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Perceived External Employability and Well-being: A Study on Causation among the Employed and Job Seekers in Outplacement EAWOP 2013 Dra. Dorien Vanhercke Dra. Kaisa Kirves Prof. Nele De Cuyper Prof. Anneleen Forrier Prof. Marijke Verbruggen Prof. Hans De Witte Contact: Dorien.Vanhercke@ppw.kuleuven.be

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Context 2 Perceived employability is becoming more relevant: o Career management is predominantly the responsability of the individual. o Career actions or lack thereof are strongly determined by ones perception of events (e.g., Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). However, research concerning perceived employability is still rather vague, especially towards the relationship with the subjective outcome of well- being. Two samples: the employed and job seekers in outplacement Perceived internal and external employability

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Theoretical framework 3 Conservation of Resources Theory (Hobfoll, 1989) Perceived external employability and well-being as personal resources (Hobfoll et al., 2003) : Resilience Feelings of control Develop from other resources Hypotheses: Perceived external employability Well-being Both effects appear at the same time.

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The employed 4 Method Two-wave surveydata (2011 2012): N= 600 Measures: o Perceived external employability (4 items; De Cuyper & De Witte, 2010) - T0: =.94; T1: =.90 - e.g.: I could easily switch to another job elsewhere, if I wanted to. - 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree). o Well-being (1 item; Abdel-Khalek, 2006) - Overall, how happy or unhappy would you say you are? - Response scale ranges from 1 (very unhappy) to 10 (very happy) Analyses: SEM with AMOS

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The employed 5 Table 1. Sample composition

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The employed Results 6 Table 2. Fit statistics for the structural equation models (employed) Note: best-fitting model in italics. 22 dfpGFICFIRMSEASRMRComparison 2 dfp SM1 Stability model 133.7832