Impact of Self-Perceived Employability on Sustainable Career Development in Times of COVID-19: Two Mediating Paths

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 added further stress to individuals’ work life, and employability may be especially important to help individuals to pursue sustainable career success in such a context. However, previous studies that examined the impact and the mechanisms of employability on sustainable career success are lacking, especially in the context of pandemic threat. Based on conservation of resource theory (COR), the current study aims to explore whether and how employability, as an important resource, reduced work-related emotional exhaustion and increased work engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. We expected that self-perceived employability would reduce emotional exhaustion and increase work engagement. We further expected that coping strategy mediated the effect of self-perceived employability on emotional exhaustion, and career commitment mediated its effect on work engagement. Data were collected via a national survey in China among a sample of 4990 human resource practitioners from October to December 2020 amid the COVID-19 outbreak. The proposed model was tested with structural equation modelling. Results supported the proposed model. Self-perceived employability reduced emotional exhaustion and to a larger extent, increases work engagement. The two mediating effects were of partial mediation. The implications of the results for theory and practice are discussed.

1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic, a global health crisis, has brought tremendous challenges and stress for individual workers and threatens the sustainability of individual career development [1,2]. Employers and employees alike are in need of insights into how to sustain an employee’s career success in such a difficult time. Conservation of resource (COR) theory may be especially useful to this end. According to COR theory, people who possess aspects of the self that reflects a sense of resiliency and an ability to manipulate the environment are more capable of resource gain and are less vulnerable to resource loss, and personal resources, in turn, may protect workers against mental health problems resulting from stress [3]. During stressful times like the COVID-19 outbreak, personal resources may then be especially important for individuals to sustain psychological health and work productivity, two indicators of sustainable career success. Self-perceived employability, which refers to the individuals’ self-perceptions of the likelihood to secure employment in the labor market, reduces individuals’ fear of becoming unemployed whereas promoting feelings of being in control in one’s work life. The feelings of being in control afforded by self-perceived employability help individuals gain resources. Thus, self-perceived employability has been increasingly seen as a critical personal resource in contemporary working life that contributes to employees’ well-being and positive work-related attitudes and behaviors in non-pandemic contexts [4,5,6,7]. The question naturally arises: Will self-perceived employability, as a critical personal resource, also protect individuals from the stress and hassles brought by the pandemic and contribute to workers’ psychological health and productivity? To the best of our knowledge, no studies have to date answered this question [8,9]. We believe that in stressful situations like the pandemic, self-perceived employability’s resource role will be especially important. Showing the effect of self-perceived employability in the pandemic context will provide employers and employees insights into how to stay above the negative impacts of the pandemic and similar situations in the future. In addition, past studies rarely examine simultaneously the effect of self-perceived employability on psychological health and productivity, making it difficult to compare its relative impact on these different aspects of outcome [7,8]. Thus, the first aim of the study is to examine in one study whether and to what extent self-perceived employability helps reduce emotional exhaustion (as an indication for psychological health) and increases work engagement (as an indication for productivity) during the pandemic.

Another important gap in the literature of self-perceived employability’s impact on psychological health and work productivity is that few studies examine the underlying mechanisms of the impact [7]. This is an important omission since it leaves us unclear about how individuals and organizations can intervene to avoid negative outcomes when self-perceived employability is low. To this end, this paper seeks to address such a gap and identify ways through which self-perceived employability helps people reduce emotional exhaustion and increase work engagement [9]. We identify and examine two important mediators, coping style and career commitment, of self-perceived employability’ effect on emotional exhaustion and work engagement, respectively.

In stress coping literature, coping style has been consistently shown to be an important determination of whether stress leads to negative outcomes [8], and personal resources determine whether individuals adopt a more positive or negative coping style. However, no studies have examined if self-perceived employability, as an important personal resource, impact emotional well-being by allowing individuals to adopt a more positive coping style and a less negative style. Thus, we seek to examine the mediating role of coping style in the relationship between self-perceived employability and emotional exhaustion.

In contemporary careers, individuals’ work behaviors and work attitudes, work engagement included, are impacted increasingly by the extent to which individuals are emotionally attached to their career of choice. To develop attachment to a career, that is, career commitment, individuals need to feel in control of their career. Self-perceived employability provides individuals with such sense of control and is conducive to the development of career commitment. Career commitment, thus, should be an important mechanism of self-perceived employability’s effect on work behaviors. However, no studies have been undertaken to examine such mediating effects of career commitment. Therefore, we will propose and examine this effect. The overall conceptual model of the current study is presented in Figure 1.

In summary, our study aims to contribute to the literature in three important ways. First, by relating self-perceived employability to emotional exhaustion and work engagement in the pandemic context, our study furthers the line of study that investigates the positive role of self-perceived employability from a COR perspective. We will show if self-perceived employability’s resource role still holds in a special time like the pandemic by enhancing individuals’ health and productivity at work [9,10,11]. We are also the first study that examines in the same study the relative impact of self-perceived employability on psychological health and productivity [9]. Second, while self-perceived employability has been shown to reduce emotional exhaustion, little is known about the mechanism of the effect [3,7]. Our study serves as the first attempt to assume that the impact of self-employability on emotional exhaustion is mediated by individual stress coping style. Third, we propose for the first time in the literature that the impact of employability on work engagement is mediated by career commitment. We argue that self-perceived employability, as a personal resource, will lead to higher commitment to one’s career of choice, which in turn leads to higher work engagement [3,4]. Below, we provide a discussion of the key constructs in our study, and the theoretical arguments leading to the hypotheses.

Figure 1. Full Hypothesis Model. Note. “+” means a positive relationship and “−” means a negative relationship.

Figure 1. Full Hypothesis Model. Note. “+” means a positive relationship and “−” means a negative relationship.

2. Theories and Hypotheses Development

2.1. Self-Perceived Employability, Emotional Exhaustion and Work Engagement

Self-perceived employability (SE) refers to individuals’ self-perceptions of the likelihood of obtaining and retaining a job [12]. As discussed earlier, self-perceived employability can be seen as an employee resource, reducing the fear of becoming unemployed whereas promoting feelings of being in control in one’s work life [3,7,11]. According to COR, during stressful times like the COVID-19 outbreak, the resources afforded by perceived employability may then be especially important for individuals to remain healthy and productive at their work [9]. Past studies in non-pandemic contexts have indeed shown that perceived employability benefits employees’ well-being and is associated with several work-related attitudes and behaviors, such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention, and performance [3,5,6,7]. We further propose that self-perceived employability can help reduce emotional exhaustion and increase work engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Emotional exhaustion (EE) refers to a state of emotional resource depletion, in which one is overextended to the point that there is nothing left to give. Emotional exhaustion often results from limited resources to cope with environmental demands and stress [13,14,15]. The uncertainty and stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic makes workers more prone to emotional exhaustion. Based on COR, self-perceived employability provides individuals with the resources necessary to cope with such a difficult time and, thus, make them less prone to emotional exhaustion [14]. This means people with high employability are likely to have more personal resources at their proposal to successfully cope with the stress instead of deteriorating to emotional problems. In addition, past empirical studies did find that self-perceived employability protects individuals from job burnout and emotional exhaustion in times without a pandemic [7,13,16]. Hence, we propose that:

Hypothesis 1 (H1).

Self-perceived employability is negatively associated with emotional exhaustion.

Work engagement (WE) is defined as a positive work-related state of mind with vigor, dedication, and absorption [17,18]. It is a highly desirable state for employers and employees alike and has received wide research attention. Work engagement can predict work productivity even after controlling for potential confounders [19] and it is also predictive of job-related performance [20,21]. It is also considered a part of productivity in the sustainable career model as it is essential for the long-term performance of organizations [9]. Past studies seeking to explain work engagement have often adopted the JD-R model. The model proposes that work engagement results from two types of resources: job resources and personal resources [22]. While job resources refer to the various aspects of the job that are helpful in achieving work goals, reducing job demands, and stimulating personal growth and development, personal resources in JD-R model is similar to that in COR theory. As discussed earlier, self-perceived employability is an important type of personal resource. Thus, it should also provide individuals with resources necessary to help them stay focused on their job [3,13], increasing the work engagement. Some empirical studies also found a positive relationship between perceived employability and work engagement in non-pandemic contexts [23,24]. We expect this will especially be the case in times of pandemic. Thus, the following hypotheses are thus proposed:

Hypothesis 2 (H2).

Self-perceived employability is positively associated with work engagement.

2.2. The Mediating Role of Stress Coping Style between Self-Perceived Employability and Emotional Exhaustion

We argue that the resource benefit of self-perceived employability in preventing emotional exhaustion takes effect by allowing individuals of high self-perceived employability to cope with stress at work more productively. Coping is defined as the set of cognitive and behavioral strategies used by an individual to manage the internal and external demands of stressful situations [25]. In order to relieve the effects of stress, individuals will adopt a certain coping style after evaluating a situation, and the specific coping style adopted may lead to quite different consequences [26,27,28]. Coping style can be divided broadly into positive coping style (PCS) and negative coping style (NCS). Specifically, positive coping style is problem-oriented and refers to proactive responses like reappraisal or creation of positive meanings [29]. It is related to fewer emotional and behavior disorders in reacting to a stressful situation. Negative coping style, on the other hand, is avoidance-oriented and emotion-focused and has been related to higher level of dysfunctional problems [29].

Thus, theoretically and empirically, coping style is also related to emotional exhaustion at work, with a positive coping style relating negatively to emotional exhaustion and a negative coping style relating positively to emotional exhaustion [30,31]. Individuals with high self-perceived employability should also tend to adopt more positive coping strategies and less negative coping strategies [29]. According to the cognitive appraisal theory, individuals’ responses to a stressful situation depends on their appraisal of their personal resources to cope with the situation [26]. Those with high personal resources may protect themselves against mental health problems and have the ability to deal with external challenges [14]. This means they have enough resources to cope with the situation more proactively and tend to confront the problem instead of avoiding the problem [13,29]. Thus, at work, when faced with stress, individuals with high perceived employability will also be able to cope with work related stress directly by adopting more positive coping style, and less likely to avoid the situation by taking negative coping style. Different coping styles in turn relate to different levels of emotional exhaustion. We, therefore, propose that:

Hypothesis 3a (H3a).

The effect of self-employability on emotional exhaustion is mediated by positive coping style.

Hypothesis 3b (H3b).

The effect of self-employability on emotional exhaustion is mediated by negative coping style.

2.3. The Mediating Role of Career Commitment between Self-Perceived Employability and Work Engagement

One possible mechanism of self-perceived employability’s impact on work engagement is through career commitment. Career commitment (CC), used interchangeably with occupational commitment, refers to one’s emotional attachment towards one’s vocation or career [32]. As individuals’ career become increasingly self-directed, their commitment has shifted to their career of choice instead of a specific organization [33]. Thus, individuals’ work outcomes are becoming increasingly influenced by their commitment to their own career in lieu of their commitment to the organization. Past empirical studies have shown that career commitment was positively related to work performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intention [34,35]. It has also been shown to positively predict work engagement [36].

Self-perceived employability as a general career related personal construct should have direct impact on individuals’ career attributes like career commitment, which in turn leads to work engagement. From the COR perspective, individuals with higher self-perceived employability feel less fear about job loss and a higher sense of control of their work [4]. This sense of control is similar to the effect of self-efficacy, which makes individuals confident to deal with the challenges related to different work tasks [3]. Career commitment studies have found that individuals with more self-efficacy would have more willingness to constantly develop their vocational skills and remain in their career even when faced with obstacles, conditions necessary to develop commitment to a career [37]. By the same token, self-perceived employability should also allow individuals to develop career commitment. Moreover, past studies also show that individuals with greater opportunities in the marketplace are also more likely to develop career commitment, probably because they have higher outcome expectations about committing to a career [34,36]. We, therefore, propose that:

Hypothesis 4 (H4).

The effect of self-perceived employability on work engagement is mediated by career commitment.

3. Method

3.1. Participants and Procedure

To test the hypotheses, we invited registered members of a professional survey platform nationally and aimed to obtain similar numbers of participants from the north, south, west, east, and central part of China from October to December 2020 amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Our data collection procedures were chosen mainly with two considerations. Firstly, such a large sample geographically evenly distributed increases national representativeness of the sample [38]. Secondly, this specific online platform was chosen because it had already provided national survey services for many research projects and was conducive to acquire representative samples and was suitable for a large-scale survey [38,39]. Meanwhile, we chose HR practitioners as our research sample because they are in the front line of the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic in an organization. They are in charge of employees’ health and well-being during the pandemic, and they are also under the strain of restructuring work arrangements to meet remote working needs. Therefore, HRs are the group of workers closely experiencing the stress of COVID-19 and are suitable for the observation of the role of self-perceived employability in handling the stress brought by COVID-19.

The final sample consisted of 4990 HR practitioners (Mage = 33.36 years, SDage = 8.73, Mwork = 5.29 years, SDwork = 3.65) and women accounted for 78%. Considering the unequal distribution of gender in human resources [40], the gender distribution of the sample generally reflected the gender distribution of the population. The sample covered several industries, like manufacturing, information technology, finance, retail, construction, education, government agency, and so on. Meanwhile, more than half of the participants had earned an undergraduate degree (76.2%), the remaining part had technical school or lower degree (2%), community college degree (13%), master’s degree (7.9%), and doctoral degree (0.8%). All participants were paid 20 RMB to fill out the questionnaires.

3.2. Measures

3.2.1. Self-Perceived Employability

Rothwell [41] self-perceived employability scale was adopted to measure this construct with eleven items, rated on a five-point Likert scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). For external employability, sample item was “if I needed to, I could easily get another job like mine in a similar organization”, and for internal employability, items like “even if there was downsizing in this organization, I am confident that I would be retained”. The Cronbach’s α of the whole scale in this study was 0.86.

3.2.2. Coping Style

The Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire with 20 items (SCSQ) [42] was used to test positive coping style (PCS) and negative coping style (NCS). Specifically, PCS with 12 items contained a proactive strategy, and a sample item was “talk to others about your troubles”. Inversely, NCS with eight items reflected a passive strategy like “relieve your worries by smoking, drinking, taking medicine and eating”. Items were rated on a four-point scale based on the frequency with which they adopt a coping style in daily life (0 = never, 3 = always). SCSQ was widely used in China and had good validity or reliability [29]. The internal consistency of the scale in this study was also good for both the positive coping style subscale (Cronbach’s α = 0.76) and the negative coping style subscale (Cronbach’s α = 0.82).

3.2.3. Emotional Exhaustion

Emotional exhaustion was measured using Wharton’s [43] six-item scale. Participants were asked to rate the extent, from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7), to which they felt exhausted in general. The sample item was “I feel emotionally drained from my work”. The Cronbach’s α was 0.91.

3.2.4. Career Commitment

Career commitment was measured by a seven-item scale [44] and anchored with strongly disagree (1) and strongly agree (5). An example item was “if I could do it again, I would not choose to work in this career field”. The reliability of this scale was high (α = 0.80).

3.2.5. Work Engagement

Work engagement was gauged using the shortened version Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-9 (UWES-9), which was developed by Schaufeli [45]. Sample items were “At my work, I feel bursting with energy” and “At my job, I feel strong and vigorous”. All items used a five-point Likert-type response scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The reliability of whole scale was high (α = 0.84).

3.2.6. Control Variables

In terms of control variables used in the current study, we considered participants’ gender, age, education, tenure, and administration level within the organization. We chose these control variables given that some demographic variables, like individual’s human capital, and work experience, would influence the study variables [46].

4. Results

We used the structural equation modelling (SEM) approach and the BOOTSTRAP method recommended by Preacher and Hayes [47] within Mplus 8.1 (Muthén & Muthén, Los Angeles, CA, USA) to examine our parallel mediation model. Besides, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and tested the composite reliability, convergent and discriminant validity before we examined a causal model.

4.1. Descriptive Statistics and Correlations

The means, standard deviations, and correlations among the study variables were provided in

Table 1. Means, standard deviations, and correlations among variables in the proposed model.

Variables	Mean	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
1. Gender	0.21	0.41	-
2. Age	33.36	8.73	0.08 **	-
3. Education	2.92	0.56	0.00	0.04 **	-
4. Tenure	5.29	3.65	−0.05 **	0.37 **	0.12 **	-
5. AL	2.34	0.81	0.06 **	0.19 **	0.19 **	0.40 **	-
6. SE	3.83	0.55	−0.01	0.02	0.14 **	0.20 **	0.23 **	0.86
7. PCS	2.97	0.43	0.00	0.03 *	0.16 **	0.12 **	0.23 **	0.49 **	0.76
8. NCS	2.34	0.65	−0.01	0.03	0.06 **	0.03 *	−0.01	0.06 **	0.18 **	0.82
9. CC	3.93	0.62	−0.06 **	0.00	0.10 **	0.22 **	0.24 **	0.43 **	0.32 **	−0.29 **	0.80
10. WE	3.88	0.57	−0.04 **	0.05 **	0.13 **	0.20 **	0.27 **	0.58 **	0.45 **	−0.00	0.54 **	0.84
11. EE	3.57	1.64	0.05 **	−0.02	0.04 **	−0.12 **	−0.07 **	−0.10 **	−0.04 **	0.51 **	−0.41 **	−0.17 **	0.91

Note. N = 4990. * p < 0.05. ** p < 0.01. Cronbach’s Alpha was bold face diagonal. AL = Administration level; SE = Self-perceived Employability; WE = Work Engagement; PCS = Positive Coping Style; NCS = Negative Coping Style; CC = Career Commitment; EE = Emotional Exhaustion.

. As shown, self-perceived employability was positively related to positive coping style (r = 0.49, p < 0.01), negative coping style (r = 0.06, p < 0.01), and career commitment (r = 0.43, p < 0.01). In addition, positive coping style had a negative relationship (r = −0.04, p < 0.01) while negative coping style had a positive relationship (r = 0.51, p < 0.01) with emotional exhaustion, and career commitment had a positive relationship with work engagement (r = 0.54, p < 0.01). Based on these results, the hypothetical relationships were initially supported.

4.2. Test of Reliability and Validity

We conducted an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to test instrument validity and reliability before we examined the measurement model with a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results showed that the KMO value was 0.924, which was greater than 0.6, and the instrument validity passed the Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity successfully. Landis et al. [48] noted that using all items as separate indicators increases the number of estimated parameters and can lead to a poor model fit. Therefore, researchers often use item parceling techniques to produce more stable estimates. Due to the large number of items included in the current study, we paired items when conducting CFA and EFA in order to reduce the number of observed indicators [49]. We allocated items to parcels based on the suggestion that the item parcels within each measurement had relatively equal average loadings [48]. We got 27 observed indicators for the factors (six item parcels for Self-Perceived Employability, five parcels for Work Engagement, six parcels for Positive Coping, four parcels for Negative Coping, four parcels for Career Commitment, and two parcels for Emotional Exhaustion), which are demonstrated in

Table 2. Factor Analysis, Instruments Validity, and Reliability.

Variables	Item Parcels	M	SD	% of Variance	Loadings		Cronbach’s Alpha
					EFA	CFA
Self-perceived Employability (SE)	SE1	3.85	0.711	13.204	0.717	0.735	0.86
	SE2	3.84	0.689		0.699	0.738
	SE3	3.81	0.728		0.712	0.733
	SE4	3.79	0.712		0.741	0.722
	SE5	3.85	0.695		0.706	0.708
	SE6	3.79	0.867		0.652	0.571
Work Engagement (WE)	WE1	4.03	0.684	11.131	0.609	0.739	0.84
	WE2	3.92	0.658		0.660	0.755
	WE3	3.72	0.763		0.765	0.710
	WE4	3.86	0.712		0.723	0.757
	WE5	3.90	0.879		0.709	0.602
Positive Coping (PC)	PC1	2.96	0.634	11.038	0.620	0.585	0.76
	PC2	2.90	0.612		0.601	0.588
	PC3	2.94	0.646		0.642	0.598
	PC4	2.95	0.627		0.689	0.598
	PC5	3.06	0.633		0.675	0.621
	PC6	3.00	0.616		0.649	0.610
Negative Coping (NC)	NC1	2.45	0.759	10.573	0.768	0.714	0.82
	NC2	2.55	0.731		0.800	0.696
	NC3	2.03	0.873		0.771	0.777
	NC4	2.33	0.835		0.817	0.791
Career Commitment (CC)	CC1	3.79	0.804	9.153	0.782	0.830	0.80
	CC2	3.92	0.811		0.803	0.805
	CC3	4.01	0.673		0.643	0.661
	CC4	4.06	0.791		0.559	0.542
Emotional Exhaustion (EE)	EE1	3.54	1.678	6.367	0.850	0.928	0.91
	EE2	3.61	1.771		0.869	0.876
Instrument Total	KMO			0.924			0.82
	p-value			0.000

. As shown in Table 2, all factor loadings were higher than 0.5 and all reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s Alphas) were greater than 0.7, which supported the reliability and validity of the instrument for this study. Therefore, we can conduct the subsequent statistical analysis.

4.3. Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Composite Reliability, Convergent, and Discriminant Validity

Our proposed model was tested with a two-step SEM approach [50]. In the first step, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to confirm the indicators loaded on their corresponding latent factors in order to further establish structural validity for the study variables. We examined the six-factor model, which included self-perceived employability, positive coping and negative coping style, career commitment, emotional exhaustion, and work engagement. We chose several model fit indices to assess the fitness of the measurement model based on established standards [51], including chi-square (χ²), comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker–Lewis index (TLI), standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). Since the chi-square value is very sensitive to sample size, the other four evaluation criteria are more appropriate. The model fit indices showed that the six-factor hypothesized model was a good fit of the data: (χ² = 3231.61, CFI = 0.95, TLI = 0.94, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMR = 0.05). As shown in Table 2, all the observed indicators loaded significantly on their underlying constructs and the standardized factor loading for each indicator was acceptable: self-perceived employability (from 0.57 to 0.74), positive coping style (from 0.59 to 0.62), negative coping style (from 0.70 to 0.79), career commitment (from 0.54 to 0.83), emotional exhaustion (from 0.88 to 0.93), and work engagement (from 0.60 to 0.76). Then we also compared the six-factor measurement model with several alternative models to examine the discriminant validity. We reported the CFA results of our hypothesized model and other alternative models in

Table 3. Confirmatory Factor Analysis Result.

Model	χ2	RMSEA	CFI	TLI	SRMR
A: Six-factor Model a	3231.61	0.04	0.95	0.94	0.05
B: Five-factor Model b	10,517.22	0.08	0.82	0.80	0.14
C: Four-factor Model c	14,246.35	0.09	0.75	0.73	0.11
D: Three-factor Model d	17,448.77	0.10	0.70	0.67	0.15
E: Two-factor Model e	23,713.63	0.12	0.59	0.55	0.12
F: One-factor Model f	27,097.81	0.13	0.53	0.49	0.13

Note. N = 4990. ^a Model A = Self-perceived Employability, Positive Coping, Negative Coping, Career Commitment, Work Engagement, Emotional Exhaustion. ^b Model B = Self-perceived Employability, Positive Coping + Negative Coping, Career Commitment, Work Engagement, Emotional Exhaustion. ^c Model C = Self-perceived Employability, Positive Coping + Negative Coping, Career Commitment + Work Cngagement, Emotional Exhaustion. ^d Model D = Self-perceived Employability, Positive Coping + Negative Coping + Emotional Exhaustion, Career Commitment + Work Engagement. ^e Model E = Self-perceived Employability, Positive Coping + Negative Coping + Emotional Exhaustion + Career Commitment + Work Engagement. ^f Model F = Self-perceived Employability + Positive Coping + Negative Coping + Emotional Exhaustion + Career Commitment + Work Engagement.

. The model fit indices showed that our hypothesized six-factor model yield best fit to the data.

In addition, researchers also use Composite Reliability (CR), Average Variance Extracted (AVE), and Maximum Inter-construct Correlation (Max r) to establish reliability and validity. Fornell and Larcker [52] indicated that the CR value should be higher than 0.6 and suggested the AVE value to be greater than 0.5, or at least above 0.36. As shown in

Table 4. Test of composite reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity.

	CR	AVE	Max r	SE	WE	PC	NC	CC	EE
Self-perceived Employability (SE)	0.85	0.50	0.689	0.704
Work Engagement (WE)	0.84	0.51	0.689	0.689	0.715
Positive Coping (PC)	0.77	0.36	0.602	0.602	0.564	0.604
Negative Coping (NC)	0.83	0.56	0.595	0.059	0.016	0.212	0.746
Career Commitment (CC)	0.81	0.52	0.610	0.472	0.610	0.375	0.377	0.719
Emotional Exhaustion (EE)	0.90	0.81	0.595	0.115	0.195	0.048	0.595	0.488	0.902

Note. CR > 0.7, AVE > 0.36, $\sqrt{\mathrm{AVE}}$ > Max r, $\sqrt{\mathrm{AVE}}\text{ was bold face }\mathrm{diagonal}$.

, each variable had a CR value greater than 0.7, and all variables had AVE values higher than 0.5, except for positive coping, which was 0.36. Besides, $\sqrt{\mathrm{AVE}}$ is higher than Max r for all variables. Overall, the above results of CFA and construct validity indicated that our six-factor model could be used for the subsequent structural model analysis.

4.4. Test of Hypotheses and Mediations

In the second step, we added the proposed structural model to the established measurement model to examine whether the full SEM model was a good fit of the data. The model fit indices also demonstrated that the full model produced a good fit to the data: (χ² = 4257.79, CFI = 0.93, TLI = 0.92, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMR = 0.06).

According to the path coefficients displayed in Figure 2, the direct paths from self-perceived employability to positive coping style ($\mathsf{\beta }$ = 0.59, SE = 0.01, p < 0.001) and negative coping style ($\mathsf{\beta }$ = 0.07, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001) were significant. Besides, the direct effects from self-perceived employability ($\mathsf{\beta }$ = −0.05, SE = 0.02, p < 0.05), positive coping style ($\mathsf{\beta }$ = −0.17, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001), and negative coping style ($\mathsf{\beta }$ = 0.66, SE = 0.01, p < 0.001) to emotional exhaustion were also significant. In addition, the direct path from perceived employability to career commitment ($\mathsf{\beta }$ = 0.43, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001) was significant. The direct effects from self-perceived employability ($\mathsf{\beta }$ = 0.53, SE = 0.01, p < 0.001) and career commitment ($\mathsf{\beta }$ = 0.34, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001) to work engagement were also significant. Thus, Hypotheses 1 and 2 were supported.

To further test the indirect effects of self-perceived employability on emotional exhaustion and work engagement through two forms of coping style and career commitment, respectively, we used the BOOTSTRAP method to construct bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals, with 5000 as the number of samples. First, the total effect from self-perceived employability to emotion exhaustion, which was the sum of two indirect effects and direct effect, was negatively significant (total effect = −0.10, 95% CI [−0.13, −0.07]), also supporting Hypothesis 1. In addition, the total effect from self-perceived employability to work engagement, which was the sum of one indirect effect and direct effect, was positively significant (total effect = 0.67, 95% CI [0.65, 0.70]), also supporting Hypothesis 2. Furthermore, the indirect effect of self-perceived employability on emotional exhaustion via positive coping style was negatively and statistically significant (indirect effect = −0.10, 95% CI [−0.13, −0.07]). Thus, Hypothesis 3a was supported. Besides, the indirect effect of self-perceived employability on emotional exhaustion via negative coping style was statistically significant but positive (indirect effect = 0.05, 95% CI [0.03, 0.07]), supporting Hypothesis 3b. Similarly, the indirect path from self-perceived employability to work engagement through career commitment was also positively and statistically significant (indirect effect = 0.15, 95% CI [0.13, 0.17]). Therefore, Hypothesis 4 was supported. The results of the hypotheses were demonstrated in

Table 5. Results of hypotheses (standardized weights).

	Path	Effect	SE	95% Confidence Interval	Results
H1	SE → EE	−0.10	0.016	[−0.13, −0.07]	supported
H2	SE → WE	0.67	0.014	[0.65, 0.70]	supported
H3a	SE → PC → EE	−0.10	0.014	[−0.13, −0.07]	supported
H3b	SE → NC → EE	0.05	0.011	[0.03, 0.07]	supported
H4	SE → CC → WE	0.15	0.011	[0.13, 0.17]	supported

Note. SE = Self-perceived Employability; WE = Work Engagement; PC = Positive Coping; NC = Negative Coping; CC = Career Commitment; EE = Emotional Exhaustion. Bootstrap sample size = 5000. Indirect effect was significant if the confidence interval did not contain zero.

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5. Discussion

5.1. Theoretical Implications

Our study makes several contributions to the literature on self-perceived employability and career success. First, based on COR perspective, our study showed that self-perceived employability as an important personal resource was important for sustainable career development even during the pandemic. It enhances individual productivity and health at work [9]. Self-perceived employability helps individuals withstand the stress posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and keeps them from emotional exhaustion and to stay engaged with their work. This expanded the existing understanding on employability’s role in a regular context to an unusual and challenging time like the pandemic as contributing to employment during career transitions [10].

In terms of improving productivity, self-perceived employability as a critical personal resource contributes to work engagement [13,23]. Our results find a relatively large total effect of self-perceived employability on work engagement (total effect = 0.67). This finding contributes to the work engagement literature in showing that self-perceived employability is a critical antecedent of work engagement that should not be ignored in the future. In terms of psychological health, the relatively well-established negative effect of self-perceived employability on emotional exhaustion turned out to be small (total effect = −0.10). This may be due to the contextual nature of the pandemic. The stress caused by a crisis like pandemic is uncontrollable and unpredictable, thus personal resources can only protect individuals from emotional exhaustion to a limited extent [10]. Nevertheless, self-perceived employability can help individuals remain engaged with their work despite emotional exhaustion. Future studies can examine whether the same conclusions still stand in a non-crisis context.

Second, past studies did not specify the mechanism of the effect of self-perceived employability on emotional exhaustion [4,7], and our study established that the impact of self-employability on emotional exhaustion is partially mediated by stress coping style. Specifically, consistent with our hypothesis, people with high self-perceived employability tend to significantly adopt higher level of positive coping style, which is problem-oriented [29]. As a result, they experience decreased level of emotional problems triggered by challenges [30]. In other words, positive coping style mediated the negative relationship between self-perceived employability and emotional exhaustion and the indirect effect is negative. The result confirms that self-perceived employability, acting the role of personal resource, will impact individuals’ adoption of positive coping and in turn prevent negative emotions.

Contrary to our expectation that individuals with resources were less likely to avoid the problem by adopting a negative coping style and, thus, leading to lower emotional exhaustion [25,27], self-perceived employability’s effect on negative coping style was positive in our study. Nevertheless, negative coping style was positively related to emotional exhaustion as expected. As a result, we found a positive indirect effect of self-perceived employability and emotional exhaustion through negative coping style. In other words, a negative coping style suppresses the positive role of self-perceived employability in preventing emotional exhaustion [53]. This result is surprising and may be due to the specific context of a pandemic. When facing enormous stress in situations like the pandemic, individuals may resort to all the possible ways of coping, the negative ones included [54]. Individuals of high self-perceived employability who were more resourceful were in a better position to mobilize all the coping strategies and a negative coping style that focused on dealing with one’s own emotions may then be a practical alternative [30]. As a result, self-perceived employability’s effect on negative coping style was also positive and a negative coping style in turn led to higher emotional exhaustion. We expect that in less challenging situations, the suppression effect will not be found [29]. Future studies in a non-pandemic time should be conducted to further examine this relationship. The suppression effect of a negative effect found in our study suggest that during challenging times like the pandemic, employers should also pay attention to support individuals with high self-perceived employability to help them avoid using a negative coping style. Otherwise, self-perceived employability may harm the employees’ emotional well-being through negative coping style [28,30].

Third, our study proposes and establishes the mediating role of career commitment in the effect of self-perceived employability on work engagement. This extends the outcome of employability to include career commitment and also contributes to the career commitment literature by adding employability as an antecedent [3,4]. Individuals of high self-perceived employability have a higher sense of control related to work and, thus, are more likely to make sustained efforts when faced with obstacles [34,55]. They also have higher outcome expectations about continuous investment in their career of choice. High career commitment in turn leads to higher work engagement, with a medium path coefficient (0.34). This is consistent with contemporary self-driven models of careers. Within such models, individuals’ commitment to their own career in addition to their organization will affect their work attitudes such as work engagement [32]. Along this line, future studies may also explore career commitment as a mechanism of self-perceived employability’s impact on other work behaviors, such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance.

In conclusion, our study extends the understanding of the positive role of self-perceived employability in an employee’s career success by showing that it protects workers from emotional exhaustion and increases their work engagement during the pandemic. More importantly, our study explores the mechanism of such effects, the understanding of which is lacking in the literature. While coping style has frequently been discussed as an important mechanism that determines individuals’ mental health in facing the pandemic [56,57], our study is the first that shows that a positive coping style also mediates the effect of self-perceived employability on emotional exhaustion. Resources provided by employability enables individuals to cope with stress related to COVID-19 more positively, thus leading to lower emotional exhaustion. Interestingly and surprisingly, we find that self-perceived employability may also increase emotional exhaustion through negative coping style. We urge future studies to further examine this effect. For self-perceived employability’s impact on work engagement, we show that career commitment is an important mediator. As previous studies showed that career commitment also leads to other positive work outcomes such as job satisfaction during the pandemic [58], we expect that the mediating effect of career commitment will extend to other positive outcomes. Both mediators in our study, coping style and career commitment, however, serve only as partial mediators. This suggests that the mechanisms of self-perceived employability are multifold and warrant further investigation.

5.2. Practical Implications

Our results showed that self-perceived employability not only benefits individuals’ own career development but also organizations as it leads to psychologically healthier and more productive employees. This has practical implications for individuals and employers alike. The COVID-19 pandemic takes a serious toll on individuals’ emotional health and productivity. Our studies showed that individuals with high self-perceived employability can cope better in such a difficult time. To sustain career success, it is crucial for individuals to foster their employability. Organizations face the employability paradox as they are concerned that employees with high employability will tend to leave the organizations for external job opportunities [59]. Our results show that self-perceived employability does not necessarily lead to turnover, it also increases to a large extent employees’ job engagement, even during the pandemic. In this sense, organizations should not be reluctant to invest in employees’ employability.

Moreover, our study explains how to reduce impact of negative emotional state by coping style. People should adopt a positive coping style to handle emotional problems. Although positive ways focus on the problem itself and may cost more resources temporarily [27,60], for long-term perspective, this coping style can relieve emotion burnout. On the contrary, negative coping style is short-term emotion-orientated [29] and only aggravates emotional exhaustion. Hence, organizations and individuals should foster positive coping to deal with stress so that individuals can build a positive career development cycle [9].

Moreover, the importance of career commitment is found in this study. Career commitment means employees can trigger their working motivation spontaneously [35] and such investment for vocation may further lead to promising and sustainable career trajectory [37]. Hence, increasing individuals’ career commitment also is the effective way to improve productivity. For organizations, they can increase the significance of vocation, encouraging employees to immerse themselves in their career. For individuals, choosing the interesting career is of importance, which motivates them to accumulate experience continuously to gain long-term career success [37].

5.3. Limitations

Several limitations of our study should be noted. First, although the current model has satisfactory fit indexes, the cross-sectional nature of the current study cannot support causal inferences adequately and future research should adopt a longitudinal design to test the causal effects. The relationship between career commitment and self-perceived employability may be in the reversed direction. In spite of this, the other hypotheses tested may be more logical in the current forms. Because self-perceived employability is a more general and enduring personal attribute compared with the other variables, it is more logical that it predicts the other specific attributes than the other way around. Nevertheless, the self-report measurements used may induce social desirability bias and the cross-sectional data may also increase homogeneity between variables. Future studies will benefit from objective and multi-source measures of the study variables.

Secondly, the sample of this study was based on a nationwide survey covering a wide range of industries but limited to HR professionals. Though, as discussed earlier, HR professionals are especially suitable for examining the research hypotheses, the narrow focus on a single occupational group may influence the external validity of the results [40]. However, the logics underlying our hypothesis development is not limited to HR professionals and previous studies have studied the effect of self-perceived employability on work outcomes in other professions [53]. This gives us confidence that our theorizing and results are unlikely to be limited to the HR profession. Nevertheless, future research is needed to examine the generalizability of our research findings to employees of other occupations.

Lastly, there exist different conceptualizations of employability. In the current study, we adopted the outcome-based conceptualization that focuses on the results of being employable, that is, self-perceived employability. Employability can also be seen from an input-based view that looks into the factors that contribute to employability, such as skills, knowledge, and attitudes [61]. Future studies should examine whether input-based conceptualization of employability leads to the same research findings. In our current study, our theoretical models focus on employability’s role as a personal resource; we believe this view will also apply to input-based employability as they directly conceptualize the specific resources implied by being employable.

6. Conclusions

In conclusion, the current study draws on the COR theory and reveals that self-perceived employability as a personal resource protects individuals from emotional exhaustion and, to a larger extent, helps individuals remain engaged with their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study contributes to a deeper understanding of self-perceived employability’s contribution to sustainable career success by examining the effect in a difficult time like the pandemic and by examining in the same study the relative impact on psychological health and productivity. We also furthered the understanding of the effects of self-perceived employability by proposing and examining the mediation of coping style and career commitment. Coping style plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between self-perceived employability and emotional exhaustion, and career commitment plays a partial mediating role between self-perceived employability and work engagement. Based on our results, individuals and organizations alike should invest to boost self-perceived employability. They can also invest to increase positive coping styles and career commitment. We hope our study will inspire more studies in the future that extend the existing views of the benefits of employability and establish the mechanisms of employability’s various effects.