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Enhancing Career Management Preparedness and Mental Health

  • Chapter
Sustainable Working Lives

Part of the book series: Aligning Perspectives on Health, Safety and Well-Being ((AHSW))

Abstract

The search for feasible solutions for longer careers and their sustainability underline the need for new conceptual frameworks for managing working careers which emphasize proactive coping and a life-long perspective. In this chapter we will look into these issues and introduce new solutions for preparing people for today’s increasingly unpredictable employment environment. Preparedness means confidence in one’s own career management skills, motivation for managing one’s career and both emotional and knowledge-wise readiness to deal with the setbacks that one may encounter during the career management process. This preparedness counteracts the progress of discouragement in today’s challenging labor markets. We present two case examples of group interventions aimed at enhancing the career management preparedness and mental health of employees in work organizations and of young employees returning to work after parental leave. Together, these two related group programs provide examples of the power of research-based psychosocial interventions to enhance the preparedness of employees for successful career management and adaptation to the challenges of current work life. The chapter underlines the need for more research, especially longitudinal and interventional research on career management preparedness, mental health and productivity, using a life course perspective.

The work on this chapter was made possible by a grant to the first author from the Finnish Work Environment Fund (TSR; Grant # 112008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Development of Work and Organizations, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland

    Jukka Vuori & Salla Toppinen-Tanner

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  1. Jukka Vuori
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  2. Salla Toppinen-Tanner
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Correspondence to Jukka Vuori .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Development of Work and Organizations, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland

    Jukka Vuori

  2. TNO Sustainable Productivity and Employability, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Roland Blonk

  3. Department of Psychology, Organizational Studies, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Richard H. Price

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Vuori, J., Toppinen-Tanner, S. (2015). Enhancing Career Management Preparedness and Mental Health. In: Vuori, J., Blonk, R., Price, R. (eds) Sustainable Working Lives. Aligning Perspectives on Health, Safety and Well-Being. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9798-6_13

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