Sustainable employability means attracting the right people and making sure they can keep performing at their best throughout their working life. For the organisation, and certainly for the individual as well. The most important element of sustainable employability, particularly in recent years, is personal development. The will to develop has to be there in the employee and in the organisation alike.

Why does sustainable employability matter?

It is worth paying attention to sustainable employability because organisations need people who are able to work well. People who are able to work well can respond far more easily to innovation, change and new developments. With a tight labour market, finding and keeping good people matters more than ever. We also have to keep working for longer, so it is important that people remain fully able to work right up to the end of their working life. In short: sustainable employability keeps people productive, healthy, motivated and engaged for longer.

Sustainable employability matters in every organisation and for every employee, younger and older alike.

How do you improve sustainable employability?

How you improve sustainable employability depends very much on the organisation and the people who work there. There is no ready-made recipe that every organisation can use. It falls to the HR department to work out what suits your organisation and your people best. There are two starting points you can follow in this process:

Health and vitality To perform at their best, people need to be healthy and full of energy. Stress is an important part of that. Because you do not have 100% influence over it, you cannot oblige people to live healthily. You can give them a hand by offering various tools, though. Make them aware of their own lifestyle, provide a healthy lunch, organise a bootcamp or arrange gym memberships, encourage people to take the stairs instead of the lift, hold meetings standing up, make sure there is fruit available and try to reduce stress and workload. The small things often work best in making people aware of their lifestyle. Skills and competencies Sustainable employability is not only about being mentally and physically fit; it is also about continuing to develop skills and competencies . How do you make sure work stays challenging and people keep learning and developing? A personal development budget, for example, can enable lifelong learning. It is also important that people take control of their own career and development themselves. That starts with being aware of why it matters to them. Have managers coach on this. Talk to your people regularly about their personal development. The organisation facilitates and has to make sure all the tools and resources they need (a feedback tool , for instance) are available.