If you suddenly lose your job, it isn’t all for naught. Most workers carry skills from job to job

Scott Schieman is a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto and author of I Want M.O.R.E.: Why Your Job Still Matters (AEVO).

A problematic question emerged from the haze of the pandemic and negative rhetoric surrounding the Great Resignation: If you make your job the centrepiece of your identity and then your job suddenly vanishes, what do you have left?

Some claim nothing.

But this reveals a lack of awareness of what research has long documented about how work shapes our core self.

It’s like saying what happens at the gym stays at the gym, as if working out has no benefits beyond the physical and temporal parameters of your focused investments there. We know that’s misleading – otherwise, why would we bother?

Back in the 1970s, the sociologist Melvin Kohn pioneered ground-breaking research that demonstrated the power of work to shape who we are and our capacity for effectiveness in the world – that is, our agentic self.

Years later, while reflecting on the inspiration behind his research and the knowledge it produced, Dr. Kohn described how he was disturbed by “the assumption that work has no psychological ramifications beyond the time and place during and within which it occurs.”

In other words, for better or worse, what happens at work doesn’t stay there. I argue it’s mostly for the better. The intangible assets you acquire often stick with you, accumulating over time. I call it the Bridging Effect – that is, when the skills and abilities you have developed in one job bridge over to help you in another.

Researchers have measured it with the following question: “How much of your past work experience and/or job skills can you make use of in your present job? Would you say almost none, a little, a lot or almost all?”

In 2006, the International Social Survey found that 70 per cent of Canadian workers and 67 per cent of American workers reported “almost all” or “a lot.” Twenty years later, I found similar numbers in my own surveys. Today, 72 per cent of Canadian workers and 74 per cent of American workers say “almost all” or “a lot” of their past work experiences and job skills matter for their present job; by contrast, only 6 per cent said “almost none.”

Most Canadian and American workers believe that what happens at a job doesn’t stay there once they change roles or leave it altogether. The tidbits they’ve accrued continue to matter.

What are those tidbits? To find out, I asked open-ended follow-up questions. One theme involves the ways people accumulate and leverage know-how. “I have worked for the same company for almost 30 years,” said a 46-year-old who sells industrial air purification equipment. “I started in the plant and in the field, and that experience helps me sell the equipment.” A 34-year-old accountant reinforced the point: “I worked as a junior accountant before and I need all that skill and more for my current role.”

It’s like that “skills-acquired-over-a-long-career” thing Liam Neeson’s character in the movie Taken tapped to save his kidnapped daughter. But as a 21-year-old pre-flight mechanic explained, a long career isn’t always necessary to accrue know-how: “Hands-on technical work and socializing have helped me work well in my current job.”

In the Bridging Effect, the lessons of one job generalize to the next. “I chose a very specialized field within my domain and have been developing this expertise for over a decade,” said a 34-year-old aerospace engineering technician. “My job gives me the opportunity to apply this specialization across a wide range of different industries.”

Some express a distinctive “did-this-before-and-it-helps-now” quality. “Working as a chef, I had to be able to make things look beautiful and present things in a pleasing manner,” said a 43-year-old stained-glass artist. “I also did a lot of the payroll and bookkeeping at a glass and window shop which helps me manage my own stained-glass business.”

Cumulative know-how can take us somewhere different in life from where we started – or at least that’s the ideal of the Bridging Effect. “My current job has allowed me to transfer skills and competencies from my former job,” a 55-year-old investigator for the Ministry of Finance told me. “I’m currently in my second career after 30 years with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

“You always learn from something,” observed a retired executive secretary to the vice-president and chief financial officer of a major corporation. “That learning sticks with the individual – it doesn’t belong to a job. A job is a group of tasks; a profession is something you love, but you don’t become the tasks. You’re not the tasks; you’re not the document; you’re not the packages; you’re not the meeting coordination.”

It doesn’t belong to a job. That’s the quintessential message of the Bridging Effect: Even if you lose your job and you are no longer working for any one particular employer, chances are you still take at least a little something away from that job. Those intangible assets.

This column is part of Globe Careers’ Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about the world of work. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab.