Personal responsibility for employability - Health Care

What is interesting to note about the models presented is that they reflect that employability is more than just skill development and begin to articulate the importance of self-reflection and awareness. Employability is not something that is undertaken by others for you, it is something that you need to consider and undertake for yourself. If you do not take ownership you risk restricting your personal and professional development, thereby potentially adversely influencing your long-term potential within the world of work. This suggestion of ownership and individual employability identity is supported by evidence reported in the literature. Hinchliffe and Jolly (2011) undertook research to provide some evidence about employer expectations of graduates. A questionnaire was distributed to employers to judge graduate performance and four strands of themes were identified from the research; these are summarised here:

Values – personal ethics, social and organisation values, including the value associated with entrepreneurship.
Intellect – how a graduate is able to think critically, to analyse information and to bring about change within organisations.
Performance – the transfer of skills and ability to learn new skills relevant to the workplace.
Engagement with others – the ability for graduates to engage with a wide range of challenges and individuals/organisations.
These four strands emphasise the importance of you taking ownership and influencing your own employability, whether it be in response to your own personal values or your motivation to think critically and influence, which could have a positive impact within the working environment. Some of the changes that are happening within health and social care may be difficult to deal with, but employers need individuals who can continue to develop personally and professionally within the working environment despite difficult demands.
Time for reflection
How do your personal values and beliefs influence your focus on employability?


External influences on employability
The limitations of the models presented thus far is that they do not explicitly consider external influences, such as economic, environmental, social or political contexts, that may influence your employability. This is a very real issue within the health and social care sector and something that impacts on career development and planning, as discussed in Chapter 2.
It needs to be acknowledged that external influences, such as economic social and health priorities and policies, will have an influence on your employment options. You need to respond to this to maximise your employability. This is the drawback on focusing purely on skill development rather than taking a holistic approach to employability. You could spend your time developing a specific skill but if, in the meantime, the political landscape has changed there may be different priorities that render your skill worthless. McQuaid and Lindsay (2005) presented seven operational versions of the concept of employability: dichotomic employability; sociomedical employability; manpower policy employability; flow employability; labour market performance and employability; initiative employability; interactive employability. These seven versions of the concept of employability support the suggestion that is not just the individual who influences their own employability – there are external contributory factors that will have an influence on the employability of individuals. There is a concern that there is a perceived narrow concept of employability adopted by policymakers and researchers that does not take into account the personal circumstances and external factors that may influence an individual’s employability (McQuaid and Lindsay, 2005). Further literature (Hillage and Pollard, 1998) supports the assertion by McQuaid and Lindsay and presents four components to employability, which include assets, deployment, presentation and also take into account the external influences. External influences could be, for example, government policy changes that result in a change in clinical priorities or changes in family circumstances that restrict an individual’s ability to commit to a leadership course that would be useful for employability development.
Time for reflection
What market conditions do you need to be aware of within current health and social care that may influence your employability?


Response to changing expectations within the workplace and personal circumstances

To fully embrace the concept of employability you need to have an awareness of the world of work into which you are entering. Workplace environments are changing and this is no less evident than in the area of health and social care. A psychosocial construct of employability has been presented by Fugate, Kinicki and Ashforth (2004). It identifies that a number of person-centred constructs are required in order to maximise employability and respond to the changing workplace. Fugate, Kinicki and Ashforth (2004) argue that there are three main elements to employability that all have a mutual influence on each other:

Career identity.

Personal adaptability.
Social (networks) and human capital (education and experience).
You need to be increasingly flexible within the modern workplace to adapt to what the job requires you to do. The roles and responsibilities of health professionals are shifting; for example, the introduction of prescribing of medication and injection therapies for nurses and physiotherapists or the setting up of social enterprises to provide health and social care. This means that you may have to change your identity at work multiple times over a period of employment, depending on the demands within your job. The ability for you to adapt to change will be key to your success. This means that past learning needs to be adaptable to new working situations – and this needs to be evidenced to demonstrate this to future employers. For example, if you have been involved in an activity at university that has demonstrated your ability to be flexible and proactive, then use that as an example which is transferable to the work situation. The concept of an internal locus of control is an interesting concept relevant to this situation, whereby your response to external influences will have an impact on the outcome of the situation (Fugate, Kinicki and Ashforth, 2004).

There may be external influences on job prospects and changing roles but your individual response to the situation – being optimistic and opportunistic about situations – will maximise your development and opportunities as an individual. Personal circumstances that may have an impact on your employability and response to work situations can also change, such a buying a house in a specific location. In order to maximise your employability potential, an appreciation and awareness of external and personal factors that impact on employability is essential if you are to establish and evidence where you are and how you are able to adapt and respond to the changes.

Time for reflection

How can you ensure that you respond in a proactive manner to change to maximise your opportunities?
A number of models have been presented that have attempted to incorporate the different definitions of employability within a workable model to try to increase the clarity of employability in practice. However, it has been argued that the models presented have been either too complex or too simple (Dacre Pool and Sewell, 2007). The literature does present a wide range of considerations for employability which can inform the development of a personal construct of employability relevant to you.

Time for reflection
Having read the models presented above, does this influence your own personal construct of employability? What model is best applied to your own circumstances?