In today’s uncertain and unstable job market, career paths are increasingly marked by transitions and conversions or adaptations. How can we equip our clients to optimize their chances of having a positive career transition experience?
This qualitative study looked at the lives of women who had experienced situations of social exclusion that led them to doubt their ability to return to school or on the job market. The participants were all long-term unemployed women, mostly single parents. Dionne, Saussez, and Bourdon examined how the lessons learned during an 18-month group intervention program enabled them to develop new capacities to adapt to a new work environment.
The intervention approach involved a specific type of learning: the action system. This approach relies on awareness as a source of personal development. For example, rather than dictating a series of actions that the participants should do, the facilitators encourage them to reflect on the sequence of actions to be taken to achieve social and work reintegration. This approach raises awareness of the steps required to achieve a goal and increases participants’ empowerment over their career transition path.
The research team took a closer look at the evolution of the participants in the collective action project organized by the facilitators. Two action systems introduced by the facilitators were analyzed:
- The structuring, as a group, of a life schedule to reconcile work, school and family life, i.e. the implementation of a new lifestyle schedule to enable participants to give time to their role as worker or student;
- The systematization of actions in collective work, i.e. the establishment of group norms and shared responsibilities to facilitate teamwork on a project for a community resource directory. This process was accompanied by moments of reflection on collective and individual functioning.
The results obtained show that participation in a social and work integration group focused on the development of new capacities for action enabled the majority of participants to make a career change – either returning to school or accessing a new job. The feeling of effectiveness gained from implementing the planned actions enabled the participants to consider new career possibilities that had previously been unimagined or invalidated. This awareness is combined with a new sense of power over their lives, which opens the potential for them to reconcile their different social roles previously perceived as incompatible (e.g. mother, worker, student).
Career change can be destabilizing indeed and give rise to uncertainty. By focusing career development interventions on the acquisition of new capabilities, CDPs can contribute to a positive retraining experience by reinforcing the sense of efficacy of people in situations of economic or social exclusion.
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