It’s about time: How age and future time perspective shape employability of workers.

Details

Supervisors

Raemdonck, Isabel

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques, à finalité approfondie

Abstract

enAging of the population and extension of working lives have made it increasingly urgent to understand under which conditions workers can sustain their employability over longer career spans. Yet, most existing research still relies on chronological age as a single indicator and examines its direct association with employability. To address this gap, the present master thesis firstly investigates how three complementary operationalizations of age (chronological, functional, and a novel lifespan composite) relate to workers’ perceived internal and external employability. Secondly, it investigates whether future time perspective (FTP) profiles mediate these relationships. Drawing on socioemotional selectivity theory, FTP is conceptualized as combining two dimensions: general future time perspective (GFTP), which captures overall life-horizon perceptions, and occupational future time perspective (OFTP), which captures life-horizon perceptions within one's career. Methodologically, the study combines latent profile analysis on GFTP/OFTP with regression-based mediation models in which FTP profile membership serves as a latent mediator of the age-employability relationship. Using a person-centered approach in a sample of 554 Belgian workers (M_age = 46.27 years, SD = 10.67), we identified four distinct GFTP/OFTP profiles along an ordinal gradient from Low GFTP/Low OFTP to High GFTP/High OFTP. Chronological and functional age predicted profile membership, whereas lifespan age showed no meaningful associations with profiles or perceived employability. Most importantly, GFTP/OFTP profile membership fully mediated the relationships of chronological and functional age with perceived external employability and partially mediated the relationship with perceived internal employability, highlighting future time perspective as a key mechanism through which age shapes workers’ perceived employability. Together, these findings offer partial support for our predictions and underscore the importance of moving beyond chronological age in aging-at-work research.