Study of employability role in occupational mobility and transition with PLS structural equation model

Frequent reorganization and downsizing processes cause a dramatic increase of occupational transitions, having a strong impact on career models. Whereas job security is assumed to be important in predicting employees’ well-being under a traditional career model, employability is considered crucial for the workers well-being under the new conditions of labour market. In general the concept of employability, from the individual worker’s perspective, is an indicator of his or her opportunity to acquire and to keep an attractive job in the internal or external labour market. While there are several studies on employability of employees, there are only few studies on dismissed workers, who are managing an involuntary transition that is not linked to a personal career project. One of the objectives of labour policies is to set out preventive actions identifying in advance workers who are at risk of long-term unemployment. To implement this objective it is important to identify employability resources and protective factors to play on. However there isn’t enough empirical evidence of the applicability of the construct of employability to involuntary occupational transitions and it is uncertain the dimensions of personal employability that should be developed to minimize the risk of depression and to sustain the worker in his/her search of a new post. Moreover in Italian outplacement services there isn’t an agreed system of employability profiling. Starting from the psycho-social model to employability suggested by Fugate and partners, the aim of our contribution is to analyze the role of employability in re-employment processes for dismissed workers. Through structural equation models we want to study the relation between personal employability resources and mental and physical health. We want therefore to understand if and how some variables influence this relation. These variables have been identified as potential risk factors in unemployment situations: the perception of organizational justice, the perceived employability and the perceived utility of re-employment services. Our research involved dismissed workers in the pharmaceutical sector, who joined programs of requalification and re-employment sponsored by companies within a Welfare-to-Work project called Welfarma