Developing resilient workers: Learning across working life

Abstract

As the requirements for work continue to change, influenced by such factors as the growing use of technology and globalisation, workers’ employability increasingly depends on their ability to continue to adapt to these changes. Alongside those influences are social changes that are also transforming workforces and workplaces, including longer working lives and increased longevity and a growing reliance on experienced workers since the number of younger entrants to working life cannot keep pace with overall demands. All these imperatives lead to the need for resilient workers, capable of learning adaptively across lengthening working lives. While some of that learning will occur through accredited courses, much of it arises through everyday learning in the circumstances of practice and as an outcome of workers’ own endeavours as active (agentic) learners and through their interactions with others, in and out of the workplace. Drawing on interviews with 51 workers, this paper discusses how learning and training can help develop resilient workers and hence sustain their employability.