We grow, develop, and change. We may change professions and workplaces several times along our career paths.
Changes in our lives as part of natural growth and development directly affect what and how we think about our work.
During these changes, we pause to examine the points where our work intersects with our understanding of a good and meaningful working life.
The work environment is currently undergoing massive change. This in itself challenges us in unprecedented ways to find ways to renew ourselves and respond to changes in our working environment throughout our careers. Rather than a career roadblock, this is a natural, multilayered process intertwined with growth and development, offering a chance to clarify:
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What do you really want from your work and life?
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What gives you a sense of meaning?
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Which strengths do you want to put to use in the future?
Feeling competent creates well-being
For people, learning means more than acquiring skills. Developing our competence, feeling that we can handle our current tasks, and being prepared for changes in them creates a sense of well-being. Losing our sense of mastery is also closely connected to well-being: to how committed we are to our work and how meaningful we find it.
Responses to our Skillscape survey and, among others, the Occupational Barometer show that employees feel a need for career guidance to support their work and reassurance about how and in which direction to develop their skills.
Managers, colleagues, personal networks, and friends are mentioned as important sources of support. Respondents also use a wide range of support outside their organizations, such as trade unions and career counselors, when considering their careers.
The responses highlight a need for diverse, easily accessible forms of support and guidance at different career stages. Among existing practices, development discussions are mentioned as almost the only established opportunity to address and plan career matters at one's workplace.
It has also become clear that employees today expect a particular sense of meaning from work: a feeling that they have an impact in the world.
Help through career design
Life Design offers a broader perspective on working life as part of a whole in which work is just one area of life. Consider, for example, the experience of meaningful work and identifying where working life intersects with our idea of a good life and happiness: understanding these factors deeply often requires seeing the whole picture.
Career Design combines design thinking and life design in planning one's career. The approach emphasizes the individual's active role in planning and managing their career development. It aims to help people identify their skills, strengths, values, and passions, direct their careers on that basis, and find guidelines for their development.
Career design borrows design thinking and a process model from design to support career reflection, enabling people to examine their careers and direction and shape a future that reflects who they are.
Career design is not merely reactive career planning: it emphasizes a proactive attitude to taking responsibility for one's career. Designers do not plan their way forward; they build their way forward.
Career design is a process that enables people to examine their careers and direction and shape a future that reflects who they are. It is an inspiring journey and process for renewal, helping clarify what a meaningful working life means personally at different points of change along our career paths.
Career design is a creative process that helps you envision career choices that motivate you and fit your personality, preferences, values, and interests perfectly, then plan your career step by step.
The career design process is neither easy nor quick, but it is effective, thought-provoking, and even fun! As you design your career, you learn about yourself, your strengths, your values, and your ideal life. You then begin fitting what you have learned to reality.
We can think of the career design mindset as teaching us thinking skills that help us, in this time of many changes, embrace different options courageously, design alternative futures, and see ourselves as active participants in them.
You can find a career planning tool on our website to support this process. It helps you map your possibilities, identify your strengths, and clarify where and how you want to move forward.
What thoughts has this sparked? Is this really a career roadblock or crisis at all, or an inspiring process about to begin, in which you can see and discover entirely new dimensions to support the next stage of your career?
Elina Söderlund
Career path
Career design
Change management
Career management
Career well-being
Kuulas& Co Oy. Kuulas & Co is a design agency and coaching company specializing in organizational development. We help our clients align strategic skills needs with employees' career and learning aspirations.
Join us in shaping the future of work and learning together! Find out more about what we do at: www.kuulas.co