Page 69 - increasing-the-value-of-age-guidance-in-employers-age-management-strategies

Increasing the value of age: guidance in employers’ age management strategies

4.6. Career management skills and active ageing

The notion of CMS has only recently entered policy vocabulary and still
generates perplexity. CMS are generally associated with skills, attitudes and
knowledge which individuals can develop to make informed and reflexive career
choices and management.
These will generally include skills and knowledge associated with decision-
making, identification of career and learning opportunities, adaptability to new
work and learning situations, and increased awareness of one’s qualities,
preferences and development needs. Guidance activities very clearly aim at
developing these skills, in a logic of individual empowerment and progressive
autonomy.
The development of CMS has become particularly important in policy
agendas with the impact of the economic crisis, which degraded the possibility of
stable career paths. The need to ensure that people possess the right skills and
knowledge to cope with unexpected career events, adapt to new work and
learning environments, and make unusual career decisions, has become a
priority. Youth groups and older workers were particularly affected in their career
tracks and expectations.
It is desirable that the framework offered by the combination of employment,
social security, education/training, and guidance systems can provide consistent
and sustained career support, adjusted to each career stage. This support should
be accessible in various contexts (learning, work, home), independent of their
level of formalisation.
Not all countries in Europe have a structured approach to CMS development
and those that do, tend to do it in the framework of general education services as
a curriculum element (Denmark, France, Austria and Finland). Less frequent are
initiatives aimed at working adults.
Independent of being part of a taught curriculum or developed with less
conventional approaches, CMS can be either inserted in a homogeneous vision
of people, originating a ‘one size fits all’ approach, or acknowledge individual
needs and styles of learning, as well as client group specificities. This makes
CMS development a pedagogic and andragogic issue, which has to adapt to age-
related characteristics.
In the case of older workers, issues such as extensive professional
experience and possible low proficiency in ICT tools and foreign languages need
to be factored into the approaches developed. This type of approach requires
identification of typical issues in each career stage and, at its best, assessment of
individual needs.

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