The physical and mental health of your personnel changes over the course of their careers. This also applies to competencies and knowledge. Additionally, your personnel are required to work longer due to the increasing retirement age. Higher sickness absenteeism, lower productivity, and decreasing motivation are potential risks.
Is the work still feasible both physically and mentally? Can your employees keep up with all the new developments? How do you ensure they continue to enjoy their work together?
With the aging population and a tight labor market, the emergence of new generations and other cultures, as well as changes resulting from technological advancements such as AI, now is the time to prioritize sustainable employability.
Sustainable employability means that employers and employees ensure they can adapt to changes that occur while remaining fit and healthy at work. Sustainable employability can be broken down into the following three elements:
Vitality
Represents energetic, resilient, fit, motivated, and the ability to work tirelessly. Ask yourself the following questions:
Work Capacity
Stands for the employee's health. To what extent is the employee physically and mentally capable of performing their job? Is there still a good balance between individual characteristics (health, competencies, values, and attitude) and the job requirements?
Employability
This concerns being attractive in the job market. Is your employee sufficiently attractive to find a new job if necessary? For this, lifelong learning and regularly changing jobs or positions is important.
Remaining sustainably employable is, of course, also the own responsibility of the individual employee. However, employers can enable their employees to continue doing their work well, healthily, and with pleasure. And to combine work and private life well. In practice, you see that this is a challenge for many employers.
Jan, 56 years old, has been working for 10 years as a work preparer for a window frame manufacturer. He works full-time and is at the maximum of his salary scale. He has a lot of experience, but it seems he's finding it all more difficult. The company has changed its product range and installed a new package for designing and calculating.
Jan is no longer as fast, and it seems like he goes to work reluctantly. He calls in sick more often, is quieter, and seems increasingly unlike the person once regarded as the driving force of the department. This can't go on.
Sustainable employability is not a 'one size fits all' solution. After all, people are inherently different and therefore have different needs. In this practical example, it is up to you as an employer to engage in a conversation with Jan, highlighting that he seems out of balance. The discussion revolves around Jan's ambitions, those of the organization, and Jan personally.
During the conversation, you can ask Jan the following questions, among others:
Of course, it doesn’t stop at this one conversation. It’s important to stay in contact with each other and agree on joint actions.
Based on the outcomes of the conversations, you, as an employer, can implement changes to keep your employees' working conditions attractive. For example, you can:
Do you have any questions or would you like to know what opportunities there are for your organization in the field of sustainable employability? Please feel free to contact me!
You want a policy focused on positively stimulating the health of your employees. The goal of this workshop is to closely examine your company's situation and provide practical tools for developing or renewing a vitality policy. Your organization and employees are central to this process.
To the workshop