In our conversations with people going through outplacement, one concern comes up again and again. They are asking whether their experience will still carry weight elsewhere and whether they can compete for the opportunities ahead.
It is easy to see why. Restructuring, slower hiring and the growing use of AI are reshaping work across sectors and levels of seniority. Even people with long, successful careers are beginning to question what that means for their future. If this role ends, how confident am I that I can move forward?
We might describe this as employability anxiety: the fear that your skills, experience or professional identity may no longer translate as clearly into the next stage of your career.
Job insecurity is about whether your current role will continue. Employability anxiety runs deeper. It is about whether you still believe you can build what comes after it.
Your job may feel secure, but does your career?
Recent research suggests this concern is becoming increasingly common.
Spring 2026 hiring trends found that 42% of UK workers worry that AI and automation could make their role redundant, a feeling it describes as the ‘fear of becoming obsolete’, or #FOBO. Four in five now place greater value on job security than career progression, while 71% say they want their employer to invest more in reskilling.
Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026 research points in a similar direction. More than half of employees, 53%, feel they lack the future-ready skills needed to remain competitive in an AI-enabled economy. Concern about losing a job because of AI has also risen sharply, from 28% in 2024 to 40% in 2026.
A senior leader may have decades of experience, a strong track record and deep sector knowledge, yet still feel uncertain as their organisation restructures, technology reshapes their role or employers begin looking for a different combination of skills. For someone who has built much of their identity around a particular role, sector or level of seniority, that can be deeply unsettling.
Workers are told to keep learning, but access is uneven
The standard response to concerns about future employability is often to tell people to keep learning and develop new skills. Yet access to that development is becoming more limited.
The Learning and Work Institute’s 2025 Adult Participation in Learning Survey found that only 21% of people in employment were currently learning at work, down from 28% the previous year. Among full-time workers, the proportion who had participated in any form of learning during the previous three years fell from 65% in 2024 to 50% in 2025.
This creates an uncomfortable gap. Employees hear repeatedly that continuous learning is essential, while many receive little time, funding or practical opportunity to develop.
We encourage people to take responsibility for their careers, but they do not all start from the same position. Some have access to formal training, supportive managers and visible internal opportunities. Others must work out for themselves which skills matter and how to make time for learning alongside a demanding role.
Employability cannot depend solely on completing another qualification or learning the latest piece of technology. People also need help to understand where their experience transfers, which gaps genuinely matter and how the market is changing around them.
Employability is about more than technical skills
AI dominates much of the current debate, but future employability won’t depend on technical capability alone. 39% of workers’ existing skills are expected to change or become defunct by 2023. AI, big data, cybersecurity and technological literacy are among the fastest-growing skills. Yet employers also expect creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, curiosity, leadership and social influence to become increasingly important. That should be encouraging for experienced professionals.
The challenge is not an absence of valuable skills, but an inability to recognise and communicate them in a changing context. Someone may have spent years leading transformation, influencing difficult stakeholders, managing risk or navigating uncertainty. Yet their CV still describes the responsibilities attached to their most recent job rather than the problems they are equipped to solve next. This is where employability anxiety can become self-reinforcing.
The less certain people feel about their relevance, the more likely they are to make their positioning broader and more generic. They list every capability, apply for too many different roles and struggle to explain where they add the greatest value.
Why employers should care
Employability anxiety may sound like a personal career issue, but it has consequences for organisations too. ADP Research found that workers who strongly believed they had the skills needed to advance their careers were five times more likely to feel their jobs were safe. Those who felt their employer invested in their development were 5.3 times more likely to feel secure, and that confidence affects how individuals show up at work.
Employees who felt secure were six times more likely to be fully engaged, 3.3 times more likely to describe themselves as highly productive and less likely to feel overloaded or experience negative stress.
Employers cannot promise that every role will remain unchanged. They can, however, offer greater transparency about how work is evolving, invest in relevant development and help people understand how their capabilities might transfer.
Mercer found that 65% of executives expect between 11% and 30% of their workforce to be reskilled or redeployed because of AI over the next two years. If that transition is treated only as an operational exercise, organisations risk overlooking the human questions underneath it.
Where do I still add value? Could I succeed in a different role? What happens if there is no place for me here?
Outplacement should not begin at the exit meeting
Traditional outplacement often begins after someone has been told their role is ending. Employability anxiety usually starts much earlier. It may surface when an employee watches colleagues being made redundant, notices work becoming automated or realises that skills once central to their role are losing importance.
By the time a formal redundancy conversation takes place, their confidence may already have been eroding for months. Modern career transition support needs to address more than applications.
A strong outplacement programme should help people make sense of what has happened, identify the value they still bring and understand the realistic routes available to them. That may include internal redeployment, a permanent external role, interim or fractional work, consultancy, a portfolio career or a more substantial change of direction.
The practical tools remain critical. People need a strong CV, a credible LinkedIn profile, interview preparation and a focused search strategy.
But those tools work best when they sit within a clearer story about who the person is now, what they can offer and where their experience is most relevant. A successful career still carries value, but people may need help seeing how that experience connects to what comes next.
Perhaps the better question is no longer ‘how secure is my current job?,’ but ‘how confident am I that I could create a meaningful next chapter if this one ended?’
At Hanover Talent Solutions, we work with organisations and individuals through redundancy, redeployment and career transition. We combine practical career strategy with coaching that helps employees rebuild confidence, understand their value and move forward with greater clarity.
If you would like to explore how more thoughtful outplacement or career transition support could help your people, please get in touch.