Sustainable employability means attracting the right people and ensuring that they can (continue to) perform optimally throughout their working lives. For the organization, but certainly also for the employee himself. The most important element of sustainable employability, especially in recent years, is personal development. The will to develop must be present in both the employee and the organization.
Why is sustainable employability important?
It is important to pay attention to sustainable employability because it is important for organizations to have highly employable employees. After all, well-deployed employees can respond much more easily to innovations, changes and developments. The tight labor market makes it all too important to find and retain good employees. In addition, we have to work longer and longer, so it is important that employees remain optimally employable until the end of their 'working lives'. In short: sustainable employability ensures that employees remain productive, healthy, motivated and involved for longer.
Sustainable employability is important in every organization for every employee. Both for young employees, and older employees.
How do you improve sustainable employability?
How to improve sustainable employability depends very much on the organization and the employees working there. There is no ready-made recipe that can be used by every organization. It is up to the HR department to investigate what suits your organization and employees best. However, there are two principles you can follow in this process:
Health and vitality In order to perform optimally, it is important for employees to be healthy and vital. Stress is an important part of this. Because you cannot influence this 100%, you cannot force employees to live a healthy life. But you can give them a helping hand by providing them with various instruments. For example, make them aware of their own lifestyle, facilitate a healthy lunch, organize a boot camp or provide fitness subscriptions, encourage employees to take the stairs instead of the elevator, hold meetings while standing, arrange for fruit to be available and try to reduce stress and work pressure. The little things often work best to make employees 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 ensure that work remains challenging and that employees continue to learn and develop? A personal development budget, for example, can ensure that employees can engage in lifelong learning. It is also important that employees themselves take control of their careers and development. This starts with being aware of the importance for the employee himself. Have managers and supervisors coach on this. Have regular discussions with employees about their personal development. The organization is a facilitator and must ensure that all the tools and resources they need (for example, a feedback tool ) are available.