The Route to Employability: Individually Designed or Relationally Negotiated?

Abstract

In an online survey among 632 employees and their supervisors working in seven Dutch hospitals, we investigated whether the route to employability is either individually designed or relationally negotiated. With regard to the individual route, we expected that a proactive personality would be positively related to job crafting and negatively related to job plateauing; in turn, job crafting would lead to high employability as assessed by employees’ supervisors, whereas job plateauing would lead to low employability. With regard to the relational route, we expected that a social exchange relationship would lead to the negotiation of idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) between employees and their supervisors; in turn, i-deals would be positively related to employability as assessed by employees’ supervisors. Results show that the route to employability is mixed. Specifically, job plateauing appeared to mediate between a social exchange relationship and employability. Limitations of this study and recommendations for practitioners are discussed. Specifically, we recommend organizations to invest in social exchange relationships, for example by having HR advisers act as process facilitators who use mediation skills in order to stimulate creative dialogue between employees and their supervisors.