The LIFE Technique – Creating a Personal Work Profile

Abstract

This paper focuses on the question: how can a personal work profile be created most easily and effectively for people considering their future? A personal work profile is a detailed description of the skills a person would like to use and characteristics of a work environment they would like to experience. This is valuable for all people of working age because it helps them find, or move towards, work which suits them best. This is tremendously important in Knowledge Management (KM). This is because when the an individual’s knowledge and skills are matched well with the work they conduct, there is a high level of job satisfaction, motivation and performance. Therefore, if there is a good match, employees and organisations benefit enormously. The paper categorises and critically examines literature relevant to the research question and explains why the new Look Into your FuturE (LIFE) technique (‘the LIFE Technique’) was designed, what is new about it, how it works and how it has been road tested, reflected upon and improved. The primary data strongly suggests that the stages of the Technique are useful and easy to do, and that it is a valuable initiative that should be developed and applied further in the future.