Hi, I'm Helen and I'm Sarah and this is the squiggly careers podcast where each week we share

ideas for action and some tools to try out that we hope will help you navigate your squiggly

career with a bit more confidence, clarity and control and this week we are taking on the topic

of career cushioning but what does it mean sarah well career

cushioning is one of those phrases that have emerged a bit like quiet quitting so there's lots of

articles about it and helen and i even had a debate before this conversation we were like we don't want to

get drawn into kind of career fads we don't want to be like fash fashion for careers.

But I do think career cushioning, because people will be seeing it around, I want to make sure

that people are clear about what it means and why it's useful, but also what it's not, because

I do think career cushioning in lots of ways is sensible. Career cushioning in summary is keeping your options open.

It's recognising that your current job won't be your last job and it's being proactive

and almost taking this create not weight attitude when it comes to increasing your career

resilience. So I think this is always important, but I do think the reason

that career cushioning is sort of having a mini moment, if you want to describe it like that,

is that when there are tough times, you know, in the environment or economically, when recessions

are happening or coming our way, the likelihood of those uncertain, unexpected,

naughty moments in our squiggly careers coming our way does, of course, increase. So whether that

looks like job changes or restructures or redundancies or, you know, maybe your manager leaving,

those sorts of things where we sort of, we don't

know that happening until they happen. And so they are outside of our control and they can feel

quite daunting when they kind of do come our way. If you spend some time, if you take some action

to sort of cushion your career, it often means that is in your control. So you've sort of been

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