During our first PBL session we were given a case of a full time employee Hanne, who decided to study at Haaga-Helia AMK and to get a degree, hoping that it might lead to better career opportunities in her future. After being accepted to the programme and reading some news related to employability, Hanne started to question her motivation for studying.
After reading this case and discussing it, our group has agreed on four topics and questions related to Hanne's situation:
Motivation: How to adapt motivation theories to be more employable?
Social life: How can we manage life, balancing work and studies?
Innovations: How can we adapt to a fast-paces world?
Opportunities after school: How important is the theoretical knowledge compare to the practical one?
The main question that should include all of the previous then is: What makes us more employable?
a) Motivation
How to adapt motivational theories to be more employable?
Motivation is something we all need in our every-day life to do even the simplest tasks. We have to understand the point and result of our actions to be able to do them. With some activities that have become part of our daily routine, it gets very easy to find the motivation and usually we don't even have to think about it. With others, especially long-term, difficult tasks, finding a motivation can become an impossible fight. One of our current long-term task is to finish school, preferably with good grades and other related tasks (building a network, gaining experience from abroad, becoming flexible towards changes,...) this requires an enormous portion of motivation but if we succeed there is a huge chance of getting a good job.
I found an article on a website called Psychology Today, written by a psychologist Heidi Halvorson PhD., which deals with the most common cliches related to motivation. In my opinion a really nice summary of the fact that the three following ideas don't have much to do with motivation, even though they are widely presented:
Writing down your goals, which has never really been proved as something that leads to staying motivated and achieving your goals, what's more- it can even frustrate us if we are not achieving what was written.
a vague saying: "just do your best" is also pretty much useless since it doesn't specifies, what does 'your best' mean and as we all know from real life, in many cases you might fail even though you feel like you couldn't do more
and finally visualizing success, which in fact can drain our focus to something else.
I thus believe that when trying to understand the concepts of motivation it is necessary to avoid such cliches .
When focusing only on the theories, I found out that there are countless articles, books, etc about motivation and with time, many motivation theories were introduced. The problem is that there isn't only one way of categorizing motivation into theories, simply because you can't really 'measure' motivation in a traditional way.
Studying the given material about theories makes answering the questions really complicated since each category is further developed into more detailed categories.
Speaking about employability, I think the key theories are the following:
The Herzberg motivation theory, because it clearly describes, how important role our job plays in our lifes and what factors influence our working life. Understanding these and being aware of the key factors can help us find the right job and effectively present ourselves on the job market
The theories in the Need-to-know category I found related more to the problem of an employer trying to motivate their employees, but not necessarily concerning our problem.
The third category is in my opinion the key, where to find answers. Starting with the Maslow's theory, I believe that to satisfy all the needs, having a job is inevitable. The most important, though not developed in this article is the Self-determination theory. I found more about this theory on the Positive Psychology Program website. Determination is the key factor in achieving.The important part is the word SELF- it indicates that determination is something nobody can do for us. Even though in a certain extent it is up to the school, society and employer to motivate us, the biggest motivation driver is our inner determination. If we are able to achieve a balanced self-determination we have a high chance to become very well employable
Getting to know, understanding and later adapting some of the motivation theories can definitely help us to study more efficiently and later find a good job. It is important not to blindly follow all of the theories, but think about what they tell us and how we might benefit from them.
b) Social Life
How can we manage life, balancing work and studies?
Socalled work life balance has become a very trending topic in the recent years, often presented in lifestyle magazines and by psychologists as a key to live long and happy life. The problem here is, how to achieve such thing.
One thing that surprised me during my research was that the country where you live might have a huge impact on your work-life balance. According to a dutch scientist Geert Hofstede, each sountry can be categorized on a cultural scale, which determines the working environment in the country. If we compare Finland:
We can see many differences, the main point for me is the Masculinity share. It states how much the society tends to work. The more masculine the society, the more they practise so called 'live to work' attitude. Japan is very well known for this fact and the rate of suicides is one of the biggest in the world. On the other hand the Finnish society is much less masculine and the concept here is more 'work to live'. What I am trying to say is that even though we ourselves might try to get the optimal balance, there might be a pressure from the society, where we live that we will have to face.
Numerous, though mostly pretty obvious tips on maintaining work-life (in our case work-life-study balance) can be found online.
In my opinion and from my experience as a full-time working student I must say that the key factor is to prioritize and to accept that in a long-term run you can't achieve everything; the best grades, excellent job with various responsibilities, perfectly working relationship and a lot of quality time with our friends and family.
And once again we have to mention the social media, which play a huge role in our attempts to achieve the right balance. As described in the article by eMarketer, not only the time wasted by scrolling on social media but also seeing other people's lives presented in the best possible, yet unrealistic way, makes us think that we are not good enough and we should, work, study, do sports,... much more because other people manage that as well. That can be very frustrating and negatively influence our working life or studying.
Achieving some kind of a balance between studying, free time and working is difficult but not impossible. It is important to prioritize and be aware of our environment, which influences our choices.
c) Innovations
How can we adapt to a fast-pace world?
A popular discussion topic nowadays has become the fast-changing world, which makes it extremely difficult to effectively educate people and prepare them for work.
One closely related topic are the changes on the job market. Even though you can never know for sure, many predictions show on careers that in few years may no longer exist, such list can be found for example on the CNBC website.
It is always important to be aware of possible future scenarios and be ready to adjust or simply to have a plan B.
The material given during our session gives a nice summary of the key changes we have to be ready for in the future. Naturally a large portion of them is relate to technology but we must not oversee the other prognoses such as the aging population- which might lead to huge social reforms, or ever-growing globalization, which has an impact on both companies and states. The material also gives a list of skills that will be essential on the future job markets. Related to innovations I think the most important ones are novel & adaptive thinking, new media literacy and virtual collaboration as these are neccessary in any job we might ever end up doing.
Despite the number of researches and predictions the problem is that nobody can really tell what the future will be like and thus it is hard to prepare well for it. However the importance of education can't be underestimated.
Innovations and quick changes in the world are something we cannot influence and we have to simply adjust to it. With the right set of skills learnt during our studies and outside school we might very probably be able to face a quick changing world and be a valuable part of it.
d) Opportunities after school
How important is the theoretical knowledge compare to the practical one?
Another very trending topic, which is closely related to the matter of employability and mainly our education. Progressive schools like Haage-Helia that follow the changes on the job market have already adjusted to the new world and try to teach the students skills rather than information.
We can again find more in the article Ten Skills For the Future Workforce, which indicates the necessity of teaching young people skills. The article Graduate employability also deals with this topic and even though it is almost 10 years old we can see that the concept of teaching skills in not that new.
Again, I wouldn't underestimate the 'power' of theoretical knowledge, because even though what we learn today might not be true in 10 years it is not a reason to stop learning. Many researches have shown the positive effect on our brain from educating ourselves. Also gaining knowledge helps us to think about the matter in better detail and create connections in our brain.
I have found and interesting article about learning and how to apply different learning theories and explains how do they work in our brain. I would definitely not underestimate the theoretical knowledge even though it tends to be forgotten in today's world.
Despite the fast changes in the world, theoretical knowledge remains necessary when educating young people effectively for today's job market. However, today more than ever before connecting everything with practice and teaching skills is the key to succeed in any kind of job.
The four partial answers should be sufficient enough o answer our main question. I would like to add that it is not only up to the school to make us employable from my own experience I must say that the key is being proactive and trying outside school as well to get something more. In today's world, unfortunately, a university degree despite giving a certain advantage, doesn't guarantee a good job.
REFERENCES:
CNBC Make it. The 10 most endangered jobs in America. URL: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/14/the-10-most-endangered-jobs-in-america.html. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
eMarketer. Social Media Complicates Work-Life Balance. URL: https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Social-Media-Complicates-Work-Life-Balance/1007554. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Geert Hofstede. Cultural Dimensions: Finland. URL: https://geert-hofstede.com/finland.html. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Geert Hofstede. Cultural Dimensions: Japan. URL: https://geert-hofstede.com/japan.html. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Geert Hofstede. National Culture. URL: https://geert-hofstede.com/national-culture.html. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Higher Education in Europe. Graduate Employability, 'Soft skills' Versus 'Hard Business Knowledge': A European Study. Routledge. 2008. URL: https://haagahelia.sharepoint.com/sites/globba/coursematerials2/Basic%20Courses/IBU1LF101%20Introduction%20to%20International%20Business/Materials/PBL/General/HRM%20material/Graduate%20Employability%202008.pdf. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Institute for the Future for the University of Phoenix Research Institute 2011. Future Work Skills 2020. Phoenix. URL: https://haagahelia.sharepoint.com/sites/globba/coursematerials2/Basic%20Courses/IBU1LF101%20Introduction%20to%20International%20Business/Materials/PBL/General/HRM%20material/future_work_skills_2020.pdf. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Leadership central. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. URL: http://www.leadership-central.com/maslow's-hierarchy-of-needs.html#axzz4rjZW1RDt. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Leadership central. Two Factor Theory. URL: http://www.leadership-central.com/two-factor-theory.html#axzz4ri9BlIul. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Psychology today 2011. The Three Biggest Myths About Motivation That Won't Go Away. URL: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-success/201106/the-3-biggest-myths-about-motivation-won-t-go-away. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
After reading this case and discussing it, our group has agreed on four topics and questions related to Hanne's situation:
Motivation: How to adapt motivation theories to be more employable?
Social life: How can we manage life, balancing work and studies?
Innovations: How can we adapt to a fast-paces world?
Opportunities after school: How important is the theoretical knowledge compare to the practical one?
The main question that should include all of the previous then is: What makes us more employable?
a) Motivation
How to adapt motivational theories to be more employable?
Motivation is something we all need in our every-day life to do even the simplest tasks. We have to understand the point and result of our actions to be able to do them. With some activities that have become part of our daily routine, it gets very easy to find the motivation and usually we don't even have to think about it. With others, especially long-term, difficult tasks, finding a motivation can become an impossible fight. One of our current long-term task is to finish school, preferably with good grades and other related tasks (building a network, gaining experience from abroad, becoming flexible towards changes,...) this requires an enormous portion of motivation but if we succeed there is a huge chance of getting a good job.
I found an article on a website called Psychology Today, written by a psychologist Heidi Halvorson PhD., which deals with the most common cliches related to motivation. In my opinion a really nice summary of the fact that the three following ideas don't have much to do with motivation, even though they are widely presented:
Writing down your goals, which has never really been proved as something that leads to staying motivated and achieving your goals, what's more- it can even frustrate us if we are not achieving what was written.
a vague saying: "just do your best" is also pretty much useless since it doesn't specifies, what does 'your best' mean and as we all know from real life, in many cases you might fail even though you feel like you couldn't do more
and finally visualizing success, which in fact can drain our focus to something else.
I thus believe that when trying to understand the concepts of motivation it is necessary to avoid such cliches .
When focusing only on the theories, I found out that there are countless articles, books, etc about motivation and with time, many motivation theories were introduced. The problem is that there isn't only one way of categorizing motivation into theories, simply because you can't really 'measure' motivation in a traditional way.
Studying the given material about theories makes answering the questions really complicated since each category is further developed into more detailed categories.
Speaking about employability, I think the key theories are the following:
The Herzberg motivation theory, because it clearly describes, how important role our job plays in our lifes and what factors influence our working life. Understanding these and being aware of the key factors can help us find the right job and effectively present ourselves on the job market
The theories in the Need-to-know category I found related more to the problem of an employer trying to motivate their employees, but not necessarily concerning our problem.
The third category is in my opinion the key, where to find answers. Starting with the Maslow's theory, I believe that to satisfy all the needs, having a job is inevitable. The most important, though not developed in this article is the Self-determination theory. I found more about this theory on the Positive Psychology Program website. Determination is the key factor in achieving.The important part is the word SELF- it indicates that determination is something nobody can do for us. Even though in a certain extent it is up to the school, society and employer to motivate us, the biggest motivation driver is our inner determination. If we are able to achieve a balanced self-determination we have a high chance to become very well employable
Getting to know, understanding and later adapting some of the motivation theories can definitely help us to study more efficiently and later find a good job. It is important not to blindly follow all of the theories, but think about what they tell us and how we might benefit from them.
b) Social Life
How can we manage life, balancing work and studies?
Socalled work life balance has become a very trending topic in the recent years, often presented in lifestyle magazines and by psychologists as a key to live long and happy life. The problem here is, how to achieve such thing.
One thing that surprised me during my research was that the country where you live might have a huge impact on your work-life balance. According to a dutch scientist Geert Hofstede, each sountry can be categorized on a cultural scale, which determines the working environment in the country. If we compare Finland:
and for example Japan:
We can see many differences, the main point for me is the Masculinity share. It states how much the society tends to work. The more masculine the society, the more they practise so called 'live to work' attitude. Japan is very well known for this fact and the rate of suicides is one of the biggest in the world. On the other hand the Finnish society is much less masculine and the concept here is more 'work to live'. What I am trying to say is that even though we ourselves might try to get the optimal balance, there might be a pressure from the society, where we live that we will have to face.
Numerous, though mostly pretty obvious tips on maintaining work-life (in our case work-life-study balance) can be found online.
In my opinion and from my experience as a full-time working student I must say that the key factor is to prioritize and to accept that in a long-term run you can't achieve everything; the best grades, excellent job with various responsibilities, perfectly working relationship and a lot of quality time with our friends and family.
And once again we have to mention the social media, which play a huge role in our attempts to achieve the right balance. As described in the article by eMarketer, not only the time wasted by scrolling on social media but also seeing other people's lives presented in the best possible, yet unrealistic way, makes us think that we are not good enough and we should, work, study, do sports,... much more because other people manage that as well. That can be very frustrating and negatively influence our working life or studying.
Achieving some kind of a balance between studying, free time and working is difficult but not impossible. It is important to prioritize and be aware of our environment, which influences our choices.
c) Innovations
How can we adapt to a fast-pace world?
A popular discussion topic nowadays has become the fast-changing world, which makes it extremely difficult to effectively educate people and prepare them for work.
One closely related topic are the changes on the job market. Even though you can never know for sure, many predictions show on careers that in few years may no longer exist, such list can be found for example on the CNBC website.
It is always important to be aware of possible future scenarios and be ready to adjust or simply to have a plan B.
The material given during our session gives a nice summary of the key changes we have to be ready for in the future. Naturally a large portion of them is relate to technology but we must not oversee the other prognoses such as the aging population- which might lead to huge social reforms, or ever-growing globalization, which has an impact on both companies and states. The material also gives a list of skills that will be essential on the future job markets. Related to innovations I think the most important ones are novel & adaptive thinking, new media literacy and virtual collaboration as these are neccessary in any job we might ever end up doing.
Despite the number of researches and predictions the problem is that nobody can really tell what the future will be like and thus it is hard to prepare well for it. However the importance of education can't be underestimated.
Innovations and quick changes in the world are something we cannot influence and we have to simply adjust to it. With the right set of skills learnt during our studies and outside school we might very probably be able to face a quick changing world and be a valuable part of it.
d) Opportunities after school
How important is the theoretical knowledge compare to the practical one?
Another very trending topic, which is closely related to the matter of employability and mainly our education. Progressive schools like Haage-Helia that follow the changes on the job market have already adjusted to the new world and try to teach the students skills rather than information.
We can again find more in the article Ten Skills For the Future Workforce, which indicates the necessity of teaching young people skills. The article Graduate employability also deals with this topic and even though it is almost 10 years old we can see that the concept of teaching skills in not that new.
Again, I wouldn't underestimate the 'power' of theoretical knowledge, because even though what we learn today might not be true in 10 years it is not a reason to stop learning. Many researches have shown the positive effect on our brain from educating ourselves. Also gaining knowledge helps us to think about the matter in better detail and create connections in our brain.
I have found and interesting article about learning and how to apply different learning theories and explains how do they work in our brain. I would definitely not underestimate the theoretical knowledge even though it tends to be forgotten in today's world.
Despite the fast changes in the world, theoretical knowledge remains necessary when educating young people effectively for today's job market. However, today more than ever before connecting everything with practice and teaching skills is the key to succeed in any kind of job.
The four partial answers should be sufficient enough o answer our main question. I would like to add that it is not only up to the school to make us employable from my own experience I must say that the key is being proactive and trying outside school as well to get something more. In today's world, unfortunately, a university degree despite giving a certain advantage, doesn't guarantee a good job.
REFERENCES:
CNBC Make it. The 10 most endangered jobs in America. URL: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/14/the-10-most-endangered-jobs-in-america.html. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
eMarketer. Social Media Complicates Work-Life Balance. URL: https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Social-Media-Complicates-Work-Life-Balance/1007554. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Geert Hofstede. Cultural Dimensions: Finland. URL: https://geert-hofstede.com/finland.html. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Geert Hofstede. Cultural Dimensions: Japan. URL: https://geert-hofstede.com/japan.html. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Geert Hofstede. National Culture. URL: https://geert-hofstede.com/national-culture.html. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Higher Education in Europe. Graduate Employability, 'Soft skills' Versus 'Hard Business Knowledge': A European Study. Routledge. 2008. URL: https://haagahelia.sharepoint.com/sites/globba/coursematerials2/Basic%20Courses/IBU1LF101%20Introduction%20to%20International%20Business/Materials/PBL/General/HRM%20material/Graduate%20Employability%202008.pdf. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Institute for the Future for the University of Phoenix Research Institute 2011. Future Work Skills 2020. Phoenix. URL: https://haagahelia.sharepoint.com/sites/globba/coursematerials2/Basic%20Courses/IBU1LF101%20Introduction%20to%20International%20Business/Materials/PBL/General/HRM%20material/future_work_skills_2020.pdf. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Leadership central. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. URL: http://www.leadership-central.com/maslow's-hierarchy-of-needs.html#axzz4rjZW1RDt. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Leadership central. Two Factor Theory. URL: http://www.leadership-central.com/two-factor-theory.html#axzz4ri9BlIul. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Online Learning Insights. Why Educators need to know learning theory. URL: https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/why-educators-need-to-know-learning-theory/. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
Positive Psychology Progam. What is Self-DeterminationTheory? URL: https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/self-determination-theory/. Accessed: 4. September 2017.
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