The dynamics of employees' career sustainability: A latent transition analysis

With the increasing uncertainties and challenges in today's work environment, it is imperative to enhance employees' career sustainability by maintaining a balance among happiness, health, and productivity. While research on this topic has grown, few studies have empirically examined these three sustainability indicators holistically to understand how they naturally co-occur to form distinct profiles. To address this, integrating career sustainability and proactivity theories, we use a person-centred approach to identify career sustainability profiles and explore profile transitions driven by proactivity and person–environment fit change. In Study 1, using a diverse sample of employees (N = 460), we identify four profiles of career sustainability, namely, thriving, health-oriented, performance-oriented, and struggling. In Study 2, using another sample from a large organization with a two-wave longitudinal design (N = 529), we replicate the findings of Study 1 in each wave of data. Moreover, we used latent transition analysis to identify the dynamic transitions of career sustainability profiles over time and demonstrate that proactivity facilitates shifting to or staying in more favourable profiles via enhanced person–environment fit.