Page 74 - Working-and-ageing-Guidance-and-counselling-for-mature-learning

3062_EN_C1_Layout 1 11/23/11 4:21 PM Page 68

Working and ageing
68 Guidance and counselling for mature learners

European Union for instance, the number of youngsters is decreasing, while
the number of people aged 60, and over, is at the same time rising roughly
twice the rate observed until a few years ago (European Commission, 2010).
These demographic changes imply an ageing working population and
necessitate companies to rely increasingly on older workersʼ competences
and efforts. Companies are in need of growing participation of senior people,
and are forced to retain their older workers longer, to make use of their rich
expertise, and to prevent skills shortages in critical domains.
Results from a broad scan on ʻage and workʼ, initiated by the Dutch labour
23
union FNV ( ) in 2006, revealed that, in many companies, age-related policies
to prevent older workers from early retirement are absent (Klomp, 2010). Other
studies confirm there is a serious lack of strategic responses to the ageing
workforce (Armstrong-Stassen and Schlosser, 2008; Kooij, 2010). Based on
a survey among over 28 000 employers in 25 countries, the Manpower report
of 2007 concluded that one key reason for this is simply that employers do
not understand how to do so effectively (Armstrong-Stassen and Ursel, 2009).
The Manpower study found that a growing proportion of the older worker
population may be quite willing and able to continue working for years to come,
if workers are engaged and encouraged to do so (Manpower, 2007). It is thus
important to find out in what ways work organisations could positively affect
employability of their ageing workforce and support longer working lives.
Therefore, the main research question addressed in this chapter is what
factors affect employability of an ageing workforce.

4.2. Understanding employability

Thijssen (1997) distinguished three types of employability definitions:
(a) according to the core definition, employability encompasses all individual
possibilities to be successful in a diversity of jobs in a given labour market
situation;
(b) the broader definition covers not only actual employability but also
individual capacities to improve and use employability;
(c) in the all-embracing definition, contextual factors and effectuation
conditions are added as well. Effectuation conditions are context-bound
factors that help or hamper a workerʼs employability, such as training
provided by the firm and human resources policies in place. In this all-

23
( ) Federation Dutch labour movement; Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV).