Empowering individuals: how Lifelong Guidance enables opportunities and career journeys

It connects education, training and employment systems, allowing people of all ages and backgrounds to navigate transitions and uncertainty with confidence. 

By linking personal development with broader social and economic goals, it can contribute to more inclusive and resilient societies.

Real lives, real impact

When Maria, a mid-career manufacturing worker, needed to navigate digital transformation in her industry, guidance helped her:

• explore further learning options,
• understand how labour market trends might affect her career pathway, and
• understand how further training can provide a solution. 

Guidance helped Ahmed, a recent refugee with a background in engineering, to:

• build on his prior learning,
• validate his skills and at the same time find affordable opportunities to learn a new language, while balancing family life,
• become aware of available options, and
• acquire the competences for planning realistic next steps in a new country. 

Both cases show the same principle: guidance enables individuals by developing the skills to navigate their learning and careers over the long term, understand the labour market, including unexpected change and uncertainty while opening access to meaningful  experiences and resources. Although career guidance may provide services to assist at cross-roads, in particular contexts or in career transitions, one major aim is to equip people with a set of competences that last a lifetime. 

Developing self-direction and motivation to handle uncertainty

Effective LLG enables the longer-term development of skills needed to navigate and assess complex information (and misinformation) landscapes, labour market change, conditions in the world of work and disruption. Concerns in Europe about job quality, rising demands for upskilling and reskilling, and economic productivity make acquiring self-direction and decision–making skills earlier in life more essential than ever.

Cultivating career competences has become as important as formal qualifications. When all individuals develop these transversal skills, they may be more confident at work, in pursuing meaningful learning opportunities, negotiating career changes and managing unexpected challenges. Research indicates that people with strong career management skills demonstrate higher levels of work satisfaction, engagement and resilience. 

Enabling equity and preventing social exclusion

LLG is also a policy lever for social equity. Vulnerable groups, including youth at risk of early school leaving, older workers facing technological disruption or age discrimination, migrants seeking labour market integration and individuals with specific needs including disabilities, often have higher level needs and face multiple barriers. Good quality guidance helps them with the information, advice and skills to recognise their strengths and obstacles to achieving their goals including through referrals, tailored online and offline services, service cooperation and coordination and advocacy. 

Lifelong guidance is not a quick fix, but a continuous process that helps individuals make sense of uncertainty and build meaningful career paths. By ensuring access to quality services at every stage of life, societies not only strengthen people’s confidence and opportunities, but also lay the foundation for more resilient guidance systems that meet growing demand in the face of trends such as demographic change and labour shortages and restructuring in some economic sectors.