CARE for professionals: Strengthening their careers and employability

Professionals’ ability and willingness to work and continue working until their retirement age are challenged in today's demanding and dynamic work environment. Medical specialists are typical examples of professionals who work in stressful environments resulting in high burn-out and low employability rates compared to other professions. This emphasizes the urgency of finding ways to strengthen professionals’ careers and employability.

The research question guiding this thesis is: What do the careers and employability of professionals entail, and how can their career proactivity and their ability and willingness to continue working until retirement age (i.e. employability) be stimulated?

This thesis shows that medical specialists’ careers are strongly clinically focused and they have limited attention for developing themselves in non-clinical areas. Findings further show that medical specialists’ challenges with staying employable are mainly related to their ability to cope with a highly demanding work environment that many medical specialists find highly stressful. The effectivity of Human Resource Development (HRD) practices is examined in separate randomized controlled intervention studies. Results show that organizations can support medical specialists’ employability and enhance their career proactivity by offering them HRD practices, such as a personalized feedback report and training programs. Also, training programs for line managers can help them in offering support to medical specialists in their team. These HRD practices are beneficial for the employability of professionals and help them to proactively take charge of their jobs and careers, better cope with job demands, search for job resources and prepare for their future career.