Employability and Career Success Across the Life-Span

Age as moderator in the Relationship Between Self- Versus Supervisor Ratings of Employability and Career Success

Beatrice Van der Heijden, Maastricht School of Management, Open University of the Netherlands, University of Twente

Annet De Lange, University of Groningen, the Netherlands

Evangelia Demerouti, Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Claudia van der Heijde, University of Twente, the Netherlands

Introduction

• Employability (or career potential) is seen as a prerequisite for career success (cf. Van der Heijde & Van der Heijden, 2006).

• Far-reaching changes in the workforce (ageing and dejuvenization) that necessitate further empirical research on ageing and careers.

• Career management only possible given a thorough understanding of what constitutes one’s employability.

Aims of the Study

• Firstly, to test the operationalization of employability, and to investigate whether the factor structure for self-reported versus supervisor-rated employability is similar across two age groups of workers (‘youngsters’ versus ‘over-forties’).

• Secondly, we examine the predictive validity of employability in the light of objective career success, using two sources of raters (employees and their immediate supervisors).

Aims of the Study

• Thirdly, this study aims to examine whether age of the employee moderates the relationship between self- and supervisor ratings of employability, on the one hand, and objective career success, on the other.

Employability

• “The continuous fulfilling, acquiring or creating of work through the optimal use of competences” (Van der Heijde & Van der Heijden, 2006).

Five Dimensions of Employability

• Occupational Expertise;

• Anticipation and Optimization;

• Personal Flexibility;

• Corporate Sense;

• Balance.

Career Success

• “The accumulated interaction between a variety of individual, organizational and societal norms, behaviors, and work practices” (Boudreau, Boswell, & Judge, 2001), and refers to real or objective, and perceived or subjective accomplishments of individuals in their work lives.”

Multi-Rater or Multi-Source Ratings

• For example, from supervisors, peers, subordinates, and customers, instead of relying on appraisals from a single source.

• The rationale behind this is that different evaluation perspectives offer unique and valuable information, and thus incremental validity to the assessment of individual performance.

Hypotheses

• We expect an equivalent factor structure of the employability construct among the rater groups (employees and supervisors), and we advocate the comparability of the different rater group scores. Moreover, in line with previous research, we expect a similar factor structure across different age groups of workers (Hypothesis 1).

Hypotheses

• Employability is positively associated with career success (Hypothesis 2 for self-rated, and Hypothesis 3 for supervisor-rated employability).

Hypotheses

• Age moderates the relationship between supervisor ratings of employability and objective career success. More specifically, we expect stronger relationships between supervisor-rated employability and career success of the youngsters versus the over-forties (Hypothesis 4).

Hypotheses

• Age moderates the relationship between self-ratings of employability and objective career success. More specifically, we expect a relatively stronger relationship between self-rated employability and career success for the over-forties, compared to their younger counterparts (Hypothesis 5).

Explanations for the Moderating Effect of Age

• Negative stereotypical beliefs about older workers (Boerlijst, Van der Heijden, & Van Assen, 1993; Offerman & Gowing, 1990).

• Increased P-E fit for older workers (Watkins & Subich, 1995; Wright & Hamilton, 1978).

Methodology

• The employability measure in our model has been filled in by both parties (employees and their immediate supervisors), in order to enable us to investigate the factor structure depending upon rater source and age group, and for testing our model hypotheses.

Methodology

• In order to increase the validity of the findings, instructions regarding cross-checking as well as anonimity have been used (Mabe & West, 1982).

Methodology

• N = 303 pairs of employees and supervisors working at a large Dutch company producing building materials (response rate was 91.8%).

• 83.5% male and 16.5% female employees.• Mean age employees 41 years (sd = 9.15).• Mean organizational tenure employees

10.74 (sd = 9.61).

Methodology

• 95.0% male and 5% female supervisors.

• Mean age supervisors 43 years

(sd = 7.96).

Measures

Employability: (1) occupational expertise (15 items); (2) anticipation and optimization (8 items); (3) personal flexibility (8 items); (4) corporate sense (7 items); (5) balance (9 items).

Measures

Objective Career Success (Gattiker & Larwood, 1986) (three single items): (1) organization-specific objective hierarchical success; (2) overall objective hierarchical success; (3) current gross income.

Results

• All employability measures demonstrated good internal consistencies, for both groups of raters.

• The correlations between the supervisor-rated employability dimensions are high, while these are somewhat lower for the self-ratings.

Results

• The agreement between self- and supervisor ratings for the same employability dimension ranges from .22 to .37.

• Moreover, all supervisor ratings of employability appear to be unrelated to objective career success outcomes, which might indeed indicate that possible moderators, like age, are involved.

Results

• However, regarding the self-reported ratings of employability, six out of the fifteen possible correlations with the three objective career success outcomes are significant but rather weak, which again points to the influence of possible moderators.

Preliminary Analyses

• Males had relatively higher objective career success scores compared with the females.

• Both males and females had higher scores for the ‘number of promotions in entire career’ compared with the ‘number of organization-specific promotions.’

Preliminary Analyses

• Tenure was positively related to organizational promotions, and negatively to overall promotions.

• Given the outcomes of previous studies, we decided to include gender, educational qualification, and tenure as control variables in the subsequent analyses (see also Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005).

Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA)

• We compared the fit of the two-factor model with the fit of alternative models, including a model with only one latent factor (employability), and two-factor models in which, respectively, the factor loadings, error variances, correlation between the factors, and the factor variances were constrained to be equal in both age groups.

Results

• The two-factor model had a satisfactory fit. Moreover, all indicators had a significant loading on the respective factor for both the younger and the older employees.

• More importantly, this model appeared to fit significantly better compared with the one-factor (employability) model, supporting a similar factor structure across the two rater groups, that is, employees and their immediate supervisors.

Results

• Constraining, respectively, the factor loadings, error variances, correlation between the factors, and the factor variances to be equal for both younger and older employees did not result in a significantly worse fit compared with the two-factor model with free parameters.

Results CFA

• Hypothesis 1 is confirmed: The factor structure is indeed equivalent for both age groups.

Covariates

Supervisor-rated employability

Occ. exp

Ant & Opt

Pers Flex

Corp sen

Balance

Self-rated employability

Occ. exp

Ant & Opt

Pers Flex

Corp sen

Balance

Organization-specific promotions

Overall promotions

Income

Results SEM analyses

• Self-reported employability was positively related to overall promotions. This provides partial support for Hypothesis 2.

• Supervisor-rated employability was significantly, but negative, related to overall promotions. This implies that Hypothesis 3 is to be rejected.

Results Multi-Group SEM for the Younger Employees

• Self-reported employability was significantly and positively related to both overall promotions and current gross income.

• The supervisor ratings were positively related to current gross income.

Results Multi-Group SEM for the Younger Employees

• Gender was negatively related to both self- and supervisor ratings of employability, as well as to income, with females having lower scores compared to males.

• Educational qualification and organizational tenure, however, were positively related to supervisor ratings of employability.

Results Multi-Group SEM for the Younger Employees

• Moreover, organizational tenure appeared to be positively related to the amount of organization-specific promotions.

Results Multi-Group SEM for the Older Employees

• Self-reported employability was positively related to overall promotions, while supervisor ratings were negatively related to overall promotions.

• All other structural relationships appeared to be non-significant.

Results Multi-Group SEM for the Older Employees

• Moreover, organizational tenure was negatively related to both supervisor and self-rated employability, and positively to organization-specific promotions.

Implications Multi-Group SEM

• Hypothesis 4 (stronger positive relationships between supervisor-rated employability and career success of the youngsters versus the over-forties) is partly supported.

• Hypothesis 5 (relatively stronger relationship between self-rated employability and career success for the over-forties, compared to their younger counterparts) is to be rejected.

Outcomes and Implications of the Psychometric Analyses

• Our results confirmed a two-factor model (self-reported employability and supervisor-rated employability), comprising five employability indicators.

The Relationship between Employability and Objective Career Success

• For self-reported employability, the hypothesis is partly supported.

• However, in case the supervisor ratings were used, we have found a negative relationship with overall promotions, which is contradictory to our assumptions.

The Relationship between Employability and Objective Career Success

• It might be that an ‘instrumental style of leadership’ plays an important role (Boerlijst, Van der Heijden, & Van Assen, 1993).

• In case of high employee career potential, supervisor restrains the employee from moving to another job or to another field.

Covariates

Supervisor-rated employability

Occ. exp

Ant & Opt

Pers Flex

Corp sen

Balance

Self-rated employability

Occ. exp

Ant & Opt

Pers Flex

Corp sen

Balance

Organization-specific promotions

Overall promotions

Income.35/.30

.19/-.22

.31/n.s.

.42/.59

.83/.72

.78/.69

.75/.73

.51/.79

.80/.91

.81/.87

. 63/. 72

.83/.85

.82/.87

Outcomes and Implications of the Test of the Career Success Enhancing Employability

Model Moderated by Age

• Highly different results have been found for the over-forties compared to the youngsters.

• Possibly, our results reconfirm our ideas regarding the prevalence of age-related differences in supervisory attitudes towards their employees (see Van der Heijden, 1998).

Outcomes and Implications of the Test of the Career Success Enhancing Employability

Model Moderated by Age

• It is conceivable that for the over-forties in particular, the instrumental style of leadership’ plays an important role (Boerlijst, Van der Heijden, & Van Assen, 1993).

Limitations and Recommendations for Further Research

• Possibility of response set consistencies as all data have been collected using questionnaires.

• Cross-sectional approach implies need for further research to address the issue of causality.

Limitations and Recommendations for Further Research

• Generalizability to other occupational settings and/or other countries has to be investigated.

Practical Implications

• Human Resource policies should be rooted into a so-called ‘conservation’ model instead of the long-adhered ‘depreciation’ model (Yeats, Folts, & Knapp, 2000).

• Especially, the employee’s immediate supervisor should bear responsibility to enhance life-long learning.

Practical Implications

• With an age-conscious HRM policy, that is aimed to guide the amount of employability, ageing does not need to pose a threat.

• The employability instrument (Van der Heijde & Van der Heijden, 2006) has high practical value in the light of enhancing life-long career success.