In this article Marjorie McCrory, Senior Lecturer in Career Guidance and Development at the University of the West of Scotland asks some important questions about the terminology used in the Career Development National Occupational Standards (NOS) Review Survey. While this post is specifically relevant for readers in the UK, many of the issues that it raises are relevant to thinking about standards and guidelines for careers practice in other countries.

Like many colleagues across the sector, I have received a link to the Career Development National Occupational Standards (NOS) Review Survey, which is open until 19^th April 2021.

The NOS for Career Development outline the range of activities that may be undertaken by career professionals. Qualifications in career development are mapped or benchmarked against the NOS. The standards have not been reviewed since 2014, so a review is overdue. However, at this truly critical juncture for our society, our economy, our clients and our profession, I would like to urge colleagues from across the sector to consider how we might best use this opportunity to re-frame and refocus our work and our professional identity on sustainable, socially-just career practice.

To that end, I will explain here why I will be suggesting an alternative form of wording for the Key Purpose statement, which features at the beginning of the survey. The currently proposed re-wording for the existing Key Purpose statement is,

to assist individuals to maximise their human and social capital and make the most of transitions throughout their working lives by assisting them to identify and develop the skills to make and manage their choices of learning and work.

My concerns about the wording of the Key Purpose statement are based both on what is said, and specifically on the language that is used, and also on what is not said.

Language matters

It could be tempting to suggest that the precise language used in these kinds of documents isn’t all that important, because it is simply a way to express what most of us already understand. However, the language used here – that of human and social capital – has a history and it is one in which (in the case of social capital in particular) individuals are conceptualised as lacking something. Furthermore, the something that they are seen to lack is something they are (individually) responsible themselves for developing, regardless of the structural inequalities that we in fact know to overwhelmingly determine life chances. Focusing on social capital too often locates the problems that people face in the wrong places.

I am not suggesting here that that there is nothing that individuals can do to help themselves, nor am I suggesting that practitioners should not be encouraging clients to engage with the sorts of activities that might build what we often these days think of as ‘social capital’ (networks and connections, for example). What I am suggesting is that the language we use can all too easily, even if unintentionally, obscure the fundamental nature of the problems that individuals and communities face.

The long-standing focus on social capital has not, in fact, had any positive material impact on the kinds of problems that it seeks to solve – as the growing problems of inequality and exclusion, and their various manifestations, over the course of the current century shows. These concerns have been variously detailed and evidenced in the work of Danny Dorling, Feeney and Collins, Inaba and Lansley.

In short, the use of the terms human and social capital would link the NOS explicitly to a concrete political and ideological project, one that originated within the Chicago School of Economics (later popularised by Robert Putnam and was later adopted by the World Bank (see Fine’s article ‘social capital in wonderland’) to further a neoliberal agenda in which individuals would be ‘responsibilised’ for developing the ‘resilience’ to operate in increasingly unregulated markets and in the context of punitive welfare reform. These agendas do not necessarily serve us well as a profession, and they have served, and will continue to serve our clients even more poorly.

The need to incorporate social justice

The Key Purpose statement neglects to mention, I am sure unintentionally, two key aspects of careers work which the profession itself has come to recognise as increasingly important, and especially so in the wake of the pandemic and in response to Black Lives Matter and the MeToo movement.  

The first of these is the need to meaningfully address ourselves to ‘socially-just’ career practice. That is practice that seeks to take seriously the range of intersecting inequalities that continue to determine life chances; those of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability and so on. We must be able to orientate ourselves to these problems and issues without limiting our capacity to do so by adopting uncritically the language – and aspects of the mindset – of neoliberalism. Whilst much of our work is done with individuals, we need to be able to recognise the role of structural inequalities in determining individual life chances and shaping careers and we ought to be developing new ways of working with individuals and communities that empower people to imagine and realise better futures, rather than focusing solely on helping them to adapt to terribly difficult conditions, though the latter is clearly an important part of our work and the need for it will remain.

Secondly, there is no mention in the Key Purpose statement of either ‘decent’ or ‘sustainable’ work. These ideas too are currently articulated to specific government policy agendas and initiatives and so the usual caveats ought to apply as we address ourselves to them, but the idea that career practitioners ought to be cognisant of these should not be controversial.

Taking all of this into account, I will be completing my survey by suggesting the following form of words for the Key Purpose:

to empower individuals and groups to manage choices and transitions relating to learning, work and life so that they can fulfil their potential and make meaningful contributions to a more equal and sustainable society

I don’t expect that everyone involved in the consultation process will agree with my suggestion, but I think that it is important that the consultation on the NOS should not become a superficial exercise, but rather one in which we take the opportunity to clearly and publicly affirm a purpose for the profession that involves striving to serve both our clients and our society well.