfilling lives after sport. </p>
<p>For example, Australian rugby and AFL clubs now hire personal development managers whose role is to support players in relation to education, future careers, family assistance and connecting with employers. They are also involved in player well-being and health in association with coaches and others at the clubs.</p>
<p>Being a professional athlete may well be a “dream job”, but it really is only the beginning – an incredibly enriching beginning, but a beginning nonetheless. </p>
<p>As for Barry, when we last checked in he was still smiling and looking forward to spending time more time with his grandchildren.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71555/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research shows there are some common struggles among those who retire from being professional athletes but players can be successful in careers after sport.Steve McKenna, Associate Professor of Management, Curtin UniversityJulia Richardson, Associate Professor of HRM, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/689722016-11-18T00:25:51Z2016-11-18T00:25:51ZIt’s time to reduce the number of PhD students, or rethink how doctoral programs work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146480/original/image-20161117-19361-1d8ojlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Redesigning the PhD in Australia is a big task.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are not enough academic jobs vacant in Australia each year to employ all our PhD graduates. </p>
<p>This imbalance risks training an increasing numbers of doctoral students on a promise that cannot be fulfilled: that is future academic employment. </p>
<p>We need to accept a hard truth that Australia needs to rethink the design of the PhD and the expectations around it, or radically reduce intake to doctoral programs.</p>
<p>In 2015, Australia graduated over <a href="http://highereducationstatistics.education.gov.au/">10,000</a> postgraduate research students – the vast majority of these were doctoral students. There were over 65,000 research higher degree students enrolled at Australian universities last year with most full or part time PhD students.</p>
<p>The number of PhDs in Australia will continue to grow. Enrolments in higher degrees have increased by almost half since 2001, and although much of this has been through more international doctoral students, domestic student numbers continue to grow year on year.</p>
<p>Most of these PhD graduates do not end up in a career of teaching or research at a university, or even teaching or research somewhere else. </p>
<p>There are currently over 50,000 staff employed in full-time or fixed-term academic roles in Australian universities. The number of positions vacant each year is nowhere near enough to accommodate even a small proportion of new Australia PhD graduates, let alone those who completed in prior years.</p>
<p>If the majority of PhD students, then, do not end up in ongoing academic employment, are designs for doctoral program right? Are student expectations realistic if they enter the degree with aspirations for a teaching and research career as many, perhaps most, do?</p>
<p>The Australian government recently accepted the excellent report from <a href="http://acola.org.au/index.php/projects/securing-australia-s-future/saf13-rts-review">ACOLA</a> on doctoral training. This looks at many of these challenges. There are broad issues related to research training and the academic workforce that the sector must now face.</p>
<h2>Rethinking the PhD</h2>
<p>There is a real need to think about the prospect of academic employment for PhD graduates. Much of the teaching in Australian higher education is delivered by sessional staff at universities. </p>
<p>Australian universities now depend on sessional teachers, short-contract researchers and other casualised and fixed-term staff to operate. </p>
<p>Many universities wouldn’t be viable without these staff. But for most academics, sessional employment is not a replacement for an ongoing position, offering little in the way of development of career progression. </p>
<p>Sessional work itself is not a problem unless it shows that many doctoral graduates find this as their only option. Or if it shows that students are being set up with unrealistic expectations of their future prospects for permanent academic employment.</p>
<p>We risk an unsustainable academic <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-academic-ponzi-scheme-22252">Ponzi scheme</a>. This is not just an Australian trend, the US faces a similar challenge for large numbers of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/higher-education-college-adjunct-professor-salary/404461/">sessional staff</a>.</p>
<p>But thinking through doctoral programs is more than just about managing PhD candidate expectations. </p>
<p>It is about doctoral training in a mode which combines the apprenticeship model, learning how to research, with more formal components of the other areas of learning that work in non-academic environments. </p>
<p>They need to be able to leverage the broad range of skills acquired through doctoral training, such as project management and strong writing skills.</p>
<p>Many students contribute as junior researchers to projects. This is critical to student research training and the overall research effort. However, to ensure they finish their degree with the right skills set will likely require a more diverse set of experiences and training. We need to avoid at worst viewing PhD students as a cheap research workforce.</p>
<p>Redesigning the PhD in Australia is a big task. It requires an ongoing discussion about enrolling such a large cohort of doctoral students who will not work in academia.</p>
<p>In an age of the innovation economy and government focus on thinking past the mining boom, there is much to be said for doctoral trained workers. </p>
<p>They are a great national resource to be celebrated, where time spent in PhD research is recognised for the skills developed beyond an area of deep expertise.</p>
<p>But the decisions we make now about how we train PhDs will be with Australia for a long time. If we don’t change, we need to consider training fewer of them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwilym Croucher is Principal Policy Adviser in the Chancellery at the University of Melbourne and Senior Lecturer in the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education.</span></em></p>There are currently far too few vacant academic jobs in Australia each year to employ all our PhD students. It’s time to rethink the training of doctoral students.Gwilym Croucher, Senior Lecturer, Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/622312016-07-19T18:37:55Z2016-07-19T18:37:55ZWhy career counselling is more valuable now than ever before<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130695/original/image-20160715-2127-13i2quc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The days of staying in one career forever are over for many people.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The world of work is <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-future-of-work-8526">changing all the time</a> – and fast. Jobs have emerged that didn’t exist five or ten years ago. And the idea that you’d stick with one career for your entire working life has been left in the dust. The Conversation Africa’s education editor Natasha Joseph asked Professor Kobus Maree of the University of Pretoria’s Educational Psychology Department to explain how career counselling has changed – and why it’s so important.</em> </p>
<p><strong>When you talk about career counselling, I suspect a lot of people think back to their school days when a guidance counsellor said, “You should do this job one day.” But it’s a far broader world, isn’t it?</strong></p>
<p>Career counselling entails much more than merely choosing a job and hoping to stay in that job for the rest of one’s life. Choosing a career is seen by many as trying to find a way to integrate into society, say as a teacher or a plumber, and also about making a social contribution. </p>
<p>Today, career counsellors believe that it is essential to identify a person’s original “pain”. This provides the starting point and life plot of every person’s career and life career story.</p>
<p>Career counsellors endeavour to help people deal with their pain – and empower them to use this pain to help others. In the process, people can heal themselves and make social contributions. Some people understandably grapple with the contention that every life story starts with pain. My <a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-6209-272-3_1#page-1">own research</a>, and <a href="http://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news_article/98443/_PARENT/layout_details_cc/false">others’</a>, suggests that very high career achievers understand the value of pain to any life story: the more you hurt and struggle, the more you have to strive to prove yourself. </p>
<p><strong>Why is career counselling so important?</strong></p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130700/original/image-20160715-2110-1exk1bh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130700/original/image-20160715-2110-1exk1bh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130700/original/image-20160715-2110-1exk1bh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130700/original/image-20160715-2110-1exk1bh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130700/original/image-20160715-2110-1exk1bh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130700/original/image-20160715-2110-1exk1bh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130700/original/image-20160715-2110-1exk1bh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Career counselling can help people to navigate crossroads in their lives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kobus Maree</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Once people know where they are headed, they mostly become motivated to work hard to realise their goals. </p>
<p>People consult career counsellors when they face a “natural” crossroads: having to choose a school, university, field of study or one from a number of employment opportunities. A second group consults career counsellors when they begin to doubt whether they have made the appropriate choice in terms of schools, subjects, universities, careers or employers. In all these cases, the future is already upon them: “the old” – what used to work – no longer does. </p>
<p>Workers are being confronted increasingly in the postmodern era with the impact of change on the workplace. They have to face and deal with repeated work-related crossroads and transitions. They hesitate because they are uncertain about the way forward. Career counsellors then enable them to recount their career life story. This allows them to listen to themselves by revisiting instances when they faced a crossroads. And by listening to themselves, they become able to deal with their current crossroads.</p>
<p><strong>Whose responsibility is it to set up career counselling mechanisms? Individual schools and universities? Does the government have a role to play?</strong></p>
<p>I should think that everything starts with the government. But a host of other stakeholders are also responsible: education and labour departments; primary, secondary and tertiary training institutions; professional bodies and qualifications authorities; and youth development agencies, private practitioners and non-profit organisations. </p>
<p>The role of parents, teachers, role models and a person’s peer group also shouldn’t be underestimated. Society has a collective responsibility to ensure that every person be granted access to career counselling. In fact, postmodern career counselling can help “invisible” and “unvoiced” people who are desperately in need of career counselling become “visible” and listened to. </p>
<p><strong>How much does your research and experience suggest that people are using career counselling services in South Africa, where you’re based? What holds people back from seeking career counselling?</strong></p>
<p>Sadly, only a small percentage of South Africans ever have access to career counselling. Career counselling in <a href="http://bit.ly/2a3v6VB">Africa at large</a> is still premised on the belief that career counsellors should “test” clients to assess their personality profiles and help them to find the “best fit” between their personality traits and the traits required to execute a certain job successfully. People hope that career counsellors will tell them which careers to choose. </p>
<p>Moreover, career counselling offered by private practitioners is too expensive to be accessed by people who are poor – and that’s the <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-02-03-south-africa-where-12-million-live-in-extreme-poverty/">vast majority</a> of South Africans. </p>
<p>Far too few teachers are trained to administer career counselling adequately. Introducing Life Orientation as a school subject has <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-01-22-op-ed-active-citizenship-requires-active-learning-the-case-for-valuing-life-orientation/#.V4x_srh97IV">not resolved the challenge</a> either. Few of the teachers currently facilitating this subject have been <a href="http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/T-Anth/Anth-14-0-000-12-Web/Anth-14-4-000-2012-Abst-PDF/Anth-14-4-305-12-785-Chireshe-R/Anth-14-4-305-12-785-Chireshe-R-Tx%5B4%5D.pdf">trained adequately</a> to administer career counselling.</p>
<p>There’s some work being done to improve career counselling in the country. The South African Qualifications Authority, for instance, has developed a career guidance <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/services/education/careeradvicehotline.htm#.V4inZbh97IV">hotline</a> that doesn’t just involve a professional telling job-seekers what to do. The government is working on <a href="http://www.gov.za/sites/www.gov.za/files/40115_gon795.pdf">a plan</a> to develop and implement a three-tier system of career development services in South Africa. </p>
<p><strong>The world of work is constantly changing. We have jobs today that didn’t exist ten or even five years ago. How much is career counselling as a field adapting to those changes?</strong></p>
<p>The US Department of Labour estimates that 65% of today’s schoolchildren will end up working in jobs that <a href="http://www.successperformancesolutions.com/2013/65-percent-of-todays-students-will-be-employed-in-jobs-that-dont-exist-yet/">don’t currently exist</a>. </p>
<p>Change is the new normal. For this reason, career counsellors must do their work in such a way that their clients become career adaptable and, most importantly, employable. It is vitally important that students acquire those skills that will help them not only survive but rather <em>flourish</em> in times of change. Career counsellors should become <em>au fait</em> with the basics of “employability counselling”, so to speak. </p>
<p>Career counsellors should try and use the best elements from various approaches in their work. Their allegiance should, ultimately, be to find the best ways to be useful to clients.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62231/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kobus Maree receives funding from National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>Career counselling shouldn’t be a luxury that only certain people can access. It’s actually a necessity in the rapidly changing world of work.Kobus Maree, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/463522015-08-24T03:42:13Z2015-08-24T03:42:13ZJuggling a career and motherhood: a scientist tells her story<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92697/original/image-20150821-31404-jh3a7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After a hard day at work, children still expect their mom to spend quality time with them. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SHUTTERSTOCK</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I am regularly asked how I have managed to juggle the demands of a family and a career in science. The short answer to the question is ‘with difficulty’ and while this is the easy truthful answer, it does not really help to guide women grappling with the problem. I should include men in this equation as these issues should be as important to women as they are to their life partners. But my focus is as a mother and my suggestions are from a personal perspective.</p>
<p>The first and most important advice I can add to this well-debated topic is that few people are able to focus on more than two time-consuming activities at any time. The ideal situation would be to focus on one core activity but few mothers have this luxury. </p>
<p>The most important message for women with families or women contemplating a family is that they are going to have to make difficult decisions. One cannot resign from motherhood but the amount of time one devotes to the role is in one’s own hands.</p>
<p>How successful a mother or career scientist one can become is then dependent on how one manages to divide available time between the two activities. I do not think that motherhood and career building are mutually exclusive, but managing both roles involves a huge learning curve. I find that most career professional mothers are well organised and use their time very carefully. My observation is that people who cannot manage their time have the greatest problem dealing with the demands on them.</p>
<h2>Mothers think out of the box</h2>
<p>It is for this reason that I often prefer to employ mothers. Women who juggle motherhood and a career successfully are usually more effective than males. Mothers are usually better at multitasking in the work environment than male counterparts, as they have had more experience in doing so.</p>
<p>In addition, I have observed that mothers are able to ‘think out of the box’. They do not have to take expensive courses to teach them to think laterally – they do so every time they go home to their children. </p>
<p>Young children do not care whether mom has had a hard day at work; they typically are very selfish and self centred. Thus, mothers are forced, once at home, to think about things that are different to the issues that have occupied their focus at work. </p>
<p>For example, many children have hobbies that necessitate very steep learning curves. I certainly know more about drums and cycling than I had ever wished to learn about. My children have stretched me in ways that I would not have achieved on my own. It is in this manner that I believe my children have forced me to become a more balanced person and probably also a better professional scientist.</p>
<p>A career in science and being a mother is not for the faint-hearted. If one is not sufficiently passionate and competent in one’s area of specialisation, succeeding will probably be very difficult. The reality is that trying to juggle a career and motherhood requires one to be better than average. Being average is probably not what the normal successful career professional would usually aspire to be. </p>
<h2>Discriminatory attitudes changing</h2>
<p>That this is often the reality for working mothers is because the criteria by which women are judged have been established by men. Some of these are unfairly discriminatory to women and although attitudes are changing, there still is a long way to go. Given this inherent discrimination, why would any woman climb the career ladder?</p>
<p>The obvious answer to this is job satisfaction. The second answer is that while a career in science can require at least 60 hours a week of one’s time, there is usually some flexibility. In the early years of motherhood the flexibility is in time, possibly being able to work at home when a child is sick or being able to watch that all important soccer match. Later, and as children grow older, the kind of flexibility that is important is often of a financial nature. </p>
<p>The third reason for climbing that ladder is that if one succeeds with the parenting part, children usually leave home eventually. And here an important question arises in many cases that I encounter – what do mothers do when their children have left? While mothers who have had careers do not escape the empty nest syndrome, at least they are occupied and stimulated.</p>
<p>One of the comments that I often hear is that the hours spent at work need to be balanced by being able to spend time with one’s family. The thought of a balanced existence does have a nice ring to it, but it is unlikely to earn one substantial job satisfaction or promotion, at least in a highly competitive environment. My experience has been that there is nothing balanced about highly successful professionals.</p>
<p>They are all, without exception, passionate about what they do and usually also somewhat obsessive. Such is also the case for successful business people, top sportspeople and high-profile musicians. It is for this reason that I find it rather confusing that people have the expectation that a successful scientist should fit the mould of what some people consider to be ‘balanced’. My children laugh when I try to convince them that I am normal. I work long hours and love my work – how normal can that be?</p>
<h2>Do’s and don'ts</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>Don’t apologise for taking time off for family emergencies. </p></li>
<li><p>Don’t use family responsibilities as an excuse for not getting a job done. Colleagues who do not have children earn the same salary and it is necessary to do the job that one is paid to do.</p></li>
<li><p>Do diarise important events in the lives of family members. And it is worth taking leave to share them.</p></li>
<li><p>Do have a backup plan. Make sure that support people (family and employees) are aware that assistance might be required.</p></li>
<li><p>Do find another job if you are not enjoying the one you’re doing. Juggling a career and motherhood makes sense only if one is having fun at work most of the time.</p></li>
<li><p>Do make sure that your family understands that your work is important not only to you but also to them. If possible, expose your children to parts of your work so that they can understand you better.</p></li>
<li><p>Do live close to work if you can. This is not always possible and may be more costly, but the cost is worth it in terms of one’s time and peace of mind, especially if you have teenagers who are often ‘home alone’.</p></li>
<li><p>Do attend and participate in parent–teacher meetings – you need to know what is happening with your child at school.</p></li>
<li><p>Do choose a life partner who shares your aims and ambitions. A supportive partner makes raising children much easier.</p></li>
<li><p>Do be aware that children do not come with instruction manuals. But a happy mother usually results in a happy child.</p></li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<p>This article is based on a piece that appeared in the South African <a href="http://www.sajs.co.za/sites/default/files/publications/html/865-6600-2-PB.html">Journal</a> of Science.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brenda Wingfield receives funding from the National Research Foundation, Department of Trade and Industry (THRIP), Department of science and Technology (Centre of Excellence) and from forestry companies in South Africa.</span></em></p>How successful a mother or career scientist one can become depends on how one’s available time is divided between the two activities.Brenda Wingfield, Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa and Professor of Genetics , University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.