Sustainable employability and vitality
As an employer, you face heavy challenges due to an ageing population, diversity, the ongoing war for talent and increasing numbers of staff on long-term sick leave. Do you want your organisation to stay agile? A strong employability policy keeps your employees engaged and energised in their work.
What is sustainable employability?
Sustainable employability is about keeping employees healthy and motivated at work throughout their career.
As an employer, you play a key role in this. Inportant factors for you to address:
- Protecting and enhancing your employees’ work capacity
- Paying attention to changing capacities and competencies
- Responding to changing needs in the working environment
By proactively committing to ‘workable work’, you can prevent downtime and strengthen your organisation in the long term.
Why is sustainable employability important?
A proactive, strategic approach to sustainable employability offers your organisation many benefits:
- You are maintaining access to valuable talent and essential expertise.
- You are reducing the risk of downtime due to stress and burnout and increasing your employees’ resilience.
- You are reducing long-term sickness absence at your organisation. An attendance policy can also make a big difference here.
- You are creating a work environment where employees feel recognised and valued.
Develop a sustainable employability policy together with our experts
What is the Work Ability House?
The Work Ability House is a scientific model of what employees need to be able to function well, both physically and mentally. The house has four floors, which together determine the work capacity:
- Ground floor: Health
- First floor: Competence
- Second floor: Values and attitudes
- Third floor: Work community and management
For an employee to perform effectively, there must be a good balance between the various elements (health, competence, values and attitudes) and the demands of the job. The model helps you in taking targeted action, tailored to the needs of your employees and your organisation.
How can you increase your employees’ long-term employability?
How do you keep your employees healthy and motivated to work? These tips can help you get started:
- Formulate a clear vision on sustainable employability. Assemble a working group with diverse representation, including employees, management, HR, prevention advisors, etc., and ensure support within your organisation.
- Map the work capacity. Group discussion based on the Work Ability House is an ideal starting point for the identification of actions that your organisation is already taking along with any needs and opportunities that can still be addressed.
- Ensure proper onboarding. Sustainable employability starts with your intake. A warm welcome improves engagement from day one.
- Foster open dialogue about adjusted work (job crafting). Encourage employees to talk to their manager or occupational doctor about possible adjustments to their tasks or working environment. This increases commitment and ensures support for your wellbeing policy.
- Acknowledge and appreciate your employees. Appreciation, trust and respectful communication are the foundations of a positive work culture and long-term engagement. You can strengthen these foundations by implementing a code of conduct and actively involving your middle management in an appreciative leadership process with attention to wellbeing.
- Encourage a healthy lifestyle. Arrange opportunities to exercise, offer healthy snacks and actively provide information on health-related topics, using the Fit4Work programme for example.
How can IDEWE support you
We will support you in embedding sustainable employability in your organisational culture. We can help you with:
- Development of a shared vision on work capacity and employability
- Analysis of your current situation and risks
- A realistic action plan tailored to your organisation
- Periodic evaluations and adjustments where necessary
Develop a sustainable employability policy together with our experts
Why choose IDEWE?
- A tailor-made policy - Every organisation is different, and so are your sustainable employability challenges. IDEWE doesn’t believe in standard solutions. We listen to your unique context, assess your employees’ needs together and develop a policy that is truly a good fit for your organisation.
- Preventive approach - We believe prevention is better than cure. IDEWE offers proactive support to prevent downtime and strengthens your employees’ physical and mental wellbeing before problems arise.
- Full support - From analysis to practical actions and follow-up: IDEWE is there for you every step of the way. We will work to create a healthy and resilient workplace together.
