An interdisciplinary approach to job matching: developing an occupation-specific job matching tool for reintegrating persons with spinal cord injury into the labor market

Abstract

Purpose: To develop and pretest a comprehensive occupation- and health condition-specific job matching tool for vocational rehabilitation of persons with spinal cord injury.

Materials and methods: The study design involved qualitative and quantitative steps. First, an interdisciplinary scoping review covering return-to-work, organizational and vocational psychology research was conducted to devise a conceptual job matching framework. Then, the occupation- and health condition-specific tool content was determined based on a database analysis of jobs performed by persons with spinal cord injury and focus groups with affected persons. Finally, a tool prototype was developed and pretested in a simulation exercise with vocational rehabilitation professionals.

Results: The study yielded a tool prototype with matching profiles that structure the demands and characteristics of 415 occupations as well as spinal cord injury-related needs and limitations into a stable, a modifiable, and a needs-supplies dimension of person-job match. Vocational rehabilitation professionals perceived the prototype as helpful for determining target jobs for vocational retraining and for goal-oriented intervention planning.

Conclusions: By comprehensively assessing the person-job match of individuals with spinal cord injury, the tool facilitates determining suitable target jobs and interdisciplinary intervention planning in vocational rehabilitation and is thus likely to promote sustainable return to work.

Implications for rehabilitation

• Job matching is crucial for a sustainable work reintegration of persons with disabilities. However, the majority of existing job matching tools lack applicability for return to work because they are (1) not occupation-specific or rely on outdated occupational information, (2) not health condition-specific, and (3) not comprehensive with regard to the relevant aspects for determining a person-job match.

• Persons with spinal cord injury are a case in point for the need of job matching tools that comprehensively address occupation- and health condition-specific information.

• The present study responded to the shortcomings of existing job matching tools and uses vocational rehabilitation of persons with spinal cord injury as a case in point for developing a job matching tool that is both occupation- and health condition-specific at the same time.

• The developed tool was perceived as promising for determining suitable target jobs for vocational retraining of persons with spinal cord injury and for goal-oriented intervention planning in an interdisciplinary vocational rehabilitation setting. The tool’s underlying conceptual framework may also serve as a blueprint for developing job matching tools for other types of disabilities.

Keywords:

• Job matching
• vocational rehabilitation
• vocational guidance
• return to work
• spinal cord injury

Acknowledgements

We thank the ParaWork team (Stefan Staubli, Ruth Ziegler, Alexa Meier, Christine Reuse, Ronnie Brandstetter, Corina Amrein, Peter Senn, Martin Senn, and Christine Hayoz) for their great support to the development and pretest of the job matching tool. We also thank Friederike Ebert, Patricia Keusen and Rahel Oertli who enhanced the tool pretest with their expertise in occupational therapy and neuropsychology. A special thanks goes to Lorenzo Medici for providing his expert advice regarding conceptual and content-related issues, to Natalie Lustenberger for greatly contributing to the determination of the SCI-related tool content, and to Ronnie Brandstetter for his support in programing the Excel database.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The present study was conducted as part of a PhD thesis and supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant [no. 153033].