Advisor on all channels - Jutta Rump - Employability (Part 1)

Visit to Ludwigshafen with Jutta Rump. For 15 years, she has been leading the Institute for Employment and Employability there, addressing central issues of the world of work. The business and political sectors value the advice of the dynamic HR researcher. Her life and research motto: Stay in motion without losing balance. Human Resources: Today only the boss is in the office, or is that an illusion?Jutta Rump: Yesterday, you would have found all colleagues in the office. Today, everyone works in different locations, either at home or with clients. Mobile work is part of our institute's philosophy, and the young colleagues also expect this flexibility. It works surprisingly well. You practice generational diversity. The topic of Generation Y has been a research focus of your institute in recent years. Many are now tired of the discussion. I recommend returning the discussion to its basics. In generational research, we analyze different socialization patterns. Baby boomers, for example, grew up differently from the so-called Generation Y. Young people were born as digital natives into the digital world. In contrast, as a baby boomer, I am a typical digital immigrant, meaning I grew up without the internet, analog with a telephone, and then immigrated to the digital world. I do feel this difference in everyday life. The different use of communication tools is just one point in the generational debate. Controversial are statements regarding work-life balance and a perceived lower performance orientation. Have values changed? Basic human values, such as the fundamental need for recognition and appreciation, do not change over generations. However, depending on socialization, expectations change. Baby boomers had to compete for few educational and job opportunities with many same-age applicants in their youth and often adapted to the conditions in companies. The younger generation has comparatively more options. Therefore, their expectations are high, their loyalty to the employer is fragile. They want to negotiate on an equal footing, work should be enjoyable, meaningful, offer perspectives, and still leave enough free time. However, it is a gross misconception that Generation Y is not performance-oriented. Nevertheless, performance does not come for free. Was the Generation Y debate worthwhile in retrospect? Definitely yes. This discussion has provided key impulses towards employer attractiveness and employer branding. The changed expectations of the younger generation have sharpened HR's focus on important tools for shaping work. Leadership, development, flexibility – the debate has acted as an energy boost for the professionalization of HR work. The core of your work at the institute is employability. The colleagues of the Personnel Magazine aptly called you "Mrs. Employability" in 2007. What understanding did this institute start with? The birth of this institute was a fortunate coincidence. In 2002, I became Vice President of the Ludwigshafen University of Applied Sciences and was responsible for research. To be taken seriously in the male-dominated research world, I needed a project. In 2001, I had intense discussions with Thomas Sattelberger and Heinz Fischer during the founding phase of the Initiative Selbst GmbH on the topic of employability. I was fascinated by the topic and submitted a research proposal. Fortunately, it was approved. This means I had a concept, funding, good partners, but no platform to implement the concept. That's why my former college president and I founded the Institute for Employment and Employability. Could the practice relate to the term employability? In the early stages of our work, not really, but the idea and concept quickly gained approval. We developed core competencies for ensuring employees' employability and entered the public eye with the program "In eigener Sache" and numerous tools for job fitness. The positive feedback overwhelmed us at the time. We empirically supported the work and still maintain close contact with companies that have implemented the concept. What are the origins of the term employability? They lie in American research and an early 2000 EU directive on employability. The EU dealt with it from a labor market policy perspective to integrate people into the labor market. The American approach is based on an individual, strength-oriented perspective, which is also our perspective. What is your research approach? Our aim is to promote innovations in HR and identify topics that have not been sufficiently explored scientifically. In a first step, we work exploratively. This means that after reviewing sources and establishing an initial framework, we go into the field exploratively and conduct in-depth interviews, thus engaging in qualitative social research. The insights and hypotheses gained from this are then empirically tested through large-scale surveys in a second step. With this approach, we can derive recommendations for action for practice. How is your institute financed? As an institute of the university, we have basic funding for material costs, but we have to raise the majority of funds – especially personnel costs. This means we try to access research funding from federal and state ministries or foundations, sometimes also EU research funds. Additionally, we work for companies. Clearly, your research and business model works very well, as shown by the numerous study projects, publications, and events of recent years. Yes, we have grown significantly. The institute now employs 16 staff members, ten scientific project leaders, and six student employees. In addition to employability management, the name Jutta Rump is primarily associated with the concept of life phase-oriented HR policy. Did this help you enter the corporate world faster? Yes, I believe so. It's about the timing and terminology. In the early 2000s, employability was a difficult term, a real tongue twister. I now prefer to speak of job fitness or employability. The beauty of it is that life phase-oriented HR policy is actually a disguised employability management. How so? The goal of life phase-oriented HR policy, put simply, is to stay in motion without losing balance. This is a core competency of employability. Life phase orientation aims to keep employees in balance in their different life phases. The perspective has changed. The fields of work have remained the same: corporate culture, organization, leadership, career models, and personnel development. This is also the message to practice: You don't have to reinvent the wheel, but occasionally put on a different pair of glasses.