Embedding wellbeing in career development practice: trialling a new structure for guidance conversations in Scotland and Wales

ABSTRACT Research has established powerful relationships between career guidance, work, and wellbeing. However, some practitioners have only low or moderate confidence in using guidance to support wellbeing. Catalysed by Covid-19, this practitioner-researcher collaboration explored the question: how can we embed wellbeing more explicitly into guidance practice? Concerns and potential solutions were examined with 36 career development practitioners, service managers, and researchers from Canada, England, Scotland, and Wales. This article presents the results of a subsequent pilot in Scotland and Wales to test the resulting initial guidance interview framework. Quantitative evaluations, supported by four case examples, show customer wellbeing progress during initial guidance interviews and gains in practitioner confidence following training.


Introduction
Theoretical work and longitudinal case study reviews have long documented the likely value of career guidance to wellbeing (e.g.Bimrose et al., 2008;Kirschner et al., 1994;Redekopp & Huston, 2019;Robertson, 2013;Whelan, 2017).Wellbeing has also become a topic of increasing prominence in econometric analysis and political decision-making, with example institutions like the What Works Centre for Wellbeing (UK), methods for monetising wellbeing for comparative public health cost effectiveness analyses (HMT, 2021), and in career guidance research such as the British Journal of Guidance & Counselling special issue on Happiness and Wellbeing in 2019.In this context, special attention has been paid to academic and practitioner-based participatory research, which has the potential to allow the production of deeper knowledge of complex guidance and wellbeing issues, underpinned by adopting a broad definition of career guidance in line with Cedefop et al. definitions (2019), e.g.: "Career guidance describes the services which help people of any age to manage their careers and to make the educational, training and occupational choices that are right for them.It helps people to reflect on their ambitions, interests, qualifications, skills and talentsand to relate this knowledge about who they are to who they might become within the labour market".(excerpt from p2; for full definition please see source) Wellbeing is a particularly important topic for practice-connected research (Sointu, 2005).Practitioners in our collaboration reported growing awareness around mental health and more customers raising the topic proactively compared to earlier decades.Norms around language, growing appreciation of neurodiversity, as well as the growing complexity of working lives all make wellbeing a fast evolving space in the context of career guidance; such developments can only be understood by maintaining close links with frontline experiences.The practical aspects of wellbeing in career guidance are under studied compared to closely associated fields such as coaching and therapy (Nacif, 2021).A recent working paper from a European Union agency also noted that wellbeing is among the outcomes of career guidance that are "seldom monitored and evaluated" in Europe, at least not on a systematic basis, with wellbeing highlighted as an area of priority for deeper understanding (Cedefop., 2022, p. 5).
This article is structured as follows: firstly, we outline our approach to action research and briefly describe the thematic and crystallisation stage of the action research in which we explored the topic of wellbeing in a guidance setting.Secondly, we focus on the project initiation and materials development stage which explored ways to help practitioners embed wellbeing more explicitly into initial guidance interviews in an adult guidance setting.Thirdly, we describe the method by which we conducted a trial with adult customers/clients and evaluated the results.Fourthly, we present the findings and then discuss the results, reflecting on the collaboration to date and future plans.

Approach to action research
In this fertile ground for practitioner-researcher collaboration, we undertook volunteer collaboration initially with thirty-six careers practitioners and managers in Canada, Wales, Scotland and England.We adopted action research principles in the spirit of Coenen and Khonraad (2003), a model for critical action research with previous applications in a US career counselling setting (e.g.Solberg, 2017).In this type of research, principles of reciprocal adequacy and explicitness define the relationship between researcher and researched party, with collaboration broadly structured into three phases.A first thematic phase involves separate investigation into the topic and a process of establishing a shared perspective by engaging in activities that enable researchers and practitioners to learn about each other's world-view regarding the relevant topic.The second phase, crystallisation involves co-designing an approach to research or intervene on the topic.Only in the third phase is the approach implemented and evaluated.

Initial discussions and conceptualising wellbeing
The outbreak of Covid-19 was a catalyst to explore our conviction that it is both worthwhile and possible to embed wellbeing more deeply in career guidance practice.In February 2021, following discussions to gauge interest in late 2020, a first group discussion was held with leads from Canada (CCDF), Wales (Careers Wales) and Scotland (SDS), along with research colleagues based in England.All sides shared their recent thinking on wellbeing and career guidance.
Practitioner discussions in this project acknowledged the complexities involved in different conceptions of wellbeing and contested approaches to measurement (e.g.Kaminitz, 2020;La Placa et al., 2013).Colleagues typically preferred to think of hope and subjective well-being concepts as "multidimensional concepts", e.g.comprising emotion (i.e.anticipation and affect), cognition (expectation and satisfaction) and, to some degree, motivation (Pleeging et al., 2021).Nonetheless, despite differences in personal emphases, there was considerable overlap in usage of the term, with sufficient consensus to make progress regarding an implicit working definition and the range of potential direct and indirect links with guidance.
Regarding an implicit definition, we decided to identify specific questions to discuss with customers that would capture different aspects of wellbeing.The intention was not that these questions would capture all nuances in all collaboration partners' understanding of wellbeing, but that they would be sufficiently prioritised to guidance benefits and in sufficiently plain language to work in practice with customers. 1 Regarding links with guidance, Redekopp and Huston discussed their 2020 work and the influence of Keyes (2014).In particular, we emphasised how improved career readiness and outcomes not only enhances wellbeing, but also how improved wellbeing can enhance career readiness and outcomes.We also differentiated mental illness (e.g.specific medical conditions) from mental health (i.e. an axis from languishing to flourishing).Within this context, we specified four broad categories by which career guidance can lead to improved wellbeing for customers, noting that customer wellbeing benefits may also spill-over into benefits for family and community as well (Elftorp et al., 2022): 1. Direct via coaching/counselling: Career guidance conversations can directly provide a supportive, reflective space and independent, well-informed perspectives that help customers develop self-conception, motivation, confidence, self-values, and an understanding of the economy and society and where they fit within it.Even without further changes in employment outcomes, such insights and attitudinal shifts may translate into higher wellbeing for some customers.Empirical evidence of a direct effect can be found in strength-based career counselling (Littman-Ovadia et al., 2014) and in Canada (CCDF, 2021), as well as findings from the collaborative research presented in this paper.2. Direct via customer action taking: Career guidance is typically solution-focused and actionoriented, helping customers to understand what actions they can take to improve their circumstances, both through short-term, practical steps and a long-term trajectory through to a fulfilling career.Such action plans can aid wellbeing improvements directly or lead to improved sense of self-worth and life satisfaction through achieving steps on the action plan and feeling a trajectory towards a better future.Empirical research on benefits does not typically directly differentiate benefits driven by customer action taking rather than the coaching/counselling benefit.An imperfect measure could examine medium-term progress measures in longitudinal research, e.g.evidence from Switzerland (Masdonati et al., 2009;Perdrix et al., 2012) and support for the long-term unemployed in Ireland (Whelan, 2017).However, such measurements elide benefits from action taking and from changes in behaviour/mindset.3. Indirect via career progression: Career guidance helps customers to access new courses, jobs, roles, or careers that fit better with their strengths, circumstances, and needs, which in turn leads to higher evaluative wellbeing.The empirical link between unemployment and poor wellbeing is well-evidenced (e.g.WWCW, 2017), with the wellbeing penalty persistent over time and typically worse for men and young people (Clark et al., 2018;Robertson, 2019).There are further, albeit often diminishing wellbeing gains associated with career progression and increased income (e.g.Masuda et al., 2021) and disbenefits for non-desired, precarious work (Canivet et al., 2017).The link between career guidance and employment outcomes can be seen in empirical studies inter alia: Percy (2021), Michaelides et al. (2012), alongside meta-analyses from Hughes et al. (2016) and Liu et al. (2014).4. Indirect via referrals or advocacy: Although guidance is not typically directly aimed at mental health or mental illness (some practitioners may be dual qualified), it may still refer customers onto such services or help customers take action to seek help which indirectly leads to improvements in the future.Advocacy support can also be considered relevant in this respect (Bassingwaighte, 2020).Advocates must possess an appropriate level of skills and expertise in order to perform their role effectively and be taken seriously (Carlisle, 2000).Evidence regarding the effectiveness of advocacy remains limited and while there is a reasonable amount of information relating to the process benefits of advocacy, its impact on individual outcomes remains largely unclear.For example, in a social work context, McNutt (2011) argues that there is little robust evidence about the effectiveness of advocacy in terms of improvement outcomes for individuals.
For some customers, despite the benefits listed above, we felt that guidance might initially reduce wellbeingand sometimes in ways we might welcome in the long run.For instance, where guidance reveals how much customers do not know about themselves or their chosen goals or how much more is needed than previously thought to pursue their goals.Career guidance can, in some circumstances, play a useful challenge function to individuals, helping to align their plans and perceptions with reality e.g.temporarily increasing uncertainty and discomfort.While this process can be disruptive, if successful it will enable customers to pursue plans with a properly understood balance of risk and likely reward and have more grounded, sustainable, and reliable self-worth.The process can also be welcome in that unwise plans in the present risk storing up severe adverse shocks in the future.Nonetheless, the empirical evidence cited above suggests that positive effects typically dominate on average when they are measured.
Higher wellbeing can in turn support employment outcomes.For instance, those who are more confident with a greater sense of self-worth tend to have greater self-confidence and self-esteem (Gupta, 2022).They may be more able to present themselves well in an interview or acquit themselves well at work, helping to access work, and thrive once there.This effect may be particularly important for the long-term unemployed or those facing significant barriers to participation.Whelan et al. (2021) argue that promoting wellbeing for such groups is a key first step en route to employment, although it is possible that for some individuals it is finding employment which serves as a valuable step that improves their sense of self-worth, sense of community with colleagues, livelihood, income, and life satisfaction.

Pilot work on enhancing and measuring wellbeing
A second group meeting followed in March 2021 as a "show and tell" of the different tools already being used for supporting/measuring wellbeing and ongoing pilot work, including the identification of questions that might benefit from practitioner research.This emanated from neither theory nor practice alone but from "critical reflection on the intersection between the two" (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, p. 15).Through these and other conversations, frontline practitioners and managers shared their experience of wellbeing, highlighting topics that could make it hard to address in guidance practice, including: . Sector functioning, e.g.concerns that if mental health issues are identified or surfaced, whether there would be enough capacity among community/health organisations to support the individuals. .Professional boundaries, e.g.how to provide mental health support without mental health specific qualifications (risk of overreach/error; supplanting professional roles). .Personal boundaries, e.g.how to engage effectively in wellbeing discussions when facing personal difficulties (noting difficulties with lockdown, personal circumstances, technology adjustment etc.). .Guidance and techniques, e.g.little explicit guidance on how to incorporate wellbeing topics into conversations with customers/clients and measure progress, appreciating it could be a sensitive topic for many.
This last point was identified as the priority for further joint exploration and co-development of resources in the crystallisation stage of the action research.
Our discussions recognised that some, but not all practitioners were already regularly discussing wellbeing with customers/clients and leveraging tools to support customer progress.We also understood that formal guidance interview frameworks and training in our jurisdictions may acknowledge links to wellbeing but were typically not explicit on how/when to raise it with customers, especially when compared to the detailed frameworks available for therapy.This non-prescriptive approach was understood as being typically deliberate, as the interview frameworks maintain flexibility for professional judgement, with examples including the Career Development Institute (CDI) observational framework, Qualification in Career Development (QCD) requirements, Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) learning outcomes and assessment criteria for training, and the Careers Wales Guidance Standards. 2 It was also recognised that careers practitioners draw on evidence-based theory and practice techniques inter alia: decision-making models (Amir et al., 2008), two chair dialogue technique (Cardoso & Duarte, 2021;Hambly & Bomford, 2019), motivational interviewing, and cognitive behaviour or solution-focused coaching (e.g.Miller & Rollnick, 2013).The complexity of questions, issues and differing customer circumstances in a career guidance context requires flexible and tailored practitioner responses.In an international context, there are many other similar frameworks and techniques commonly used by careers practitioners Our joint work suggested that additional guidance/tools/training in this area could usefully be made available as a complement to the main frameworks.
Thirty-six practitioners, team managers, senior leaders, and researchers subsequently co-developed a framework for incorporating wellbeing specifically into the initial guidance conversation with adults, with both Scotland and Wales able to devote resource to a subsequent initial pilot to test the framework.Practitioners shared the tools and conversation starters/follow-up questions they had found worked well in order to develop a draft discussion guide to trial.We also co-developed five wellbeing-assessment questions that might be used to track progress, inspired by questions in the MHO-5 (Redekopp & Huston, 2022; shared in 2021 via their participation in the collaboration) and PRIME (CCDF, 2021), adapted in a way that practitioners felt could be asked as part of a career guidance interview, i.e. framed in a way that linked naturally to career guidance topics: 1.I feel positive about my ability to handle the demands / barriers / challenges coming up in my life [positive re:demands] 2. I am taking action / being proactive to help overcome the barriers and challenges in my life [taking action] 3. I feel optimistic about finding relevant and valued work that will fit in with my life [optimistic re: work value] 4. I feel my life is meaningful and I make a difference to my family, friends, or community [meaningful life] 5.I am able to make up my own mind about things that are important [can make up mind] (each sentence scored 1-5; where "1" means the statement is "not true of me at all" through to "5" which means it feels "very true of me"; the short names in square brackets are to aid in reading the results section of this paper and were not displayed to customers)

Methodology for trial and evaluation
Five practitioners in Scotland and five practitioners in Wales trialled the new discussion guide and wellbeing evaluation questions between January and March 2022 and between October 2021 and February 2022 respectively.In scope interviews were those that focused on adults interested in careers or employability related topics (whether currently unemployed or not) and only adults engaging with the public employment services (Working Wales and Skills Development Scotland) for the first time.The focus on adults excluded those in secondary education, chosen due to the expertise of the group and resource constraints in tailoring materials for different age ranges.The focus on first time customers excluded returning customers, because the purpose was to pilot a discussion guide designed to support the first interview, including initial triage and contracting activities.
The sessions took place in a mixture of remote video, in-person, and telephony channels.Customers providing information for the trial consented to their participation, with practitioners explaining the purpose of the research during the interview; more details were available on request via a standardised information note.The overall trial was approved from an ethical and operational perspective by the leadership of the two organisations, being closely involved in the design of the work to ensure it met their standards for supporting customers.
Central to the discussion framework logic was the recognition that wellbeing topics were not relevant to all customers and that, even if relevant, may not be the presenting issues or issues that should be raised directly.As a result, practitioners were invited to apply their judgement to deciding which of the customers to engage in the process.For some customers, it was possible to use brief, perhaps indirect questioning during the introduction, which helped the practitioner decide whether to raise wellbeing topics more explicitly during the meeting (online or offline).
For the purposes of the trial, we asked practitioners to log how many potentially eligible one-onone customers they saw over the trial period (total n = 317), the number for whom it was possible to gauge possible interest in wellbeing topics (n = 137), the number of whom then engaged in a wellbeing-related discussion (potentially alongside other topics; n = 75), and finally the number who agreed to answer post-pre questions to measure progress (n = 45 completed online).For some additional customers, the post-pre questions were used more discursively and logged offline.These do not form part of the evaluation, but practitioners reported that similar scaled gains as reported in section 3 were also identified in the offline data.
Out of those customers for whom it was possible to engage in a wellbeing-related discussion, we asked practitioners to capture case notes on at least five.Given practitioner time pressures, they were then invited to choose whether to continue logging data as part of the research.All practitioners provided at least four sets of case notes and several provided more than five.In total case notes were provided for 63 customers, reflecting the majority of those for whom wellbeingrelated conversations were able to take place (75).For 16 customers out of the 63 for which case studies were collected, there was also a return guidance interview within the timespan of data collection.
Customer progress was measured via the five questions co-developed and listed earlier, implemented via a post-pre framework (Hiebert & Magnusson, 2014).At the end of the interview, in a post-session debrief, the practitioner asked consecutively first "how true did this statement feel for you coming into the session today" for each statement and then "how true does this statement feel for you now, leaving the session" for each statement.Customers could also fill in their responses directly, but in general the questions were asked by the practitioner as part of the dialogue.
The advantages of the post-pre approach include asking clients only once, reducing the burden on them, allowing them to answer with the full knowledge of the session, and not requiring them to answer questions before any help is provided, which can feel intrusive, like a pre-qualification requirement or a barrier to engagement in some cases.The disadvantages of the post-pre approach are that respondents may have the experience of the intervention high in their mind and translate this into a constructed view of how they felt beforehand, which may not be the same as if they had been asked directly at the time.Respondents will also be familiar with what the careers practitioner would like to see (i.e.progress through the session), and may feel some conscious or subconscious desire to provide a helpful answer for the person who has just spent time patiently and supportively working with them.This latter disadvantage is similar to other measures conducted immediately post an intervention even if they have a data point collected immediately prior to it.

Evaluation results
Post-pre evaluation data were logged online for 45 customers across Scotland and Wales, of whom just under half were unemployed or soon to be unemployed at the time of the initial guidance interview.These 45 represented about 60% of those customers for whom it had been possible to engage a discussion about wellbeing, who were themselves 55% of those for whom it had been possible to test their possible interest in wellbeing.
For 180 out of 317 potentially eligible customers seen over the full period (57%), the conversations were such that there was no potential to test wellbeing interest or such that wellbeing was clearly not relevant.For instance, a customer might have a specific question about a CV, a job/ welfare application process, or a specific job, or there might be some overwhelming presenting issue that is required to be the focus of the initial guidance interview, without precluding the possibility of future interview sessions addressing other topics.
The results of the post-pre evaluation questions are summarised in Table 1, along with an effect size for the mean of the paired differences divided by the standard deviation of the differences and statistical significance test for differences between post and pre scores using a two-tailed, paired ttest.
In the post-session debrief, customers typically described their score as of the start of the session about neutral on average across the five wellbeing statements (i.e."neither true nor not true of me") or slightly negative, with 2 or 3 being the most common scores.By contrast, with reference to the end of the session, 4 or 5 were the most common scores provided.
On all five questions asked, the customers reported a significant wellbeing gain over the session, ranging from an effect size of 0.7-1.8 standard deviations, with t-test p-values all significant at the better than 1% level.The effect sizes for progress were strongest (1.7-1.8) for the first three questions and weaker for the last two questions (0.7), perhaps because the starting point for the initial scores was higher for the last two questions.As discussed in the previous and again in the next section, caution is required about interpreting these scores given the way in which they are asked.Nonetheless, even allowing for some caution, there is a clear positive direction in the results and large effect sizes.
This dramatic progress is echoed in the quotes from customers and the case notes from practitioners, which also illustrate the diversity of tools and approaches that practitioners used to raise and navigate wellbeing-related topics.Only two verbatim quotes are available from different customers completing the online survey, since most practitioners conducted the post-pre questions as part of the session.Both quotes point to a very positive experience: "I thought that a careers appointment would just help me to find work but I got so much more from it todaythank you so much"."This has helped me to realise a different perspective on life and see some of the negatives that were weighing me down as positives".
A review of the case notes is used to surface briefly two illustrative cases that read as among the most positive regarding application of the conversation framework and wellbeing progress and two cases that read among the most challenging to navigate for practitioners, i.e.where the intended conversation framework could be least smoothly applied.We emphasise that the project was not designed to capture comprehensive case notes on all participants and that the vast majority of case notes are positive in tone (as reflected in the Table 1 data).The cases are presented in a micro format with details adjusted in a way that does not affect their contribution to the paper, such that individuals are not identifiable from the details provided.The case notes also help to make vivid the kinds of changes in wellbeing presentation and attitude that can manifest over the course of a career guidance session.
In one challenging case (Case A), a women aged late-30s was seen in person at the job centre having been made redundant from a retail customer care job nine months ago.Case A was looking for CV help and general options, with low levels of motivation for work and little enthusiasm for the ideas discussed.A low pressure question around scoring confidence from 1-10 (answer: 4) provided an in-road for discussion on wellbeing.Neutral activities like completing a job matching quiz helped increase awareness of transferrable skills.Reported wellbeing improved only slightly over the session, from an average of 3.4 to 3.8.However, at a later follow-up discussion, some progress had been made and the customer was more cheerful and had begun investigating options for training and voluntary work.With reference to the four high-level categories of wellbeing benefit from guidance discussed earlier, this case is driven primarily by "direct via customer action taking", with only a small initial direct benefit from the coaching/counselling itself.
A second challenging case was a Masters-qualified man in his early 30s who came in with specific questions around a redundancy support programme (Case B).He appeared upset about losing his job and in low mood generally, but with little openness to discussing it.In this case, the practitioner approached the topic of wellbeing indirectly, via discussing the events of the past few months and the impact on his self-confidence.Reflections on past successes (academic qualifications, enjoyable job roles) helped to focus the discussion on what might be done in the future to reduce the risk of a further redundancy.It was not possible to do the post-pre questions with this customer, as the session already felt very rushed and the customer had a lot of concerns to be discussed directly.Action steps from the initial appointment included presenting a positive self-image and making notes about previous tasks completed successfully.At a follow-up discussion, he had been offered a job and was feeling much more positive.The benefits in this case most clearly correspond to the indirect benefit via career progression.While there may also have been some immediate coaching/counselling benefits, the session itself was difficult for the client.However, the actions taken contributed to receiving a job offer, which was the primary driver of increased wellbeing.
Turning to the case notes where the wellbeing conversation flowed easily, Case C concerned a young woman who had left college unemployed and was living at home.She was initially very reserved and quiet and the practitioner suggested an exercise to help surface a topic to work on together.The exercise involved her selecting one picture that she related to most out of a set of pictures available.The customer chose "a maze of arrows", which prompted a discussion about having no real direction.For a picture that better reflected where she would like to be, she selected a path with a blind corner, i.e. somewhere where she knew clearly where she had been but not necessarily the way ahead.Part of the session focused on the customer's feelings with her family and herself and the kind of career options that appealed to her, including nursing.The customer created a plan about interviewing people she trusted to learn about how others saw her strengths and looking for volunteering options in the areas that interested her.At a follow-up session, C spoke positively about the development in her confidence and was lined up to do a volunteering activity in the health sector.She gave answers of 5 to each of the five wellbeing questions in the follow-up session.This case contains elements of wellbeing progress from three of the four categories identified earlier, not drawing on practitioner actions via referrals or advocacy (being not applicable in this case).
Case D was a recently unemployed person in her early 50s who was emotionally open from the start of the interview, in tears and raising concerns about her mental health.She was embarrassed by being unemployed, distressed at not having money for basic social functions, and felt that her age held her back from future employment options.With wellbeing issues apparent from the start, the practitioner explored the topic based on what the customer had naturally raised, asking why she felt embarrassed.The practitioner explained that the customer could have as many sessions as needed to make progress, which she found reassuring compared to other services she had engaged with.
Having made an action plan together, case D reported an average gain in wellbeing from 1.2 to 3.8.Case D is a particularly powerful example of direct wellbeing gains via coaching/counselling in the session itself.For these gains to be sustained and built on, the action plan will need to be delivered and lead towards success, relying in part on the practitioner's skill in gauging the customer and working with her to ensure the plan is ambitious enough to achieve meaningful gains while still being incremental and achievable enough to maintain motivation.
Regarding the survey itself, customers were described as typically finding the process useful, perhaps unsurprising given how the conversation had led in a structured way to that point and customers had been asked if they were willing to support it.One customer suggested that the survey could be used at every appointment to measure progress.

Discussion and reflections
In this section, we reflect briefly on five topics: the contribution of the tools developed, the interpretation of the customer wellbeing gains, how the collaboration worked, how wellbeing might be more strongly embedded in future practice, and potential for further research in the nature of this pilot.

Contribution of the tools developed
The initial conversation framework and related techniques were further developed by the practitioners and researchers after the pilot, assembled into a free to access toolkit available online (Hughes et al., 2022) and a two-hour training session built around the toolkit.The toolkit explains the definitions and key concepts in career guidance and wellbeing, the community of interest and pilots, a ten stage interview process for navigating wellbeing that can be easily integrated into existing interview models, and advice on applying this in practice, including how to manage the guidance environment, maintain personal emotional steadiness, develop a set of exercises/ tools to draw on, and build evidence.
The key contribution in developing the toolkit is collating, systematising, and sharing insights gathered across the pockets of excellent practice identified by practitioners and leaders in our collaboration.There is no space in this article to discuss the many tools and conversational tricks included in the toolkit, but readers are invited to review the toolkit, with example tools such as card sorts, transactional analysis, coaching questions, circle of support visualisation, scaling questions, and so on.
193 practitioners in Careers Wales participated in a two-hour training session Sep-Oct 2022 and provided feedback via pre-post polling.Practitioners were polled at the start and end of the session with the question: "How would you rate your confidence in using career guidance to support mental health and well-being?"In total, over the course of the training session, the proportion with low confidence dropped from 26% to 0% and proportion with high confidence increased from 4% to 21%.As of early 2023, Skills Development Scotland are cascading a similar training programme through their guidance practitioners, but developed and delivered within the organisation at the local team-level to increase internal ownership.This programme, which is still in development form, will also rate practitioner confidence in using career guidance to support mental health and wellbeing before and after the session.The training will focus on how to broach the topic of wellbeing with customers in a supportive way and following practitioner feedback will be a largely practical session allowing for experimentation and reflection on tool usage to allow for confidence growth in this area.Format is also similar, being about 90 min delivered to c.10-40 attendees.While most feedback is positive, some practitioners and managers flagged the difficulty of time and finding enough time to engage properly in the training, being a familiar issue from continuing professional development more generally.
As highlighted earlier, awareness of wellbeing is not new to career guidance and considerable good practice exists already (indeed, being the basis for our toolkit and training).In some cases, language around wellbeing provides a different way to recognise aspects that are already important components of practice.The ambition of this collaboration was to embed wellbeing more explicitly into practice, by which we refer to helping all practitioners be systematically aware of the potential for explicit wellbeing discussions in career guidance, especially in initial conversations which typically include a triage component, and to be equipped with a range of example language and methods for acting on this potential, targeted to those customers for whom it is deemed appropriate.Reports from within the collaboration and the subsequent training evaluations suggest it is possible for such explicit embedding to strengthen practice and confidence, not by changing the high-level guidance standards and frameworks already in place, but by introducing discussion guides, toolkits, and measurement techniques to help practitioners deliver the ambitions of their existing professional frameworks.

Interpreting customer wellbeing progress
The post-pre method for gathering empirical evidence on progress may inflate wellbeing benefits for the reasons discussed in section 2. In particular, we might be worried about "politeness bias", i.e. customers wanting to provide an answer that would make practitioners feel pleased about the session, and "short-term bias" or "persistence bias", i.e. how long might we expect the real proportion of the reported wellbeing boost to last beyond the session end.An internal analysis for Careers Wales assessed plausible ranges for such factors to test whether the wellbeing gains might remain policy relevant.Considering this "politeness bias" it is worth noting that SDS adult appointments are on a purely voluntary basis, as is the case for adults attending interviews with Working Wales careers advisers.Combining this with the initial selection criteria of "customers on a first time engagement", the potential for "politeness bias" driven by structural power relations is limited; indeed the practitioner/customer relationship is in its infancy.However, general interpersonal civility and social pressures to be kind are likely still present to an extent.
One way of assessing policy relevance is to translate wellbeing gains into a consistent measurement framework, as used in wellbeing economics and health policy, such as the "WELLBY" (wellbeing-adjusted life year) developed by the UK government and anchored in the "QALY" concept (quality-adjusted life years), long-used in healthcare cost effectiveness analysis (HMT, 2021).This approach suggests that the UK ought to be willing to pay £13,000 (in 2019 prices) per one wellbeing-adjusted life year: a one-point improvement on a 0-10 scale of self-reported life satisfaction sustained for one year.Recognising that unit costs vary very widely depending on scheduling intensity and format and approach to overheads, we can use an illustrative £100 per guidance session from analysis for Northern Ireland by Hughes and Percy (2022) to conclude that a willingness-topay breakeven should occur based on direct wellbeing gains alone with average 0.8% of a WELLBY gain per guidance session.
Initial analysis on the pilot data reported here suggests this WELLBY threshold is likely to be exceeded, although further work would be needed to assess this with confidence.A comparison of post-pre and pre-post data points provides some empirical basis for politeness bias, albeit is only able to narrow the range to 25%−75%.
Analysis of persistence from longitudinal studies provides positive grounds for continued gains, e.g.Whelan (2017) for six months and Perdrix et al. (2012) for one year.Given the limited evidence specific to this topic, a cautious interpretation might assume full persistence only for the first week, with 50% of the effect sustained through to the end of the first month (i.e.assuming no follow-up sessions take place in this hypothetical analysis) and 25% of the effect sustained through to the end of month six.This is a "full persistence" equivalent of 15% of a year, i.e. 8 weeks.
The raw measure of wellbeing gain over a guidance session can be calculated using the meaningful life question, being a conservative choice (having the lowest gain of the five questions) and one closely aligned to the life satisfaction measure preferredbut not requiredby HMT (2021).
The 0.7 point gain identified on a 5-point scale for that question (table 1) equates to a 1.5 point gain on an 11-point scale.
Finally, we must comment on what proportion of guidance interviews might be expected to have a wellbeing gain.Most conservatively, we could apply 14%, being the percentage of interviewees seen in our pilot for whom we have post-pre questions logged online.This assumes there are no direct wellbeing gains for 86% of customers.A more reasonable, but still conservative estimate might apply 24%, being the proportion of customers for whom it was possible to initiate a wellbeing-related discussion.
Combining these numbers together, we arrive at just over breakeven in the low case or a 5x wellbeing return on investment in the higher case.Naturally, other assumptions and estimates are plausible, but this worked example provides indicative confidence that initial guidance interviews for adults have an immediate wellbeing benefit that is alone enough to justify the investment, even before considering the indirect wellbeing benefits of career progression or the significant fiscal benefits of more rapid return to work and career success (e.g.Percy et al., 2022).

Reflections on the collaboration
This collaboration was a reminder that such foundational topics as wellbeing are never starting from an empty page.In addition to the extant literature, practitioners will have significant personal techniques and experience to draw on.Exemplarian action research is designed to take full advantage of this, allowing for time for exploratory and perspective-sharing discussions before focusing on the detail of a potential collaborative investigation.
The success of the training suggests that practitioners value having access to practical approaches as a complement to the formal frameworks that guide practice.Practical approaches, such as specific phrases to use, when to use them, and how to follow-up, as well as specific tools and techniques to choose from, help to build confidence, to systematise practice, and to empower practitioners.At the same time, it is important that such toolkits retain the space for flexibility, i.e. a variety of formats/languages that practitioners can then tailor to circumstances based on their professional judgement and empathy.
Considering success factors for the collaboration, we would emphasise the value of a strong common core: in this case the joint moral conviction that customer wellbeing matters in career guidance and that it possible for wellbeing considerations to be more strongly embedded in career guidance deliveryeven if we do not know how to do it from the outset and will continually learn how to do it better.A further success factor was the value of having a multi-stage/multi-threaded collaborationdifferent people and organisations engaged in different parts of the research, but remained part of the conversation and review/reflection stages, which both helped manage busy diaries and also meant some participants can bring a more neutral perspective at different review stages.
More generally, the experience reinforces lessons well understood from other project work: the need for senior sponsorship, the need for a coordinating function, and the need for documentation to control scope, especially in between relatively infrequent (about monthly) meetings alongside busy core jobs.
A final reflection is that our collaboration included important groups in career guidance, but the scope/resource did not allow to include all relevant groups.We had researchers, leaders/managers, and practitioners (with wide range of career experience), but did not have customers engaged in the action research itself and nor did we have service funders, employers, or referral organisations throughout an employability services chain.

Embedding wellbeing work in the future
This practitioner-researcher collaboration showed the potential for embedding wellbeing more explicitly into initial guidance interviews with adults, not only via the achievements during the pilot and training sessions but also via discussions since about what more would be needed to systematise wellbeing more comprehensively.
For instance, practitioners reported the value of peer discussions and being part of an ongoing community related to this topic.Beyond the life of this collaboration, the question exists about where such a community might best sit and what scope it might have.For instance, it could be anchored in CPD, the management hierarchy, a professional association, or union work.It might be focused solely on embedding wellbeing into guidance practice or it might expand to address all aspects of wellbeing, including practitioner wellbeing, or physical health and accommodations more generally.
A one-off round of training marks the beginning of systematisation rather than its conclusion.A more systematised approach would explore how wellbeing knowledge and skills might be maintained over time, perhaps by being incorporated into an existing CPD activity or introduced as a new regular training.For new entrants to the profession, it should explore whether training is best incorporated into initial qualifications or treated as part of induction training/mentoring for new joiners.As with all forms of topic knowledge and professional skills, questions need to be addressed around refreshing training materials and the appropriate frequency of CPD for different practitioners.
Related to the ongoing development of training materials, we could consider how evidence and research might be improved.For instance, practitioners commented that standard guidance monitoring data in public employment services typically did a poor job of capturing wellbeing.Customer satisfaction with the process is a poor proxy and other outcomes are more about employability progression.
The five post-pre questions used in this study did work in a guidance session, but likely require too much time to be applied in every case.However, it might be possible to apply such a data gathering process on a sample basis, perhaps with customer satisfaction surveys enriched with wellbeing questions or practitioner-led questioning for a single fortnight each year, to generate regular new data points to share with funders/stakeholders, test different approaches, and fuel social impact analyses.Such monitoring work might also be supplemented with more thorough ad hoc research work, e.g.considering longer term outcomes for customers and learning more from customers about their experiences of the process and the different mechanisms through which wellbeing gains might be achieved.

Limitations and further research
Focusing on the limitations of this pilot research and possible extensions, one key learning from this study was the relatively modest proportion of customers seen for whom it was possible to raise wellbeing topics and subsequently measure progress.For limitations of the current research, it would be important to understand whether this engagement rate reflects the genuine proportion of customers for which wellbeing would be useful or whether different techniques might unlock greater engagement and wellbeing progress for more customers.For possible extensions, we would like to know how representative the measured progress is of other customers.How large are wellbeing gains from guidance even when it is not an explicit part of the dialogue?It would also be valuable to explore different ways of operationalising wellbeing, such as with different questions to measure progress or by comparing different explicit definitions of wellbeing that relate to specific competing theories of wellbeing.
With the research dataset already gathered, we might want to understand whether the wellbeing progress varied by customer circumstances (e.g.employed/unemployed) or by age.We might also analyse the case notes in more detail to understand more about the mechanisms for improving wellbeing and how different techniques are applied in practice.This type of research could also be applied more generally to younger customers, including those still in education given the growing urgency of wellbeing during adolescence and its potential long-term impacts, as well as to broader forms of career development beyond the one-to-one interview applied in this pilot.Research with adolescents is of particular importance as the brain development and plasticity of this phase means they are at increased risk and vulnerability of long term well-being issues (Andersen, 2003), as well as having an increased sensitivity to learning (Blakemore & Choudhury, 2006;Blakemore & Mills, 2014;Scarborough et al., 2010).We note that ongoing Canadian pilots drawn on as part of our collaboration team included other forms of career support, e.g.see details in CCDF (2021) and Redekopp and Huston (2022).

Conclusion
Research has established powerful relationships between career guidance, work, and wellbeing.However, the practitioner training suggests that confidence in supporting wellbeing with guidance work has room for improvement, with 26% having low confidence at the start of our training sessions and only 4% having high confidence.Nonetheless, pilot work in Scotland and Wales reinforces what the practitioners in our collaboration attested: guidance does have enormous potential to support customer wellbeing.In particular, having co-developed an interview framework and supporting toolkit, practitioners were able to raise wellbeing-related topics in 24% of all first time adult guidance interviews over the pilot period, with post-pre evidence on wellbeing progress over the session for 60% of those.While a small sample (n = 45), we saw significant gains in wellbeing over those sessions, conducted in the context of a public employment service setting, with effect sizes ranging from 0.7-1.8 standard deviations.Even with conservative assumptions regarding any politeness bias in customer responses and how long these wellbeing gains last, indicative analysis suggests these direct wellbeing gains are highly policy relevant compared to UK government thresholds for public health investment.We hope that policymakers will recognise the wellbeing benefits of career guidance as a public good worth investing in, above and beyond the considerable fiscal benefits of a well-functioning career guidance ecosystem.

Notes
1. We adopted the term "customers" in this paper as this reflected the terminology used in practice when discussing individual or group encounters that take place with careers advisers/coaches within the national careers services as funded by the Welsh and Scottish Governments.2. E.g. https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/78173-guidance-on-theories-concepts-and-sources-of-research-for-the-level-6-unit-on-career-guidance-theory.pdf;https://www.thecdi.net/write/Academy/CDI_177-QCD-Handbook_2022-23-v3.pdf

Table 1 .
Post-pre evaluation question results.