Tinka van Vuuren

Employability policy in Dutch organizations

The results from a study of more than 1,000 Dutch organizations indicate that less is being done about employability policy in Dutch organizations than the plentiful media interest leads one to expect. Though most organizations take measures to improve the employability of their personnel, only one-third has a formulated policy in this area. The most frequent employability-stimulating measures are: schooling and training, task expansion and task enrichment. There is far more activity in the government sector than in the market sector, in large organizations than in smaller ones, and the principal target group is younger people. Attention is not heavily directed at enhancing the position of weaker groups in the labour market. Only one-fifth of organizations have introduced recent changes in their employability policy, 25 per cent of them prompted by a growing labour shortage.

Enhancing perceived employability

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating role of employees’ willingness to invest in training and development and willingness for mobility on the relationship between human resource (HR) management practices and employability. As such, the study takes an interactionist perspective, building on human capital theory and social exchange theory. Investigating possible interaction effects is highly relevant as little is known yet on how organizational efforts (i.e. policies and activities) and individual effort of employees might strengthen each other in their aim of enhancing employability. Design/methodology/approach – Analyses were based on a sample of 1,346 respondents from 91 primary school locations in the Netherlands. Hypotheses were tested using regression analyses controlling for nesting of the data. Findings – The results indicate that HR activities and employees’ willingness are positively related to employability. Furthermore, only employees’ willingness for mobility str...

Sustainable employment: the importance of intrinsically valuable work and an age-supportive climate

Abstract The aging workforce emphasizes the importance of sustainable employment, that is the extent to which workers are able and willing to remain working now and in the future . This raises the question how organizations can design work contexts that contribute to sustainable employment. This study investigated the role of a intrinsically motivating job (intrinsic job value) and an age-supportive climate for three indicators of employees’ sustainable employment: employability, work engagement and affective commitment. The questionnaire was completed by 119 office employees (response 35%) of a Dutch public transport organization. A SEM analysis revealed that intrinsic job value was strongly and positively related with all three indicators of sustainable employment for employees of all ages. In contrast, an age-supportive climate was especially important for older employees’ work engagement and affective commitment. This study has implications for practice and for research of sustainable employment, HRM and aging.

HR practices for enhancing sustainable employability : implementation, use, and outcomes

Abstract With the aging of the workforce, organizations need to maintain or improve the sustainable employability of their workforce throughout their working life. This raises the question which HR practices increase workers’ sustainable employability at work. The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which organizations implement HR practices for enhancing sustainable employability in terms of workers’ health, motivation, and skills and knowledge from the employer’s perspective. In total, 312 owners/directors or HR managers (response rate 13%) filled out the questionnaire. The findings showed that most organizations implemented a range of HR practices to improve the health, motivation, and skills and knowledge of their employees. Perceived effectiveness of these practices were dependent on the number of HR practices that were implemented, employees’ use of and participation in designing these practices. Implementation of HR practices was also related to higher satisfaction with the current employability of employees, and to increased productivity of the organization. Implications for practice and examples of HR practices to enhance sustainable employability are given.

I will survive : a construct validation study on the measurement of sustainable employability using different age conceptualizations

Though the importance of sustainable employability throughout peoples working life is undisputed, up till now only one attempt for a conceptual definition has been made (van der Klink et al., 2016). Following the suggestions to further refine and improve this definition recently put forward by Fleuren et al. (2016), we propose an approach to sustainable employability that is based on the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) framework, and incorporates three indicators: the ability, the motivation, and the opportunity to continue working, respectively. As sustainable employability is considered to be an important aspect of successful aging at work, this study used four different conceptualizations of aging at work to set up convergent and divergent validity of our operationalization of sustainable employability: calendar age, organizational age (job and organizational tenure), functional age (work ability), and life-span age (partner and children). We formulated several hypotheses that were tested by analyzing data from an online survey among 180 employees from Dutch public service organizations who filled out a questionnaire on different age concepts, and their ability, motivation, and opportunity to continue working. Multiple regression analyses were performed, and results showed that the four conceptualizations of aging were differently related to the three indicators of sustainable employability. Life-span age, in terms of having children, had the strongest negative relationship with the ability to continue working, organizational age (i.e., organizational tenure) had the strongest negative relationship with the motivation to continue working, and functional age had the strongest negative relationship with the opportunity to continue working. Moreover, functional age was significantly negatively related to the other two indicators of sustainable employability too, while life-span age appeared to enhance the ability and motivation to continue working (in terms of having children) and the perceived opportunity to continue working (in terms of having a partner). Calendar age was only important for the opportunity to continue working and appeared to have a negative association with this outcome variable. These results lend support to our proposed operationalization of sustainable employability by showing that the three indicators are differently related to different age conceptualizations thus expanding previous research on the conceptualization of sustainable employability.

Career control, career dialogue and managerial position: How do these matter for perceived employability?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine three-way interactions among career control, career dialogue and managerial position in predicting perceived employability. The authors expected that participation in career dialogue strengthens the positive relationship between career control and employability. Furthermore, the authors expected that managers benefit more from career dialogue than employees. Hence, the relationship between career control and employability was expected to be strongest when employees engage in career dialogue and hold a managerial position. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected in 2014 conducting a cross-sectional survey among managers (n=206) and employees (n=254) at a Dutch location of a large science-based multinational. Moderated regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses. Findings Career control was positively related to perceived employability. This relationship was significantly stronger for the managerial group that did participate in a career dialogue than for the managerial group that did not engage in a career dialogue. For the non-managerial group of employees participation in a career dialogue did not strengthen the relationship between career control and perceived employability. Practical implications Career control is beneficial for enhancing perceived employability among employees regardless of their position in the organization. Hence, training employees to master this competency may be a fruitful starting point for enhancing employability. Originality/value This is the first study to investigate whether the relation between career control, career dialogue and employability differs for employees with a managerial and a non-managerial role.