For university students, perceived employability is gaining growing importance in dealing with occupational uncertainty. However, how perceived employability is shaped in the university setting is still under-researched. This study examines how support from university teaching staff influences perceived employability in a sample of Italian final-year university students. We draw on Conservation on Resources Theory to hypothesise a positive impact of support from teaching staff on students’ perceived employability. In addition, we contend that perceived employability predicts students’ psychological well-being. To test our hypotheses, one hundred twenty-seven university students completed a survey three times over a 10-month period. The results confirm that support from teaching staff enhances students’ perceived employability. Moreover, a positive effect of perceived employability on students’ psychological well-being emerges. Perceived employability also appears to mediate the relationship between support from teaching staff and psychological well-being. Using a time-lagged approach, this study enhances the empirical knowledge about antecedents and outcomes of students’ perceived employability. This scholarly work underlines universities’ responsibility in refining teachers’ roles and didactical practices to equip their students with career resources.

The paper describes the study design, research questions and methods of a large, international intervention project aimed at improving employee mental health and well-being in SMEs and public organisations. The study is innovative in multiple ways. First, it goes beyond the current debate on whether individual- or organisational-level interventions are most effective in improving employee health and well-being and tests the cumulative effects of multilevel interventions, that is, interventions addressing individual, group, leader and organisational levels. Second, it tailors its interventions to address the aftermaths of the Covid-19 pandemic and develop suitable multilevel interventions for dealing with new ways of working. Third, it uses realist evaluation to explore and identify the working ingredients of and the conditions required for each level of intervention, and their outcomes. Finally, an economic evaluation will assess both the cost-effectiveness analysis and the affordability of the interventions from the employer perspective. The study integrates the training transfer and the organisational process evaluation literature to develop toolkits helping end-users to promote mental health and well-being in the workplace.

Nowadays organizations have to cope with two related challenges: maintaining an engaged and highly performing workforce and, at the same time, protecting and increasing employees’ well-being and job satisfaction under conditions of a generalized increase of job overload, in an increasingly growing older population. According to the motivational process of the JD-R model, a work environment with many organizational resources will foster work engagement, which in turn will increase the likelihood of positive personal and organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction, performance, and intention to stay. However, it is not clear how this motivational process could work in different age cohorts, as older workers may have different priorities to those of younger colleagues. Postulating the existence of a gain-cycle in the relationship between work engagement and outcomes, in this study we tested a longitudinal moderated mediation model in which job satisfaction increases over time through an increment in work engagement. We hypothesized that this process is moderated by job workload and aging. We collected data in public administrations in Northern Italy in order to measure work engagement and job satisfaction. 556 workers aged between 50 to 64 replied to the survey twice (the first time and eight months later). The findings confirmed a moderated mediation model, in which job satisfaction at time 1 increased work engagement, which in turn fostered job satisfaction eight months later, confirming the hypothesized gain-cycle. This relationship was shown to be moderated by the joint influence of job demand intensity and age: higher job demands and younger age are related to the maximum level of level gain cycle, while the same high level of job demands, when associated with older age, appears unable to stimulate a similar effect. The results confirm that, on one hand, older workers cannot be seen as a homogeneous group and, on the other hand, the importance of considering the role played by the gain cycle of resources. Our findings show that age matters, and that greater consideration should be devoted to age differences in order to design appropriate human resources practices that foster work engagement and satisfaction.

According to the psychology of sustainability and sustainable development, even though there are numerous challenges within the current labor market, it is possible to establish meaningful lives and meaningful work experiences through optimizing the use of personal resources and regenerating them. In line with this assumption, the present study aims to test the moderation effect of the type of worker contracts on the relationship between psychological capital, perceived employability, and job insecurity. Participants were N = 190 Italian young workers (self-employed, permanent employees, or temporary employees). Results showed that perceived employability mediated the relationship between psychological capital and job insecurity, and that this relationship was moderated by the workers’ type of contract. Specifically, a higher level of psychological capital corresponded to a higher perception of employability, and consequently a lower job insecurity for temporary and self-employed workers, but not for permanent ones. These findings are in line with the assumptions of the psychology of sustainability, and encourage preventive interventions aimed to foster personal resources in order to reduce job insecurity, especially in cases of non-standard employment.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between organizational age stereotypes and occupational self-efficacy. First, the authors intend to test the measurement invariance of Henkens’s (2005) age stereotypes scale across two age group, respectively, under 50 and 50 years and older. Then, the moderator role of age groups in the relationship between age stereotypes and occupational self-efficacy is investigated. Design/methodology/approach: The survey involved a large sample of 4,667 Italian bank sector’s employees. Findings: The results show the invariance of the three dimensional structure of organizational stereotypes towards older workers scale: productivity, reliability and adaptability. Furthermore, the moderation is confirmed: the relationship between organizational age stereotypes and occupational self-efficacy is significant only for older respondents. Research limitations/implications: Future studies should aim to replicate the findings with longitudinal designs. Practical implications: The study suggests the importance to emphasize the positive characteristics of older workers and to reduce the presence of negative age stereotypes in the workplace, especially in order to foster the occupational self-efficacy of older workers. Originality/value: The findings are especially relevant in view of the lack of evidence about the relationship between age stereotypes and occupational self-efficacy.