Value Me: supporting confident career management and increased wellbeing in early and mid-career academics

This chapter will explore the potential to adapt an existing intervention from the field of graduate employability (called the Value Me framework) to support confident career development and increased wellbeing for early and mid-career academics. The original Value Me framework for students emphasises critical self-reflection on skills, strengths, core values, purpose and personality to support articulation of a clear employability narrative and personal brand, increasing self-awareness and employability-related self-confidence. The authors suggest that elements of the framework could be incorporated in a career development programme for early and mid-career academics to increase their perceptions of their own ability to successfully manage their careers, navigate promotion pathways, and inform career decision making in line with personal values. Further, drawing on self-determination theory, we suggest that an adapted version of the Value Me framework has potential to support fulfilment of the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness, thereby improving wellbeing in legal academics.