In the first two parts of this series (blog 1 and blog 2), I proposed that the future of employability, exploring the skills, attributes, and professional habits that enable people to gain, sustain, and transition between employment as work evolves, deserves the same attention we give to the future of work. The future of employability is a field of inquiry operating on a five-to-ten-year horizon that relies on employability futures, a foresight-based methodology for identifying skills, attributes, and professional habits that support employability across multiple possible futures. It is a framework that is meant to be applied, so this blog post will consider three questions that educators and employers must address about the future of employability:
- What assumptions about employability are we currently making?
- How do we systematically account for uncertainty related to employability?
- What does success look like when preparing for uncertain futures related to employability?
The Current State of Employability
There are currently many employability frameworks in existence. Two of the more popular frameworks are the Quality Assurance Commons Essential Employability Qualities and the National Association of Colleges and Employers Career Readiness Competencies. There is a great deal of overlap between the two, as well as with other popular frameworks, and they reflect what is needed to be employable in the workforce of today. Neither is static, as they are periodically updated to reflect changing conditions. These frameworks are represented fairly well by the educational goals adopted by colleges, universities, and other education providers.
The challenge, as I noted in Blog 2, is that many academic programs take four years or longer to complete, which creates the risk that the skills, attributes, and professional habits the programs were designed to develop may not be as relevant when students complete the programs. This is also true for shorter programs. While they are not at risk of the design-completion gap faced by undergraduate degrees, they still may not be setting up those who complete them for the future.
This challenge extends beyond academic programs. Employers face similar questions about their development programs. The skills emphasized in onboarding or leadership development today reflect current organizational needs. But will these same skills matter in three years? Five years? When the pace of change accelerates, assumptions made during program design may no longer be relevant by the time people complete the program or transition to new roles.
The Core Question: What assumptions about employability are we currently making?
Most institutions and organizations focus on present conditions. This is understandable as we design based on what we know now. But the employability futures approach requires explicitly examining the assumptions underlying these decisions.
For educators, these assumptions include: the employability frameworks we use (whether EEQ, NACE, or institution-specific) reflect what will matter when students graduate, not just what matters today; the time horizon for curriculum decisions aligns with how quickly work is actually changing; the balance between technical skills and durable skills we build into programs will serve students throughout their careers; and students will enter work environments similar to those we’re preparing them for.
For employers, these assumptions include: the skills prioritized in hiring today will remain relevant for the roles people will grow into; current definitions of “career-ready” or “high-potential” account for how work might evolve; development programs prepare employees for future responsibilities, not just current ones; and the pace at which we reassess what employability means matches the pace at which work is changing.
Identifying these assumptions is the first step. The second is determining how viable they are in multiple possible futures rather than assuming one future.
Integrating Foresight
If current employability frameworks describe what matters today, how do we anticipate what will matter tomorrow? This is where the employability futures methodology becomes essential. This approach uses three strategic foresight tools, scanning, scenario planning, and the three horizons framework, to systematically account for uncertainty.
Scanning for Signals
Scanning involves exploring a wide range of factors that might affect employability. Rather than simply monitoring job market trends or conducting employer surveys, both of which describe the present, scanning looks for signals of change that suggest how employability requirements might evolve.
The STEEPLE framework provides structure for this work by examining social, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal, and ethical factors. Each category is helpful for surfacing changes that could affect employability in the future.
Consider how AI might change what “communication” means as an employability skill. If AI handles routine correspondence and data synthesis, communication may shift toward explaining complex decisions to non-technical audiences or knowing when human judgment should override AI recommendations. It might also elevate the importance of face-to-face interactions. Or consider what happens to teamwork in hybrid and remote environments where collaboration occurs asynchronously across time zones. The skill itself does not disappear, but what it requires evolves.
For educators, scanning informs curriculum review cycles and program design. It helps answer questions like these: Which technical skills have two-year versus ten-year relevance? What new attributes or professional habits are emerging as important? Where are we seeing signals that current frameworks may need to evolve?
For employers, scanning informs talent development and workforce planning. It surfaces questions like: What capabilities will our industry require in five years? What skills are we seeing in high performers that our frameworks do not yet capture?
The goal is not to predict specific changes but to identify areas of uncertainty worth exploring further.
Scenario Planning for Multiple Futures
Scanning helps identify uncertainties. Scenario planning explores how those uncertainties might play out differently. Rather than predicting one future of work, scenario planning envisions multiple possible futures of work and asks: What would employability mean in each?
This is where future personas become valuable. In Blog 2, I introduced Hudson, a 2030 business graduate navigating a future where AI handles routine decisions, while employers place premium value on human judgment for strategic choices. The Hudson scenario revealed that employability in that future means both technical fluency with AI tools and the judgment to know when to override AI recommendations.
But Hudson’s scenario is just one possibility. A different scenario might envision slower AI adoption but accelerated climate-driven geographic mobility, requiring different employability capabilities. Another might explore fractional work arrangements becoming standard, where most professionals simultaneously hold positions across multiple organizations.
For educators, scenario planning asks: Which skills and attributes hold across all scenarios versus those specific to particular futures? If we cannot know which future will unfold, how do we prepare students for multiple possibilities? What does a curriculum designed for uncertainty look like?
For employers, the questions shift to: What does exceptional performance mean across different futures? How do we develop employees for roles that do not yet exist? What capabilities enable people to excel regardless of which future of work emerges?
The methodology doesn’t eliminate uncertainty. It makes uncertainty explicit and helps organizations prepare for multiple possibilities rather than betting on one predicted path.
Three Horizons for Transition Planning
The three horizons framework provides a structure for understanding change over time. Horizon 1 represents today’s employability requirements; this is what frameworks like EEQ and NACE currently describe. Horizon 3 represents emerging employability requirements already visible in early signals, even if not yet widespread. Horizon 2 represents the transition between them.
Understanding all three horizons enables an exploration of which employability skills will endure and which will need to evolve. More importantly, it helps address the transition: How do we support people moving from Horizon 1 capabilities to Horizon 3 requirements?
For educators, this framework addresses the tension between immediate job placement and long-term career sustainability. Programs must prepare students for Horizon 1 (they need first jobs now) while building Horizon 3 capabilities (they need sustainable careers across decades). The question becomes: How do we balance these competing needs?
For employers, the framework addresses the tension between current performance needs and future capability building. Organizations need employees to perform in Horizon 1 roles while developing them for Horizon 3 work. The question becomes: How do we support this transition without sacrificing current performance?
These three tools, scanning, scenario planning, and three horizons, provide a systematic approach to uncertainty. They do not predict the future. They help educators and employers make better decisions in the present by explicitly accounting for multiple possible futures.
How Can the Employability Futures Approach Help?
This question challenges conventional metrics. Traditional measures of employability success focus on present outcomes: job placement rates, starting salaries, employer satisfaction surveys, first-year retention. These metrics matter. They measure success in Horizon 1. But they don’t measure future adaptability.
When preparing for uncertain futures, success requires different questions.
For educators, the question shifts from “Did graduates get jobs?” to “Can graduates navigate an uncertain future of employability that requires transitions?” This requires tracking career progression over five to ten years, not just first-destination outcomes. It means examining graduate adaptability: How many successful career pivots do alumni make? Do they maintain employment across industry changes? Do they continue learning throughout their careers?
It also requires examining partnership metrics beyond traditional employer satisfaction. Are employers returning to recruit talent? More importantly, why are they returning? Are they seeking graduates with specific technical skills, or are they seeking people who can adapt as roles evolve?
For employers, the question shifts from “Do employees meet current performance standards?” to “Are employees prepared to adapt when work changes?” This requires tracking employee mobility within the organization, examining who successfully transitions between roles as the organization transforms, and understanding what enables some employees to thrive through change while others struggle.
It means tracking skills evolution over time, not just skills at hire. It requires asking: Who in our organization demonstrates the adaptability we’ll need in three years? What capabilities do they have that our frameworks do not yet measure?
The Importance of Continuous Foresight
These questions surface a fundamental insight: employability futures is not a one-time initiative. It does not end with a revised curriculum or a new competency framework. It requires continuous scanning, periodic scenario updates, and regular framework reassessment.
This means building organizational capacity for ongoing futures thinking. It means creating structures that support continuous scanning across the organization, not just periodic strategic planning cycles. It means developing comfort with revisiting and revising frameworks as signals strengthen or new uncertainties emerge.
Building the organizational capacity for this work—rather than conducting occasional foresight projects—is what enables institutions and organizations to stay aligned with evolving employability requirements.
The Necessity of Collaboration
Throughout this series, I’ve addressed educators and employers separately. But the future of employability requires them to work together in new ways.
Currently, a disconnect exists. Educators design programs based on employer surveys, which describe what employers value today. Employers hire based on current needs, then train for emerging needs. This creates a gap: no shared framework for anticipating future employability together.
Employability futures provides that framework. Rather than educators asking “What do you need?” and employers answering based on present conditions, both educators and employers can explore together the uncertainties they both are identifying. They are collaboratively exploring the ways work might evolve and what this means for both student preparation and workforce development.
This enables new forms of collaboration. Shared scanning where both contribute signals from their different vantage points. It also includes joint scenario planning where educators and employers explore futures together, testing assumptions about what employability might require.
Collaboration also enables different feedback loops. Rather than just asking “Did our graduates perform well?” the question becomes “How are they adapting? What capabilities are they demonstrating that we did not anticipate? Are they prepared to thrive in the future of work?”
For individuals, the beneficiaries of educator-employer alignment, this creates transparency. Rather than navigating an opaque job market where requirements seem to shift unpredictably, people understand the uncertainties. They know which skills endure across scenarios and which are scenario-specific. They develop agency in their own development, understanding the methodology and applying it to their own career decisions.
When educators and employers align around a futures-oriented approach to employability, individuals gain the clarity they need to build sustainable careers across uncertain conditions.
The Path Forward
This blog series has established that the future of employability deserves equal attention to the future of work. It has defined the field and introduced employability futures as a methodology grounded in strategic foresight. And it has outlined how educators and employers can apply this framework through three core questions: What assumptions about employability are we currently making? How do we systematically account for uncertainty related to employability? What does success look like when preparing for uncertain futures related to employability?
The employability futures methodology does not eliminate uncertainty; it makes uncertainty explicit. It does not predict one future; it helps individuals and organizations prepare for multiple possibilities. And it does not replace current employability frameworks; it provides a lens for examining how those frameworks might need to evolve.
We cannot predict which version of 2030 we will get. But we can prepare people to thrive across multiple versions of 2030. This requires asking different questions, using different tools, building different partnerships, and measuring different outcomes.
The future of employability is not a problem to solve once. It is a field of ongoing inquiry. It requires institutions and organizations to build capacity for futures thinking as an integrated approach to how we prepare people for work.
The future of employability starts with the questions we ask today about the work of tomorrow.