How Life Events Foster or Hinder Career Sustainability?

In our ever-changing and unpredictable socioeconomical context, career paths become more complex and thus less linear. Indeed, individuals face a set of life events that make sometimes career paths to take unexpected turns. These events could be either major (e.g., marriage) or minor (e.g., disagreement with colleagues) and are mainly characterized by their valence (positive to negative), frequency (once to repeated), predictability (expected to unexpected), and location (work-related, family-related, leisure-related, etc.). Although being sometimes out of one’s control, some individuals could rely on their personal or social resources to cope with these different life events.

Based on sustainable careers framework, this research will examine the longitudinal effect of a broad spectrum of life events—from major life events to daily hassles and uplifts—and their characteristics (valence, frequency, predictability, and location) on health, happiness and productivity, within working adults’ samples in Switzerland. The role of some personal resources (e.g., self-efficacy, emotion regulation, career adaptability) and some social resources (e.g., perceived social support) in dealing with these events will be also analyzed. This research aims thus to highlight how life events foster or hinder career sustainability and their importance when studying career paths over the life course.