Careers today are usually much less static than in previous generations. Organisational restructuring, global competition or technological advances for example, all contribute to career insecurity. Events such as economic crises or worldwide pandemics further increase perceptions of career insecurity.

In research, the consideration of "career insecurity" has gained a lot of importance. With their study "Conceptualising career insecurity: Toward a better understanding and measurement of a multidimensional construct" a team, led by Annabelle Hofer from the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Cologne and Prof. Dr Daniel Spurk from the University of Bern made a fundamental contribution to current career insecurity research.

First, the researchers developed a definition of career insecurity that combines four core features of previous ones: insecurity, future time perspective, multidimensionality and the respective context. In this sense career insecurity appears as "an individual’s thoughts and worries that central content aspects of one’s future career might possibly develop in an undesired manner."

Together with their team, the researchers developed the MU-CI-S, a new measure of career insecurity. The MU-CI-S multidimensional career insecurity scale consists of 32 items within the following eight dimensions:  CI-Career opportunities, (2) CI-Decreased prestige and qualification requirements of the employment, (3) CI-Contractual employment conditions, (4) CI-Unemployment, (5) CI-Change of workplace, (6) CI-Retirement, (7) CI-Work-nonwork interactions, and (8) CI-Discrepancy between individual resources and work demands. With their multidimensional research approach, Hofer, Spurk and co. extend previous conceptualisations of career insecurity that only act one-dimensionally and do not specify the content of individual areas of insecurity.

In practice, this scale can help a company to obtain valid, reliable, and easily understandable self-assessments of employees and to map them in a corresponding insecurity profile. This is useful in career counselling, for example, because the profile can be used as a basis for tailor-made individual intervention strategies. The scale also makes it easier for companies to target their employees' insecurities. In addition, general recommendations for companies can be derived, such as the introduction of programmes, techniques or training aimed at reducing career insecurity. This could help to improve health and well-being, and ultimately their work performance and career success.

The paper on the research results of Annabelle Hofer, Daniel Spurk and their colleagues was published in the renowned Personnel Psychology Journal and recently awarded as "Top Downloaded Article".

• The Study is published under open acces in the journal Personnel Psychology.
• Annabelle Hofer at “Find an Expert”