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CHAPTER 4
Individual and organisational predictors influencing ageing workersʼ employability 69

embracing definition, employability encompasses all individual and
contextual conditions that determine a workerʼs current and future position
on the labour market (Thijssen, 1997).
Consistent with the broader definition of employability, Van der Heijde and
Van der Heijden (2006) defined employability as ʻthe continuous fulfilling,
acquiring or creating of work through the optimal use of competencesʼ (p. 453).
Based on various authors, Van der Heijden et al. (2009) added that
employability can be referred to as the ability to engage in a permanent
process of acquisition and fulfilment of employment within or outside the
current organisation, today and in the future. Consequently, organisations
require employees who not only have the occupational expertise to perform
well in their current job, but also possess a set of more general competences
to fulfil different tasks and functions within and outside the organisation in case
their employment is no longer required.
In this competence-based approach, the concept of employability
comprises five dimensions, in which occupational expertise is complemented
with four more general competences, anticipation and optimisation, personal
flexibility, corporate sense, and balance (see Van der Heijde and Van der
Heijden, 2006; Van der Heijden et al., 2009, for elaborate explanations of the
different dimensions).

4.3. Factors affecting employability

Considering the competence-based approach to employability, it could be
stated that development of employeesʼ competences appears to be an
important aspect of employability. The more competences individuals develop
and the better they can work in different situations, the higher their
employability is. Employees are (partly) responsible for investments in their
own human capital, and for their job security, learning, and future career
development (Van der Heijden et al., 2009).
Personal motivation and ability to learn are important (De Grip et al., 2004;
Van der Heijde and Van der Heijden, 2006). Motivation to learn, defined as the
desire to engage in training and development activities to acquire new
knowledge and skills, to learn training content, and to embrace the training
experience (Köroğlu, 2008), seems to be a fundamental precondition to fulfil
the need for a partly self-controlled kind of ongoing learning. Learning
motivation triggers employees to be enthusiastic about learning, and to engage
in developmental activities (Noe and Wilk, 1993). It directs them to really learn