Tomáš Šprlák works in the field of career guidance with a focus on developing practical tools and programmes for different groups. He has experience from public employment services in Slovakia and from managing guidance services for adults in France. He has also contributed to quality assurance of guidance provision at European level.

Currently, he is involved in the Exploring Green Guidance Erasmus+ project and is a board member of Lab Green Guidance, a francophone network of practitioners integrating sustainability into career guidance.

"Rethinking careers for a sustainable future"

Career guidance has long operated within paradigms shaped by economic growth, individual choice, and labour market alignment. Yet in the context of climate breakdown, ecological limits, and widening inequalities – these models seem no longer sufficient and more and more disconnected with reality. Green guidance emerges as both a critique and a proposal: it challenges individualistic, market-driven frameworks, questions the narratives of success, competitiveness, acceleration, growth, performance, and conformism, and opens space for approaches that integrate sustainability, justice, and collective well-being.

This keynote will explore three rationales of green guidance: technocratic (focusing on green skills and labour market needs), developmental (supporting individuals to navigate and thrive in the green transition), and emancipatory (empowering people to reshape structures and advocate for a just transition). Drawing on research and practitioner insights from across Europe, it will highlight practical tools, ethical dilemmas, and new imaginaries that allow career guidance to become part of the response to the multiple crises of our time.

Rather than asking only “how do we fit people into today’s jobs?”, green guidance asks: what kind of work, education, and futures are worth creating – for people, communities, and the planet?