Career Adaptability as a Predictor of Employees' Career Agility and Career Embeddedness

ABSTRACT

The coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic has disrupted global economies and organisations, and human resources (HR) has been at the very heart of it and has had to deal with the disruption. Organisations and employees were forced to adapt to the new normal in order to survive. Since organisations are now on the road to recovery, the role of HR has become even more important. The turmoil of the modern career space requires human resource strategies that assist employees in successfully managing their career status and be more agile, embedded and adaptable in their work environment. This chapter explores the construct of career adaptability as a predictor of employees' career agility and career embeddedness. Adaptability ensures alignment with a volatile new world of work that has to contend with rapid technological and organisational changes and pandemics. This chapter reports on research showing that career adaptability predicts employees' career agility and career embeddedness. It also explores the relationship between career agility, career embeddedness and career adaptability. Finally, this chapter recommends interventions for the cultivation of career adaptability attributes to enhance individuals' agility and embeddedness in the new world of work. Based on theoretical relationships, human resource practitioners, industrial and organisational psychologists and career psychologists can identify and develop interventions and strategies to enhance employees' career adaptability and, as a result, their career agility and career embeddedness. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.