Abstract
Sustainable careers involve maintaining at least some degree of productivity, health, and happiness across the career lifespan. For many, the sometimes severe social, financial, and physical deprivations and restrictions imposed, as well as physical and psychological health risks heralded by the COVID-10 pandemic, have massively increased the challenge of forging a sustainable career. Against this stressful backdrop and motivated by an impulse to help people address their prevailing career challenges, we propose that attempts to enact a sustainable career may be facilitated by drawing on the rich literature in occupational health psychology on recovering from stressful experiences. After briefly reviewing the flourishing literature on initiatives that organizations, leaders, and individuals can take to support sustainable careers, we propose that enabling oneself to have rich recovery experiences may foster career sustainability. We develop this notion by outlining how five different empirically-ground approaches to accessing richer recovery experiences may enable career sustainability, each crystallized in a related proposition. We then discuss implications for sustainable career research and practice, aiming to thereby support those striving for career sustainability amidst the array of stressors flowing from the COVID-19 pandemic.
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