Exploring life-design counselling as a career counselling intervention for the industrial psychology profession

Abstract

The rise of 21st century work has drastically brought about changes to the nature of work and organisations. The revolutions of globalisation, technological and economical changes, organisational transformations, digitalisation and automation are the factors that create continuous new demands and challenges for the workforce. Initially, the workplace of the 20th century was characterised by security and stability; however, now, the 21st century consists of an unpredictable and ever-changing workplace. As a result, the workforce is faced with continuous work changes, career transitions, remote work and increased unemployment. Moreover, the current workforce can no longer rely on organisations for their career development, as the contemporary workplace requires from employees to be primarily responsible for managing their own work-life and career paths. Consequently, these dynamics created a demand on employees to be equipped with skills of adaptability, lifelong learning and transition management skills to successfully manage their career life. The demands and challenges of the 21st century raise a demand of change and relevance to the practitioners responsible for aiding the current workforce in managing the changes effectively. Industrial psychologists focus on aiding the workforce in functioning optimally within their work environments, while also aiming to optimise the wellbeing of employees. Therefore, it is required from industrial psychologists to stay up-skilled and implement interventions that are relevant and adequate. Specifically, industrial psychologists in the role of career counsellors are called upon in aiding the workforce in the above-mentioned demands and challenges. Therefore, this calls on the profession to adopt post-modern career counselling interventions, which are relevant and suitable. More specifically, research indicates that practitioners need to employ career construction and selfconstruction counselling approaches for the 21st century work challenges. Indeed, in the present study, life-design counselling as post-modern career construction intervention was explored as career counselling intervention for the industrial psychology profession. A qualitative research design was employed, which was based on a social constructivism paradigm. The research approach utilised to thoroughly describe the participants' experiences was an interpretive description strategy. The target population was industrial psychology practitioners and interns registered at the HPCSA (n=18). The overall results of the research study indicated that the participants experienced a positive association with life-design counselling and that it provided the industrial psychology profession with a new perspective and an alternative career counselling tool for 21st century work challenges. It was found that life-design counselling is perceived as an adequate career counselling intervention for the industrial psychology profession based on contextual considerations, adjustments and modifications to elements of the approach. The results showed that industrial psychologists will employ life-design counselling in combination with alternative approaches within their practice. However, a feeling of cautiousness in applying the approach was identified, as participants experienced a lack of self confidence in their counselling skills to facilitate the approach and expressed a need to be sensitive towards a client's age and life stage in the lifedesign counselling process. Consequently, the participants emphasised that they felt a cautiousness of avoiding doing harm toward clients in their career counselling sessions with LDC. However, in conclusion, the participants found valued significance in the exposure to life-design counselling. Based on the study, they recommended that post-modern career counselling skills and approaches should be incorporated in tertiary training institutions' curriculums for the training of Industrial Psychology students. Moreover, it is recommended that the evidence-based practice of life-design counselling should be focused on in future research. In conclusion, these findings and recommendations will enhance the skill set and relevance of industrial psychologists within the 21st century of work.