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The Guiding Principles of Career Development are as relevant as ever but may resonate differently today

Juliana Wiens and Karen Schaffer

After many Cannexus roundtables, CERIC articles and keynote speeches focusing on the “future of work,” the future has arrived in all of its messy complexity. The multiplying impacts of technology (fast-forwarded by COVID), demographics and climate change are causing real-time changes in job possibilities and in the movement of people across the globe. Keeping pace with these changes requires constant skill updates.

News stories proclaim that “no one wants to work any more,” and these stories often focus almost exclusively on employer frustrations without grappling with the changing nature of work itself. All of us – every single one of us – have had to confront or explore unexpected questions about work in the past couple of years. What do we value? What places and modalities do we work from? How are we managing or being managed? How important is the work that we do?  We’ve been confronted with new definitions of the term “essential worker,” and all of these changes have shaken our systems to the core.

Read more on the Guiding Principles

Principles in action: Framing career development as a lifelong process
5 ways to bring the Guiding Principles to life
Principles in action: Elementary career education equips students to navigate complex world of work

Never before have career professionals been so visible, so desired, so … essential. And in this context, CERIC’s Guiding Principles of Career Development are as relevant as ever. We encourage you to take a moment and read them, even if you’ve read them before. Which principle speaks to you more strongly this time ‘round? Which one reminds you of a client or a news story you’ve seen recently? Which principles now resonate differently given the events of the past couple of years?

The Guiding Principles themselves are too chunky for the average person to memorize or recite. The point is not to spout them, but to embody them. People need the validation of knowing that they are not mistaken, that work has changed and that a new approach to career is necessary.

Some key takeaways:

1. If the new world of work is complex, then career work must allow for that complexity. Step-by-step career planning belongs in a former era. Allowing for complexity means shifting with the client while helping them build decision-making skills, manage transitions, notice possibilities and uncover new career directions.
2. Clients are in a state of flow among Self-Exploration, Decision-Making, Transitioning/Action, Future-Thinking and caring for their Mental Health. In the Career Work in Action series (a series of six Action Plans for working with different client populations based on the Guiding Principles), we focus on helping the client understand their career within the framework of these five areas as they figure out what they need at any given time (download for free at ceric.ca/principles). Within each area, the client develops career skills and builds resilience through/during change.
3. To best support our clients, career professionals must remember that these big changes affect us too. It’s okay to want things to change. It’s okay to resist change. It’s okay to hate change. But we have to recognize that change is no longer the wave on the horizon, it’s here and we’re all surfing it. Having compassion for ourselves in addition to those we meet with will help us stay upright on the board.

The Guiding Principles are a sturdy support and worth revisiting as conditions keep changing. By reminding ourselves that career development is “dynamic, evolving, and requires continuous adaptation and resilience,” we can “navigate with purpose” and maybe, just maybe, enjoy the ride.

Juliana Wiens and Karen Schaffer are Career Counsellors in Halifax and the authors of the Career Work in Action series for CERIC. In their free time, Wiens does stand-up comedy and Schaffer writes romcoms. Neither of them could come up with a good punchline for this bio.

Four ways that Canada’s skills development systems need to change

Karen Myers and Malika Asthana

Canada’s skills development systems are still traditional in many ways, built around the expectation that the education we complete in our early lives will equip us with the skills we need for the rest of our working lives. It’s a linear way of thinking about skills – first we learn, then earn, then rest. This doesn’t align with the realities of workers who may be exiting and returning to the workforce more than once due to caregiving responsibilities, or who may need to upskill or reskill due to industry-wide layoffs, technological changes or the transition to net-zero emissions.

The most recent data shows that upskilling for working adults is beneficial but limited. A recent Statistics Canada study found that only a small proportion of laid-off workers participate in further education or training. However, those who do enrol in, and complete, short-term credentialled training (college or CEGEP certificates or diplomas) experience substantial earnings gains relative to those who don’t.

More from Careering Winter 2023

Top 10: Advancing career development in Canada
Unlocking the power of student career agency
10 Questions with Riz Ibrahim

It’s clear that we need to do more to connect working adults to upskilling opportunities. Inspired by the work of skills expert Michelle R. Weise, we articulate four key ways that our skills development systems need to change:

1. Better navigation: Many working adults don’t know how their skills and interests align with in-demand career paths, and what new skills they might need to develop. We have to provide working adults with the information and support they need to take ownership of their career journey.
2. More financial and wraparound supports: It’s time to design programs around the needs and circumstances of working adults – understanding how they learn best, what their primary motivators are and where they may need supports like mental health counselling, transportation subsidies and childcare.
3. Targeted training: In the current training marketplace, people struggle to find what they need. We need to invest in building a curated marketplace of accessible, targeted and high-quality training. And as credentials continue to flood the market, learners need support to compare programs on cost, time to complete, modality of delivery and learning outcomes to ensure they are maximizing their return on investment.
4. Integration of working and learning: Waiting until workers are laid off to help them upskill is inefficient and damaging. Employers need to view talent development as a business requirement, and ensure employees have the time and resources to seamlessly combine learning and earning.

To make this work, we’ll need high-quality career services powered by competent career development professionals who can support working adults to navigate their work and learning journeys.

The good news is that there are already seeds of innovation:

For example, Blueprint – with funding from the Future Skills Centre – is collaborating with the Canadian Career Development Foundation and MixtMode to prototype and field-test a dual-client delivery model that serves both employers and individuals regardless of their employment status. This model aims to ensure employers have the talent they need, and workers are supported with tools and resources to take active ownership of their career development.

There are also exciting innovations that connect employers and their employees directly with training options in a seamless interface. For example, D2L has developed an upskilling platform, D2L Wave, to help employees feel confident that the training they pursue will be valued by their employers and will support their career development. D2L works with employers to curate a catalogue of credentialled courses that align with business needs. Employees can enrol in these training options from post-secondary institutions and other providers in areas such as strategy, finance, human resources and marketing using employer-provided education benefits.

These innovations are a step in the right direction, but there is still much to learn. We need more and better data to help us trace people’s skills pathways and understand where there are gaps, to figure out how to build on what’s working or pivot from what is not.

The time is ripe for a broader policy conversation about how we can broaden access to upskilling opportunities and ensure that working adults are truly prepared for the future of work.

Karen Myers is the CEO of Blueprint. Myers leverages over 20 years of experience to lead a non-profit organization dedicated to using data and evidence to improve the social and economic well-being of Canadians. She has built a solid reputation for her ability to lead large-scale, complex projects in a range of policy domains including employment and training, poverty reduction and income security. 

Malika Asthana is a Manager at D2L, a global learning innovation company. She is passionate about leveraging her background in strategy, public affairs and policy research to facilitate conversations and share perspectives on the future of education and work.

Being intentional about how your work influences client mental health supports positive outcomes

Michael Huston and Dave Redekopp

Tenacity in the pursuit of connections between career development and mental health was one of our hopes when we approached CERIC and the Australian Centre for Career Education (formerly CEAV) to write a book on this topic. It is too early to say if our field will have an ongoing interest in mental health outcomes, but since the 2020 release of the Strengthening Mental Health Through Effective Career Development book, we’ve been heartened by ongoing Canadian and international interest.

We’ve presented at conferences in Canada and abroad; participated in a study on career development and mental health in schools; worked with the Canadian Career Development Foundation (CCDF) on the MHO-5, a simple measure of changes in mental health outcomes; and partnered on an initiative to create a practical toolkit to guide well-being discussions within employment and career services.

Sensing the interest in and general momentum of the topic, we identify opportunities below for advancing mental health-informed career development practice. As we describe in our book, your work already influences client mental health, so why not be intentional about this? Career development intervention has effects on life (e.g. getting a job), abilities (e.g. career management skills), self-perceptions (e.g. self-efficacy), opportunity-perceptions (e.g. seeing meaningful work possibilities) and opportunities (e.g. having doors opened to informal learning); all of these effects link directly or indirectly to mental health outcomes.

The buck starts here. It is up to you to sustain interest in revealing and communicating the mental health outcomes accrued from career development services. Please do not wait for government, educational institutions or charitable organizations to lead the charge. You and those you serve are the first-hand witnesses to well-being improvements and will benefit most from stakeholders appreciating your role in these broader outcomes.

More on mental health and career development from CareerWise

Career interventions are mental health interventions. Here’s why
Book review: Strengthening Mental Health Through Career Effective Development
How career development is also a mental health practice

CDPs are a conduit. Despite marked improvement in societal understanding of mental illness and mental health, there is still considerable stigma about seeking help. Mental health concerns occur for one in five Canadians in any given year, and by age 40, half have experienced a mental illness (Smetanin et al., 2015).

In addition to the mental health-bolstering impact of our work, CDPs are a likely conduit to mental health supports. Unemployed people experience significant stress and related mental health concerns, but they are more likely to meet with a career practitioner than a mental health specialist for a few reasons: needs for food and shelter take precedent over well-being, waiting times for mental health services are daunting and stigma remains real. Our impact is amplified when we:

1. Understand and can teach our clients how mental health and career development are related
2. Are connected and can refer to a network of mental health professionals

Measuring matters. Career development work is usually measured and seen as successful when there is a clear career-related outcome (e.g. a client starts a new job or educational program). Improvements in client mental health appear early in interventions and it serves us to measure and communicate the difference we make.

Although most of us don’t see measurement as central to our roles, improvements in “hope” or “meaning” (definitional mental health outcomes) are obvious to clients and can be quickly measured by verbal report or short questionnaire. Our work on the MHO-5, mentioned above, suggests measuring is easy to do, clients find it relevant, and it augments and supports career development intervention.

Sharing measurement matters. We ask you to communicate the impact of career development on mental health in ways that will resonate with your colleagues, clients, administrators, funders and neighbours. You have always known your work supports mental health; the people around you likely do not.

Start with the people you trust the most. Let them know the mental health changes you have seen and measured. Listen to their responses and find out if they are really hearing you. Refine your approach until you know your message is being heard. Expand your efforts to broader audiences. Then, repeat! It is not difficult to include mental health in almost every discussion about career development. We invite and encourage you to do so.

Trauma is a mental health concern. Traumatic injuries can impair access, entry, engagement and ultimately the outcomes of career development intervention. Working within boundaries of competence – career professionals are not mental health or trauma experts – CDPs benefit from having some knowledge of trauma and its impact. They can then use their skills to create safety, navigate disclosure, and link clients to mental health services and resources.

You know your work is a valuable contributor to mental health. We invite you to intentionally strengthen, measure, and communicate this contribution. Doing so will, at minimum, raise your spirits, help your clients and improve your practice. Doing so may also create an ongoing and public conversation about the value of career development services.

Michael Huston is a counsellor and focuses on career development with specific interest in counsellor training, career intervention strategies and outcomes, career development as mental health intervention, and work and well-being.

In 35 years of working in the career development field, Dave Redekopp has been privileged to teach, develop and deliver programs, develop products, research and consult in almost all aspects of career development.

References

Smetanin, P., Briante, C., Khan, M., Stiff, D., & Ahmad, S. (2015). The life and economic impact of major mental illnesses in Canada: 2011-2041. Prepared for the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Toronto: RiskAnalytica.