Great Expectations: The Relationship Between Future Time Perspective, Learning from Others, and Employability

Employees in countries with advanced industrial economies need to continuously develop their competences to sustain their employability – that is, to have a set of competences that enables them to maintain or find an adequate job. But how should efforts to enhance employability progress in the context of the demographic shift? Previous research suggests that employees’ perspective about their future working life may influence their motivation to engage in learning activities. The study reported and discussed here investigates how employees’ perceptions of the future as a time of opportunities and limitations affects their engagement in learning from others and, in turn, their employability. We tested our model empirically in two Austrian consultancies (n = 167). We find that focus on opportunities in the future explains engagement in learning from others and, subsequently, differences in employability. The informants’ perspectives about the future may be a helpful alternative to the measurement of chronological age, which is problematic from a conceptual point of view.