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Foreword by Patrick Gilbert

While technological change is, at least potentially, a source of progress, it also brings its share of uncertainties and fragilities. This is true of their effects on employment. Industrial change has always had consequences in this area. At the level of nations, organizations and individuals, the difficulty is always to assess the scope of these changes and to prepare for them.

Industrial revolutions have followed one another with well-known consequences on the content of work and the volume of jobs. Today, the “digital revolution”, while giving rise to the hope of new jobs, also poses certain threats with the rise of automation and the emergence of artificial intelligence. A recent OECD report (2019) on employment prospects estimates that, in the next 20 years, 16.4% of French jobs will be threatened and 32.8% will undergo a radical transformation.

In a period marked by these major transformations, companies are therefore led to reflect, very early on, on the actions to be taken on human resources. Hence, the notion of employability is becoming central and cannot simply be left to the initiative of each worker and the State. Beyond the institutional injunction to be responsible for one’s own destiny, what does this notion of employability cover? What is its history? What issues does it address? What are the respective roles of public policies, managerial practices and individual actions? What can be said (and done) about unemployability? How can we meet the challenge of the digitalization of jobs? What are the levers for building employability?

This book, which brings together researchers from different specialties around these issues, aims to shed light on the current changes in work by addressing the theme of employability in all its complexity. I am proud to welcome it to this series.

Patrick GILBERT

Professor at IAE Paris-Sorbonne

Head of the series

“Technological Changes and Human Resources”

November 2021