A break in the relationship to work? The Covid-19 pandemic and the temporalities of employees’ management of their career paths

Résumé :

The health crisis is considered to have caused a break in the relationship to work for many employees, who have drawn the consequences through a marked change in their career path. The article questions this hypothesis based on fifteen in-depth interviews with employees of Belgian private and public companies, collected in Spring 2021 in a collaborative research design. It considers the relationship to work and career choices made by individuals by placing them at the crossroads of organizational, professional and family norms that individuals strive to balance. Our results show that while the health crisis represented a shock, it especially amplified and precipitated considerations that play out over longer time frames. Distance from the company and time spent constantly with family members imposed an increased weight on family norms forcing a restructuring of balances, with organizational norms now obliged to deal with the former.