Propuestas basadas en producción de electricidad

The locality within which careering occurred significantly influenced the agency of interviewees in both actively seeking and reacting to new opportunities, or in exercising personal choice not to undertake changes which would necessitate either relocation, or a change in commute to work.

Insightfully, twenty-eight interviewees originated from the locality of Baycastle Trust, and whilst three had previously worked outside of the area they later returned, narrating their choices in relation to familial aspects, including settling down with a partner close to other family members, parental care, or relationship breakdowns. Revealingly, Shirley narrated a generally recognised tendency of those growing up in the area to remain, which she explains is supported by both regional and organisational workforce mobility data;

“they call it the stick city, but one of the things about XXXXXX is, people are born here, live here, die here or people move here, live here and die here, people don’t get out of XXXXXX they think that they do but they don’t ... when you look at the census returns in XXXXXX and XXXXshire, that’s what you find is, people don’t, there’s not much movement, and as a trust we’ve got more movement now in the last 2 years than we’ve had over the last 22 years, but that will pretty much go for all of XXXXXX” (Shirley).

Locality was a particularly influential factor in shaping personal career agency, in actively seeking opportunities, responding to opportunities which arose or were presented and in decisions to change organisations and positions. In relation to changes in careering interviewees expressed a willingness, or reluctance, to seek or react to opportunities which potentially necessitated changes in where they lived, or in commuting between home and work (and childcare). Hence, discussions of the locality of work was also closely intertwined with the familial, and particularly in terms of meeting or settling down with a new partner, (as evidenced on different occasions within Lee’s story Chapter Six), or in relation to children and childcare. However, the effects of such an influence was polarised, in some instances effecting change whilst in

others providing rationale for not having undertaken change and discussed as both an enabling and constraining influence. Within career stories, locality was predominantly demonstrated as having constrained interviewees decisions to seek or respond to opportunities which were either out of the local area, or increasingly demanding in terms of travel time. The following narrative from Anthony is representative of others discussing their choice to remain within the locality;

“I suppose I chose never to look at, or I did only briefly, moving out of area to do nursing, you know my sister very briefly was in America when she did her nursing. I thought well would I fancy, but I suppose its family ties and there’s other things occur that possibly stop you from moving out of area. Even when I worked on community it was still locality close to where I lived or had been brought up”.

However, the opportunity to change locality was also evidenced as enabling in terms of careering within the career stories. This was chiefly related to the pursuit of work opportunities, for example, on having recently qualified, it was necessary for Evelyn to actively pursue opportunities in alternate localities;

“there wasn’t a job for a speech therapist on the Isle of Man, regardless of whether they’re learning disability or not so I had the pick of anywhere England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland ".

Furthermore, similar factors were also discussed in relation to her future careering; "I’d love to stay in the NHS but I want to move back to the Isle of Man and the

NHS is slightly different, our NHS is run by our government so I’d work for the government rather than the NHS ……but I’m in a toss-up at the minute, will there be a job there for me? or I might set up my own private practice because we don’t have therapists for learning disabilities … that’s the future plan, do I go back and see is there a job in the government or do I set up my own private practice?"

The pursuit of opportunities outside of the immediate locality however also on occasion supported personal decisions and circumstances for interviewees. As described within Lee’s story in the opening to Chapter Six, he chose to accept a position within Baycastle Trust rather than a position within a different organisation (and locality) because this provided a prompt to leave the family home, and move in with a new partner;

“if I stayed in XXXXXXXXX the temptation would be possibly to stay living at home and nobody wants to do that. And I was also in a burgeoning relationship

at the time so when I moved out of XXXXXXXX to XXXXXX I moved in with my partner”.

Conversely, on leaving school and seeking an opportunity close to home following discussion with her father, and with no clear idea of what she wanted to do, Chloe approached the nearby hospital and has since spent thirty-five years within the NHS, progressing to senior management;

“I said well I’m not going to college, so he said well you better find yourself a job. We lived in the village where the local psychiatric hospital, so a big Victorian asylum it would have been at one time, and so I literally set off down the road, walked up the bank to the hospital, went into reception said I could do with a job. And they said well what do you want to do, and I said well I perhaps want to be a nurse, there was nursing in the family, my mum was a nurse assistant, my grandparents were actually registered mental health nurses, and that was back in the 1920s, they were registered nurses. So, they said well the only thing we’ve got is a cleaning job, so I said ok, and I was allocated to ward 9, and it was a 45-bedded female older person’s ward, we called it geriatric ward then and I was responsible for keeping the ward clean”

In addition to shaping personal career agency, locality also mediated role and organisational changes in careering. This was particularly emphasised where the travel requirements of an existing role were considered too demanding (in time and/or stress). This is evident within Sharon’s story, as she narrates leaving what she considers to have been the ‘best place’ she has worked; “the most learning I’ve ever had, the most

exposure to new things, fantastic”. However, her decision to leave and seek alternative opportunities was premised upon the extensive travel necessitated within the role;

“my reason for leaving there was I couldn’t do the travel anymore, I was just exhausted, because that one that was like a business they had parts of their work in west Yorkshire, anywhere between west Yorkshire down to the Isle of Whyte, Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Reading, Birmingham, Sandwell, and I was just knackered from being away from home that much”.

Alternatively, changes in employing organisation occurred in relation to work related factors but mediated by concerns over locality, including as a response to uncertainty surrounding potential relocation;

“I think they would have found me a job eventually but it could have been anywhere and XXXXXXXX is a bigger Trust than here, in terms of geographical

area and size and everything so I could have ended up having to work in XXXX …… or miles away, so that was one of the other reasons why I decided to leave really” (Craig).

The above findings demonstrate the significance of locality in determining the opportunities that individuals actively seek, or choose to respond to, and is closely linked to not only the geographical location of the organisation but also the requirements of the role in terms of time and pressure. However, as outlined above, such factors can also create continuity within work experiences, particularly in organisation, and therefore is an important factor in understanding personal agency in careering.

7.5.3

Family

The previous chapter has outlined how the support of family members was evidenced to have directly influenced the careering of interviewees. Alternatively, this section focuses upon aspects of familial support which indirectly shape the career agency of interviewees, including elements of financial and emotional support.

Having children was a key point in career stories and generated a variety of responses in terms of approaches to careering. For Shirley, becoming a single parent to a young child contributed to her decision to re-train in an alternative field. Similarly, although children were discussed in terms of having constraining career agency at certain times and influenced change within some stories, including a reduction in working hours, others including Zara story narrated how having children encouraged greater proactivity within their subsequent careering.

The support of parents, both emotionally and financially, was particularly significant within early careering, and provided an additional level of security to key decisions and changes;

“I think because I’ve been brought up in a family where its pushing you to succeed, but also I’ve not had to care for anyone. My mum and dad have always been the one that have paid bills, they do the washing they do all that. So really, I’ve been mollycoddled and I haven’t got any responsibilities that I have to do in the home. I know some people for example who have had different circumstances and feel that they have to go out to work, both my parents work so there hasn’t been any economic thing, so I think I’m well supported (Judy).

The career stories demonstrated how financial support provided by the familial was narrated within explanations of change and personal agency, particularly in supporting a break in employment or to financially support professional development. The financial security offered by some parents also permitted some interviewees flexibility within early careering to take breaks in employment, or accept lower paid work to gain experience;

“I went into this HR assistant role and it was really low paid and I had to live at home with my parents but I didn’t mind the low salary for the fact that I could save money living at home and it was experience working in HR. HRs a difficult profession to get into because you need experience, but getting that experience is difficult so you really do need to take low paid work to get into, to get some experience” (Nigel).

Furthermore, parental support also contributed to Nigel’s decision to accept VR (outlined in Section 7.2.2 above);

“I was going from having a job, voluntarily saying I didn’t want a job, and it was a risk, and at that time I was living away from home but in rented accommodation. But I knew that if anything went really bad, I had to just go home to live with my mum and dad for six months while I got myself on my feet, so it was nice to have that security net to fall back on”

Interviewees also described the security provided by having a partner who provided a primary income which enabled them to make different choices within their careering, influencing their desire for progression and reducing anxiety during periods of organisational change. For Faye however, this situation had been reversed by challenges within the industry that her husband operated his own business, and further compounded by the availability of limited professional opportunities for Faye. Furthermore, Faye was constrained by locality as her husband was unable to relocate his business. Consequently, Faye undertook a major change in role to remain within the organisation;

“we had to apply for other posts that were available, so we were against nurses and there were twenty-one staff down to seven posts. There was a new team called the Outreach Team which was about preventing admissions to hospital, which was all nurses, I took the opportunity to be involved in setting that up, I could really see what was coming and I knew I had to make some decisions. There wasn’t going to be a head OT as well anymore, and I needed to start looking at what else I could offer to the trust and what would give me job

satisfaction as well. So, then I was no longer an OT after that. Even though I used my OT skills obviously, you can’t drop the skills you’ve got, and I did supply that multidisciplinary team within that, even though I was team leader I still did some OT within that” (Faye)

Interviewees also narrated constraint in terms of personal development due to their family and financial situation. To illustrate, as a young single parent Sonia cannot currently afford to undertake the professional qualifications she requires to progress her careering beyond her current position, and Lee describes how despite undertaking to self-fund his CIPD qualifications, his personal financial situation resulted in this taking a year longer than anticipated;

“finance has been something that has constrained my career. when I went to do my CIPD I was self-funding and I couldn’t afford to do it the normal route where you do first year, second year, so I had to, I paid for the first year outright and then the second year I couldn’t afford to do that again so I had to do two modules, one year and two modules the next year so that slowed down my progress by twelve months” (Lee).

However, whilst the familial were potentially a source of financial support for interviewees in other instances interviewees financially supported the career development of others, such as children through university education, and this in turn influenced personal career agency. Similar experiences were also narrated in terms of one partner assuming the role of primary wage-earner within the family setting, and this also occurred as a consequence of either separation from a partner, sickness or as discussed, an agreement to prioritise one partners career over the other. For example;

“by this time I’m a mum in a front facing career with a clinical role with 3 small children and my husband became poorly, so poorly that he couldn’t work. I’d by this time gone down to like one day a fortnight so I hadn’t really been doing an awful lot but was then thrown back into having to work clinically full time to support my 3 under 5s and my sick husband, so, in terms of the timeline, these things from your personal life affect your professional life massively” (Joan).

Similarly, Donna’s story demonstrates how financially supporting her son through university contributed additional pressure during experiences of organisational change and the resultant uncertainty in terms of her own careering, prompting her to consider leaving the organisation and also feeling constrained by the rewards provided within the organisational context;

“we’d reached the point where there weren’t going to be enough posts for everyone and we’d got to compete with each other, very very stressful, my son was at university, I was funding his university, he was in XXXXXXX, living in private rented accommodation that we were paying for, so it was very very stressful, and I kept debating whether or not I would leave at that point and look for something else. The problem you always have, actually I will say I don’t think the NHS is poorly paid compared to the private sector and giving how much it was costing to keep my son at university it was like, well if I leave, financially can I still afford all of the things that we are currently doing, so the only decision, I did come up with, again at that time we had a very long conversation and I decided I would stick it out whatever happened, so even if they didn’t want me and they got rid of me they’d have to pay me redundancy, if they paid me redundancy I could put it to one side and finance my son at university till the end, and I could get a job and it would all be sorted. And so that’s the decision that we made” (Donna).

Conversely Jayne explains how now her children have grown and become independent, she has greater freedom within her careering choices;

“my boys have gone now, I don’t need to get up to the high grades anymore, I’ve got grandchildren now and I’ve got another one on the way and I’ve got to a point where if I can get back to being grade 5, grade 6, getting that enjoyment out of a job that I love doing, which is customer based facing people, helping them, supporting them, that sort of stuff, then I will be happy until I retire now. Because there’s no need for me to have a big massive house, or a flash car or anything else, kids have gone, they’re self-dependent” (Jayne).