The unpredictable and unstable current work market is impacting in particular at-risk workers, such as individuals with disability. Based on Life Design approach, the present study focused on two variables, career adaptability and hope, relevant to coping with the current work context and their role in affecting life satisfaction. A partial mediational model between career adaptability and life satisfaction, through agency and pathway (hope), was tested. 120 (60 women and 60 men) adult workers with mild intellectual disability were involved. Results provided support for the model. Specifically, career adaptability indirectly, through agency and pathway, predicted life satisfaction. These results have important implications for practice and underscore the need to support workers with disability in their life design process.
The “World Report on Disability” estimated that more than two billions of people, 15.6% of working age people, from 15 years old, have some form of disability (WHO, 2011). According to the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (2010), in the next years, the amount of people with disability in many countries in the world is destined to grow and this is due both to a longer life prospect and to an increasing general clinical conditions, e.g. diabetes, vascular and mental health problems, and environmental conditions (natural disasters, wars, substance abuse, air pollution, and road accidents).
Loisel and Anema (2013) highlighted that the rate of employment in working age people with disability is about 44% compared to 75% of people without disability. Moreover, workers with disability receive lower wages than colleagues without disabilities (Martinez, 2013). In Italy, up to 34% of people with disability are included in the work market: only 0.9% are seeking work and 3.5% are employed. The percentage of individuals not working increases as severity of disability increases: for those with only one difficulty/disability, it ranges from 8.1% to 14.3%; it rises to 28.4% for people with two disability and reaches 35.5% for individuals presenting three types of difficulty (National Institute of Statistics, 2012). Among individuals with disability, those with intellectual disability have the lowest employment rate (1.5%), as compared to the other types of disability. Moreover, this situation is complicated by employers' negative attitudes, who describe them as needing of help and not socially and professionally competent people (Authors, 2013).
Even for people with intellectual disability, work may play an essential role in their career development, by favoring a more positive professional identity (Wehmeyer et al., 2011) and higher levels of life satisfaction (Baldry & Hallier, 2010). It can in fact be considered both as a place of socialization and as a tool that helps people to define their role in society, thus contributing to the development of a better self-image and, therefore, higher levels of self-esteem (Prins, 2013).
We are living in a work market that is unpredictable and unstable, where career transitions are more complex and frequent, work paths are far less predictable than two decades ago, (Savickas et al., 2009), and in which a shift towards short-term contracts instead of lifetime occupation is occurring (Tladinyane, Coetzee, & Masenge, 2013). Moreover, recession, austerity measures and funding cuts in social services and public assistance are impacting the current socio-economic situation of most of industrialized western countries. These changes may instill feelings of discomfort and insecurity in a large proportion of the population, and in particular in some groups of people such as those with disability (Authors et al., in press).
Work settings require less delimited skills of workers and provide rewards less often, i.e., promotions, continued employment, and career advances. Contrariwise, a premium is increasingly being given to workers to adapt to the permanent needs of employers, to keep up to date and improve their skills, and to change flexibly among old and new work demands and employers. This may also produce negative effects on people's life satisfaction, who are not prepared to handle with this difficult situation, decreasing their work performance, increasing risk for health and psychological problems (Rubery, 2011), and favoring a lack of self-control, and hope, and a pessimistic view of the future (Luthans & Youssef, 2007).
At the beginning of the economic crisis that now is enveloping the Western world, an international group of scholars has given rise to the Life Design approach (LD), aimed at providing answers to the crisis (Savickas et al., 2009). LD states that career problems are only “a slice of the pie” of individual life, and that people need to understand how to handle postmodern life. It should specify skills and knowledge for the analysis of non-linear causalities, ecological settings, multiple subjective contexts, and complex dynamics. Moreover, it emphasizes the need to support people to become experts in co-construction and life design processes, to anticipate and deal with career transitions, and to consider the hope for a foreseeable future, useful to individual's future planning and behavior, and career adaptability, that is modern world workers' essential resource to manage frequent career and life transitions (Authors et al., in press and Savickas et al., 2009).
Based on LD and considering a group of workers with intellectual disability, the present study focused on two variables, career adaptability and hope, relevant to coping with the current work context and their role in affecting life satisfaction.
