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The International Journal of Human Resource
Management
ISSN: 0958-5192 (Print) 1466-4399 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rijh20
Nothing ventured, nothing gained! How and under
which conditions employers provide employability-
enhancing practices to their older workers
Maria Fleischmann, Ferry Koster & Joop Schippers
To cite this article: Maria Fleischmann, Ferry Koster & Joop Schippers (2015): Nothing
ventured, nothing gained! How and under which conditions employers provide employability-
enhancing practices to their older workers, The International Journal of Human Resource
Management, DOI: 10.1080/09585192.2015.1004100
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2015.1004100
Published online: 17 Feb 2015.
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Nothing ventured, nothing gained! How and under which conditions
employers provide employability-enhancing practices to their older
workers
Maria Fleischmann
a
*, Ferry Koster
a
and Joop Schippers
b
a
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam,
The Netherlands;
b
Department of Economics, Faculty of Law, Economics, and Governance, Utrecht
University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Employability-enhancing practices usually refer to training or courses, but also practices
directed towards older workers to sustain their work capability can be embraced by this
term. In the context of an ageing population and workforce, older workers’ labour market
participation gains an increasingly important role. Therefore, the importance
of employability-enhancing practices is noted as a solution to sustain their employment.
In this study, we focus on employer-provided employability practices for older workers.
We answer the following research question: which practices do employers use to
enhance their older workers’ employability and under which conditions are these
practices adopted. Analyses on Dutch corporate data (N ¼ 860) show that employers
mainly provide employability-enhancing practices that are easily implemented and not
expensive. This finding replicates prior research and clarifies that job redesign should be
considered as a possibility to keep older workers in the labour market. Furthermore, our
study shows that both organizational and labour market characteristics affect employers’
decisions whether to provide employability-enhancing practices for their older workers.
This suggests that policy measures might be necessary to assimilate investments in
employability-enhancing practices across organizations.
Keywords: employability; employers; older workers; organization; personnel policy
Employability-enhancing practices for older workers
‘Employability’ is a well-known buzzword in the literature on human resource (HR)
management. The term is used for different purposes: it can refer to individuals’ work
adaptability (Fugate, Kinicki, & Ashforth, 2004), but often it denotes the policies or practices
that enhance workers’ skills and knowledge by investing in training (De Grip, Van Loo, &
Sanders, 2004; Hall, 2002). Because employability may refer to both workers’ employability
and the employability-enhancing policies or practices, it is necessary to be explicit about the
meaning attached to the term. In the context of an ageing population, several actors regard
employability investments as a possible measure to enhance older workers’ labour market
participation (De Grip et al., 2004; De Vries, Gru
¨
ndemann, & Van Vuuren, 2001;Groot&
Maassen van den Brink, 2000). However, much emphasis has until now been put on
individuals and the employability they possess, rather than considering how organizations can
actively stimulate or generate workers’ employability through the supply of employability-
enhancing practices (De Grip, Van Loo, & Sanders, 1999; Fugate et al., 2004;Gazier,1999,
2001). This article, therefore, specifically focuses on employers’ role for employability
investments by answering the research question which practices do employers use to enhance
their older workers’ employability and under which conditions are these practices adopted.
q 2015 Taylor & Francis
*Corresponding author. Email: fleischmann@fsw.eur.nl
The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2015
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Posing this question is important for several reasons. First, knowledge about which
employability-enhancing prac tices are valuable for older workers is limited. A reason for
this is that there seems to be little agreement among rese archers as well as policy makers
regarding which practices stimulate older workers’ employability. Of ten, it is assumed that
by participating in formal training and courses, workers remain deployable within and
across organizations (De Vries et al., 2001; Groot & Maassen van den Brink, 2000; Picchio
& van Ours, 2011). However, research shows that older workers report a low participation in
these ‘general’ forms of employability-enhancing practices (Antikainen, 2001; Bishop,
1996; Canduela et al., 2012; Van Dalen, Henkens, Henderikse, & Schippers, 2006). It is
argued that increasing workers’ employability through training or the participation in
courses might be aimed towards younger workers, whereas older workers have different
needs in order to sustain their employability and work capacity (Hedge, Borman, &
Lammlein, 2006; Tamkin & Hillage, 1999). Prior research, therefore, often considers ‘age-
aware’ or ‘age-conscious’ HR practices as employability-enhancing investments
specifically directed towards older workers (Remery, Henkens, Schippers, & Ekamper,
2003; Schaeps & Klaassen, 1999). It is clear that stimulating and ensuring workers’
employability has positive impacts for older workers’ labour market participation. Higher
work capability is found to increase the active participation of older worker s in the labour
force or to delay their retirement (Sie grist & Wahrendorf, 2010; Siegrist, Wahrendorf, Von
dem Knesebeck, Ju
¨
rges, & Bo
¨
rsch-Supan, 2007). Also switching to less demanding jobs or
reducing working hours appears to enhance labour participation (Hurd & McGarry, 1993).
An enunciate difficulty is, however, that job redesign to enable and ensure these working
conditions is hardly ever put into practice by employers and organizations (Conen,
Henkens, & Schippers, 2011; Hedge et al., 2006; Taylor & Walker, 1998). Hence, by
answering the research question, we provide new insights and guidance for researchers and
practitioners alike with respect to practices that enhance older workers’ employa bility.
Second, one of the reasons for the hesitant implementation of employability practices
is that it is largely unclear who is responsible for this investment. On the one hand,
individuals themselves can decide to engage in training or skilling to increase their
employability (De Vries et al., 2001; Groot & Maassen van den Brink, 2000 ). On the other
hand, however, those individuals who are active on the labour market receive the largest
part of employability-enhancing investments through their employers in order to perform
better on the job (Forrier & Sels, 2003). These inve stments are aimed at supporting
workers’ ‘job match’ or ‘firm intern al’ employability rather than their ‘external
employability’ (Sanders & De Grip, 2004). This means, employer-provided employ-
ability-enhancing practices pay back for the firm, rather than that they make switching
organizations more likely. Especially when employability enhancement for older workers
takes the form of age-aware HR practices rather than (formal) training, employers have a
crucial role as the ‘decision makers’ (Gazier, 2001). We, therefore, shift the focus to
employers and organizations, as employers decide to which extent employability-
enhancing investments are made and who benefits from them (De Grip et al., 1999).
By doing so, we generate knowledge about employers’ role in the provision of
employability-enhancing practices that can be used to formulate policy advice.
Third, in the literature, there is an elaborate discussion about factors relating to
employer-provided employability. Several theoretical arguments hold that the returns
from employability-enhancing practices are expected to be low er for older workers
compared with their younger colleagues. This decreases the benefits for employers to
provide these practices and make these investments. In line with this argument, prior
research shows that employers are reluctant to invest in their older personnel’s
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employability (Canduela et al., 2012; Chui, Chan, Snape, & Redman, 2001; De Vries
et al., 2001; Henkens, 2005; Karpinska, Henkens, & Schippers, 2011; Taylor & Walker,
1998; Van Dalen, Henkens, & Schippers , 2010 ). Despite this general reluctance, there are
several explanations under which employability-enhancing investments take place.
We discuss not only rational decisions of employers (Becker, 1964; De Vries et al., 2001;
Knoke & Kalleberg, 1994), but also possible symbolic reasons to provide employability-
enhancing practices (Schein, 1985; Zacher & Gielnik, 2014). Arranged according to
arguments against and in favour of the provision of employability practices, we formulate
expectations on the relation between investments in employability-enhancing practices
and the share of older workers in an organization, the organization’s size, the existent
capital in the organization and how older workers are perceived within an organization.
Furthermore, we argue that the labour market dependency of organizations might
influence the investment in older workers’ employability. By using theoretical arguments
from different literatures, we provide an encompassing picture of employers’ investment
decisions, the role of organizational characteristics and the labour market. As knowledge
on these is scarce, new insights will advance the discussion on employer-provided
employability practices.
To investigate the above-stated research questions, we make use of an encompassing
data set that we collected in spring 2012 among a random sample of Dutch employers from
organizations with more than 10 employees. In the questionnaire, we asked for
organizations’ employability-enhancing practices regarding older workers. It also
included questions about scarcity on the labour market and possible HR measures when
facing an ageing workforce. Our analyses rely on 860 Dutch organizations and can thus
provide an extensive picture of employability investment in the Netherlands.
Employers’ considerations regarding the provision of employability practices
To theorize about employers’ decisions whether to provide employability-enhancing
practices and invest in their older personnel, we assume that employers are (bounded)
rational, in the sense that they pursue ‘goal-oriented’ behaviour. This means that
employers, rather than being fully rational and act upon complete information, take actions
that they believe to increase the benefits of the organization (Kalleberg, Knoke, Marsden,
& Spaeth, 1996). We consider two conditions affecting employers’ investment decisions,
namely (1) characteristics of the organization and (2) characteristics of the labour market.
Underinvestment in employability-enhan cing practices
Older workers are often regarded as being ‘overpaid’, meaning that they are paid more
than their actual productivity (see e.g. Finkelstein & Burke, 1998; Van Dalen et al., 2010;
Warwick Report, 2006). From the view of neoclassical economics, it is assumed that
earnings and produc tivity of a worker are directly related to each other. As this is however
hardly ever observed in reality, Thurow (1975) introduced what became known as the
‘seniority principle’. This term summarizes the finding that in the first career phase, the
productivity of workers is often higher than their earnings, whereas in the second phase,
earnings exceed productivity. Thus, although workers are generally underpaid in the first
stage, they are overpaid in the second stage of their career. This long-term relation
between productivity and earnings enhances workers’ loyalty to the firm and makes it
beneficial for employers to invest in their workers during the first part of the career.
However, as wages increase with seniority, the costs older workers entail for employers
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become disproportionally high if retirement is delayed (Lazear, 1979). Thus, according to
this theoretical framework, seniority wages reflect a burden for employers and,
additionally, investments in older workers are unprofitable for two reasons. First, the costs
associated with older workers would additionally increase if investments in workers’
employability were made in the secon d phase of their career. Second, older workers will
leave the organization rather soon for retirement. This means, the period investments pay
off for older workers might be expected to be shorter compared with younger workers
(Hedge et al., 2006; Warwick Report, 2006).
Another argument explaining why employers might hesitate to provide employability-
enhancing practices for their older personnel are stereotypes (for an encompassing review
of the literature on age stereotypes, see e.g. Posthuma & Campion, 2009). Literature on
stereotyping states that due to missing information, employers cannot evaluate the
productivity of each single worker. Thus, employers use their prior knowledge and general
characteristics of workers, such as gender, age or type of work, as an estimate for
productivity (Arrow, 1973; Phelps, 1972). Prior studies on employers’ views indicate that
they generally regard older workers as being less productive or flexible, and having a
lower accepta nce of new technologies (Chui et al., 2001; Henkens, 2005; Loretto, Duncan,
& White, 2000; Remery et al., 2003). This involves that employers assign a low
willingness to gather training to older workers, and, thus, also provide fewer investments.
The seniority wages of older workers, the short pay-off period and also the stereotypes
held by employers increase the costs that employers associate with older workers. These
individual-level arguments can be translated into organizational-level hypotheses.
Employers, who are active in organizations with a larger share of older workers, will
experience higher costs when providing employability-enhancing practices. Thus,
employers might decide to refrain from investing in their workers’ employability.
We therefore expect that the higher the share of older employees, the lower is the
provision of employability-enhancing practices (H1: age hypothesis).
Investment in employability-enhancing practices
Next to the reasons underlining why investments are not taking place, there is much
literature providing arguments in favour of the provision of emp loyability-enhancing
practices through employers.
From the ‘marginal costs’ argument, we know that the costs of investments do not
increase linearly with, for example, the number of workers for whom the investment is
made (Becker, 1964; Brown, Hamilton, & Medof f, 1990; Knoke & Kalleberg, 1994). The
relative costs of providing employability-enhancing practices for an additional worker
would, thus, be lower for organizations where this investment is made for a greater share
of workers. Stated differently, the costs for employability practices decrease at the margin,
because the investment for one addi tional worker is cheaper if the measure is already
implemented for a 100 employees compared with if it is only implemented for 10. Hence,
the costs of the investment in workers’ employability marginally decrease with the size of
the organization. Also other arguments would propose that investment (in formal training)
is more likely in large organizations; for example, think of the more extensive internal
labour markets of large organizations or the different setting in which large organizations
are active (Knoke & Ishio, 1994; Knoke & Kalleberg, 1994). We, therefore, frame the
following hypothesis: the larger the organization (in terms of the number of employees),
the higher is the provision of employability-enhancing practices (H2: organizational size
hypothesis).
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From the marginal costs argument, a second hypothesis is deductible. As the marginal
costs for investments decrease if the investment is made more often (Becker, 1964; Brown
et al., 1990; Knoke & Kalleberg, 1994), this allows a specification in our study: not only do
costs of providing employability-enhancing practices decrease in larger organization, but
especially if a greater share of employees is in need of these. Because espec ially older
workers have a need to receive employability-enhancing practices, the costs of providing
these practices are relatively seen lower in one organization compared with a same-sized
organization employing a lower share of older workers. We, therefore, hypothesize that
organizational size moderates the associat ion between the share of older workers and the
provision of employability-enhancing practices, such that the association is more positive
for larger organizations (H3: age-size interaction hypothesis).
Human capital theo ry assumes that workers with a higher educational level or a longer
tenure in the firm learn faster and with higher returns (Becker, 1964; Heckman, 2000;
Mincer, 1962). This argument, often subsumed under the headline that ‘learning begets
learning’ or ‘skills beget skills’, can also be translated into a rationale how organizational
characteristics might affect the provision of emp loyability-enhancing practices. For
organizations that have the ‘capital’ of an on average higher educated workforce or one
with a longer tenure, the provision of employability practices will be less costly and result
in greater pay-offs. The human capital hypothesis, therefore, states that the higher the
existent human capital is in an organization, the higher is the provision of employability-
enhancing practices (H4: existent human capital hypothesis).
Last, organizations might differently evaluate the idea whether older workers should
be retained or whether older workers can provide benefits for the organization. On the one
hand, there is much research showing that older workers are stereotyped (often by
employers) as being less able, less productive or less motivated than their younger
colleagues (Chui et al., 2001; Henkens, 2005; Loretto et al., 2000; McCann & Giles, 2002;
Remery et al., 2003). On the other hand, prior studies indicate that older workers’ job
performance increases with age (Cuddy & Fiske, 2002; McCann & Giles, 2002; Waldman
& Avolio, 1986). Hence, the question that arises is not only whether older workers are
stereotyped positively or negatively, but rather whether there is a shared attitude or
perception of older workers within an organization. This idea is explicated by the
organizational culture theory of Schei n (1990), which argues that organizations might
share a specific view or perception, manifested in a ‘culture’. In the case that workers
internalize their leaders’ (e.g. employers’) views, this leads to the establishment of an
organizational culture (Schein, 1985; Zacher & Gielnik, 2014). In organizations where the
perception of older workers is more positive, this might provide the basis for the
implementation of employability-enhancing practices. We expect that the more positive
the perception of older workers is, the higher is the provision of employability-enhancing
practices (H5: perception hypothesis).
Besides organizational characteristics that are related to employers’ decisions whether
or not to provide employability-enhancing practices, the labour market in which
organizations operate in will play a role. One such characteristic of the labour market is
competition between organizations for the ‘best’ workers. In case of scarcity in labour
supply, employers will experience more difficulty in filling vacancies, which might
increase the competition between organizations. When organizations are facing scarcity,
employers could increase the labour force participation of the existing workforce, take
internal measures that enhance the organization’s productivity or restrict the number of
workers who leave their organization (De Grip et al., 2004; De Vries et al., 2001).
Following insights from the literature on strategic management, organizations might want
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to use HR policies in order to attract or bind workers, to show that they ‘care’, and at the
same time enhance their advantage over other organizations (De Vries et al., 2001; Knoke
& Kalleberg, 1994; Lado & Wilson, 1994). Thus, employers might provide employability-
enhancing practices for their older workers in order to sustain work capability and keep
their workforce attached to the organization. Our competition hypothesis reads that the
higher the competition is on the labour market, the higher is the provision of
employability-enhancing practices (H6: labour market competition hypothesis).
Data, operationalization and methods
Data
Data collection
To investigate the above-stated research question, we make use of an encompassing data set
on Dutch employers that was collecte d as part of a larger project about social security in the
Netherlands. For the questionnaire entitled ‘Towards a greying workforce? HR policies for
older workers’, a random sample was drawn from the Dutch Trade Register (‘Kamer van
Koophandel’). Due to the generally very low response rate in corporate studies (Henkens,
Remery, & Schippers, 2008; Kalleberg et al., 1996; Van Dalen et al., 2006), we sampled
8000 organizations. Only organ izations that are subscribed to have more than 10 employees
were selected and the sample was stratified according to the size of the organization.
To secure that enough large firms would participate in the questionnaire, they were
oversampled (we applied base weights to correct for the oversampling, see below). The data
collection took place between April and June 2012. After sending the questionnaires and
cover letters by post mail, two reminders in postcard format were sent after 3 and 6 weeks.
Respondents had two possibilities to fill in the questio nnaire. They could either fill in the
paper questionnai re they received with the first post mail, or they could complete an online
questionnaire. Both versions included the same questions. In total, 983 respondents
participated in the survey. The raw response rate (12.3%) is as expected lower than in
individual surveys. Our response rate is comparable with other corporate studies in Europe
and the USA, where it is mostly ranging between 5% and 10% and is at most 20 –30%
(Henkens et al., 2008; Kalleberg et al., 1996; Van Dalen et al., 2006).
Participants
The questionnaires were addressed to the ‘Human Resource Department’ of the
organization. Each organization received one questionnaire with a distinct identification
number (printed on the paper questionnaire and necessary to login for the online
questionnaire) in order to avoid multiple answers from the same organ ization. Within the
HR department, generally any person might have completed the questionnaire.
Information on the respondents’ position show that more than one-third (37%) of the
respondents are ‘Chief executive officer of the HR department’, about every fifth
respondent was the owner of the company (18%) or a staff member of the HR department
(around 17%). Furthermore, about 10% of the respondents were Member of the Board or
of the Directors. The remaining questionnaires were completed by managers or staff
members. In the following, we will refer to respondents as ‘employers’, even though,
strictly speaking, this might not be the case. By doing so, we clearly follow other
researchers who call their respondents in corporate surveys ‘employers’ or ‘managers’ (De
Vries et al., 2001; Henkens, 2005; Henkens et al., 2008; Karpinska et al., 2011; Remery
et al., 2003; Van Dalen et al., 2006, 2010).
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Representativeness
To make our sample as repr esentative as possible for the Dutch organizations, we
implement sampling weights and post-stratification weights. First, we use sampling
weights to correct for the oversampling of large organizations. Sampling weights are
defined as the inverse of the probability of selecting a unit (Kalton, 1983; Wool dridge,
2008). As the mean of the weights should be one (Kalton, 1983), we correct for this by
applying weights of about 0.5 (instead of one) for those organizations that had a chance
equal to one to be in our sample. All organizations that had a reduced chance to be in the
sample, get sampling weights of above 1. Second, we implement post-stratification
weights. These weights are calculated based on the size and the sector o f the organizations
in order to correct for the fact that organizations with a specific size-sector combination
were more or less likely to respond than others. This way, we make our random sample of
organizations more comparable with the complete population of Dutch organizations.
We differentiate nine organizational size bands (10– 19 employees, 20–49, 50– 99, 100–
149, 150– 199, 200– 249, 250– 499, 500– 999, 1000 þ employees) and seven sectors
according to the Dutch standard organizational classification (SBI08 – Standaard
Bedrijfsindeling). For each of the resulting 36 categories, we calculate a post-stratification
weight indicating how likely an organization of that size-sector combination was to be in
the sample. The product of the sampling weight and the post-stratification weight provide
the individual weight for each organization.
Operationalization
Employability-enhancing practic es
Similarly to prior research on employability-enhancing practices directed towards older
workers (Remery et al., 2003; Schaeps & Klaassen, 1999), we identify 15 employability
practices that might be used in order to retain older employees’ employability and work
capacity. The items comprise practices such as ‘continue working in combination with
part-time retirement’, ‘exempt older workers from working overtime’ or ‘take ergonomic
measures’. Fo r each of the 15 items, there are three answer categories. We ask employers
(1) whether this employability-enhancing practice ‘is already implemented’, (2) whether it
‘is/will be considered’ (3) or whether it ‘will not be considered’ (see Table A1). The three
answer categories are recoded to a binary variable in such a way that value 1 refers to the
organizations that either ‘already implemented’ or ‘consider/will consider’ the measure;
value 0 refers to the organizations that ‘will not consider’ the measure.
Before summarizing these 15 items in one scale, we assess whether these 15
employability-enhancing practices measure the same concept by applying factor analysis.
Some Dutch authors and policy actors differentiate between practices that relieve older
workers and those where investment takes place (Ybema, Geuskens, & Oude Hengel,
2009). We use factor analysis with polychoric correlations because the recoded items are
binary. With polychoric correlations, we take into account that variables might group
together just due to their coding. The results of the factor analysis indicate that there is one
primary factor with an eigenvalue of 5.80; the eigenvalue of the second is just above one
(1.07). All items have factor loadings above 0.43.
As the factor analysis revealed one concept, we summarize the 15 binary items in a
sum scale. This means that one point is added to the scale for each employability practice
that an organization implements or considers. No points are added to the scale if an
organization does not consider implementing the practice. This results in a scale ranging
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from 0 to 15, with higher values indicating that more employability-enhancing practices
are implemented/considered by the organization. The descriptive results are provided in
Table 1.
Independent variables
The age of employees in the organization is operationalized by having the respondents
indicate how many per cent of the organization’s workforce is older than 50 years. The size
of organization is measured with the variable asking for the number of employees the
organization has at the beginning of 2012. We took the natural logarithm of the
organization’s size in order to lessen the influence of very large organizations.
1
We
measure existent human capital with the average educational level and the average tenure
in the organization. The average educational level is operationalized by a variable asking
the employers ‘What is the composition of the personnel accor ding to educational level?’.
Employers could indicate the percentage of lower educated,
2
medium educated
3
and the
percentage of higher educa ted workers.
4
We recoded the variable in such a way that we
applied weights to the three educational levels (low ¼ 1, medium ¼ 2, high ¼ 3) and
summed the percentage of lower, medium and higher educated workers. This way, our
average educational level in the organization ranges from 1 (100% low educated) to 3
(100% higher educated) employees. To assess the average tenure in the organization we
asked ‘How long on average are workers employed in your firm’. The answer categories
were 1 ‘0 – 5 years’ (reference category), 2 ‘5– 10 years’, 3 ‘10 –15 years’ and 4 ‘more than
15 years’.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics.
Obs.
a
Mean SD Range
Employability-enhancing practices 860 9.06 4.46 0–15
Percentage older workers
b
845 1.15 15.96 2 22.07–77.94
Size organization (log)
b
843 0.13 1.60 2 4.09–6.99
Average educational level 828 1.84 0.54 1–3
Average tenure
0–5 years (ref.) 852 0.13 0/1
5–10 years 852 0.34 0/1
10–15 years 852 0.33 0/1
More than 15 years 852 0.20 0/1
Perception older workers
b
799 2 0.01 0.49 2 1.82–1.61
Competition through scarcity expected
No scarcity (ref.) 835 0.44 0/1
Some positions 835 0.46 0/1
Many positions 835 0.11 0/1
Collective labour agreement 851 0.73 0/1
Sector of organization
Agriculture and industry (ref.) 849 0.35 0/1
Trade and catering 849 0.19 0/1
Transport, information and communication 849 0.10 0/1
Financial and business services 849 0.17 0/1
Government and care 849 0.10 0/1
Culture, recreation, else 849 0.10 0/1
a
For all variables with missing observations, values are imputed by ICE.
b
Variables are centred on their mean.
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To assess the perception of older employees within the organization, we make use of
the item-battery that asked ‘In your opinion, what are the consequences for your
organization if the average age of the personnel increases?’ Seven of these items,
including statements such as ‘knowledge increases’, ‘experience rises’, ‘productivity
increases’ or ‘mobility of the personnel enhances’, refer to a positive perception of older
employees. Employers could evaluate these items on a scale from 1 ‘very unlikely’ to 5
‘very likely’. We conduct factor analyses (after polychoric correlations) to assess whether
these items can be regarded as one scale. As the items can be summarized in one concept
with an eigenvalue of 2.64, we compute a scale based on the mean of the seven items. The
resulting scale ranges from 1 to 5, with higher values referring to more positive
perceptions (Cronbach’s
a
¼ 0.75).
Last, we asked to which extent the organization is dependent on the labour market.
Employers can perceive that there is competition on the market due to scarcity in labour
supply. Competition is operationalized by two dummy variables where employers could
indicate whether they anticipate ‘scarcity in some positions’ or ‘scarcity in many
positions’ for the future, both opposed to expecting ‘no scarcity in labour supply’
(reference category).
In our analyses, we control for whether the organization applies a collecti ve labour
agreement (yes ¼ 1) and six different industry sectors. The latter are included as five
dummy variables in the analyses, with the reference category being agriculture and
industry. The dummy variables for the sectors are: trade and catering; transport,
information and communication; financial and business services; government and care ;
culture, recreation, else.
Methods
To which extent the employability-enhancing practices are implemented by organizations
is measured with a continuous variable. We therefore employ ordinary least squares linear
regressions. We include all vari ables in the regression analysis (Model 1) and additionally
run a regression model for the interaction between the age of employees in the
organization and the size of the organization (Model 2).
Total 860 respondents provided answers on the dependent variable. As about 16% of these
860 organizations would be deleted due to the list-wise deletion in the regression analyses, we
imputed missing values on the independent variables by imputation using chain equation
(ICE). With this iterative multivariable (imputation) regression method, all variables used in
the prediction model for employability-enhancing practices are also included in the
imputation model. We run 25 imputations (StataCorp LP, 2009) and report the variation
between the imputed models (average relative variance increase (RVI)) below the models.
Results
Descriptive picture: the implementation of employability-enhancing practices
To assess to which extent employability-enhancing practices are used by employers to
sustain their older workers’ employability, we list the practices that were included in our
questionnaire, together with the information in how far organizations use these as an
employability investment in their older workers. Figure 1 shows that around 80% of the
organizations use emplo yability-enhancing practices such as ‘taking ergonomic
measures’, ‘employing older workers to coach younger colleagues’ or ‘alleviating older
workers’ tasks’ in their agenda. In contrast, instruments such as ‘developing educational
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trajectories for older workers’, ‘establishing age limits for irregular work/shift work’ or
‘taking lengthy career breaks’ are discussed in less than 50% of the organizations.
This shows that employers especially implement, or consider implementing, practices
that are not expensive (e.g. taking ergonomic measures, using older workers for coaching)
Take lengthy career breaks (e.g. sabbatical leave)
Establish age limits for irregular work/ shift work
Develop educational trajectories for older workers
Demote position and wage (demotion)
Facilitate long−term care breaks
Exempt older workers from working overtime
Encourage working in mixed−age teams
Offer expanded leave/vacation
opportunities for older workers
Adjust working hours
Conduct personal interviews specifically
focusing on the last career stage
Continue working in combination with
part−time retirement
Move to less burdensome position
within the organization
Alleviate tasks of older workers
Employ older workers to
coach younger colleagues
Take ergonomic measures
0255075
'Already implemented'/ 'Is/will be considered' 'Will not be considered'
Figure 1. Employability-enhancing practices ordered by share of organizations who implemented/
considered the practice.
M. Fleischmann et al.10
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or those that are state regulated or discussed in collective agreements (e.g. continue
working in combination with part-time retirement, offering expanded leave/vacation
opportunities). Those employability practices that are most expensive for the organization
(e.g. taking lengthy career breaks, develop educational trajectories) are hardly ever
considered to enhance the employability of older workers. This dichotomy in
employability-enhancing practices resembles findings of other studies: Van Dalen et al.
(2006) argue that in the Netherlands especially ‘politically correct’ rather than ‘hard’
measures are taken (p. 29). Also Remery et al. (2003) and Ybema et al. (2009) assess that
mostly practices that ‘spare’ older workers or are part of collective agreements are
implemented, wherea s those that would involve actual training and investments in older
workers are very infrequently considered. In the following, we assess under which
conditions employers invest in employability-enhancing practices.
Explanatory analyses: under which conditions do employers invest?
In Model 1 (Table 2), we include all variables, except for the interaction between the size
of the organization and the percentage of older workers. In line with the argument that
investment is less likely if the costs are higher, we expected that a higher share of older
workers in the organization is related to a lower investment in employability-enhancing
practices. We do not find a significant association between the organization’s share of
older workers and the investment in employability-enhancing practices. Our age
Table 2. OLS linear regression results for implementation of employability-enhancing practices.
Model 1 Model 2
Coef. SE Coef. SE
Independent variables
Percentage older workers 0.016 0.015 0.027 0.017
Size organization (log) 0.444** 0.154 0.425** 0.153
Percentage older workers £ size organization (log) 0.013 0.009
Average educational level 0.574 0.454 0.585 0.451
Average tenure (ref: 0 – 5 years)
5–10 years 1.829** 0.643 1.807** 0.640
10–15 years 1.702* 0.700 1.652* 0.708
More than 15 years 0.906 0.816 0.893 0.822
Perception older workers 1.405** 0.416 1.438** 0.414
Competition through scarcity expected (ref: no)
Some positions 2.274*** 0.484 2.246*** 0.481
Many positions 2.524*** 0.670 2.474*** 0.669
Control variables
Collective labour agreement 0.317 0.483 0.318 0.475
Sector of organization (ref: agriculture and industry)
Trade and catering 2 0.489 0.515 2 0.432 0.520
Transport, information and communication 2 1.489* 0.705 2 1.499* 0.698
Financial and business services 2 0.463 0.648 2 0.432 0.640
Government and care 0.166 0.670 0.135 0.688
Culture, recreation, else 2 1.079 0.758 2 1.026 0.755
Constant 5.590*** 1.190 5.582*** 1.186
Observations 860 860
Imputations 25 25
Average RVI 0.079 0.086
*
p , 0.05,
**
p , 0.01,
***
p , 0.001.
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hypothesis (H1) can, therefore, not be supported. Organizational size was expected to be
positively related to the provision of employability-enhancing practices (H2). We find
support for our rationale: the larger the organizations are, the more employability practices
are on employers’ agenda. In Model 2, we included the interaction effect between the
percentage of older workers and the size of the organization (H3). We do not find support
for our expectation that investment is taking especially place in organizations where a high
number of older workers are combined with larger organizations.
We test the existent human capita l hypothesis (H4) by considering the average
educational level in the organization and the average tenure. If more capital is available in
an organization, we assumed to find more investment in employability-enhancing
measures. A higher educational level is not significantly related to the provision of
employability-enhancing practices. However, the analyses reveal that the average tenure
in the organization is positively related to employability. This means, especially in
organizations where the mean tenure of workers is between 5 and 15 years, employers
provide more employability practices compared with the organizations where the tenure is
below 5 years. This effect of tenure comes on top of the effect of the share of older workers
(age). Regarding the existing human capital hypothesis (H4), we conclude that if an
organization has a higher level of existent human capital, then employers also implement
more employability practices.
Regarding the perception hypothesis (H5), we test whether a more positive perception
of older workers is related to the provision of more employability practices. Our results
show that employers invest more in the employability of their older workers the better they
perceive older workers. These results support our hypothesis (H5).
Last, we investigate whether the organization’s dependency on the labour market, in
terms of competition through scarcity in labour supply (H6), relates to their investment in
employability practices. Organizations’ investments appear to be dependent on the labour
market in terms of competition for scarce workers. Our results show that employers
implement more employability-enhancing practices if they expect that the organization
has to deal with a scarcity to fill some or many positions. This finding supports our
theoretical expectations.
Regarding the control variables, we assess the following: whether organizations apply a
collective labour agreement does not seem to matter for the implementation of employability-
enhancing practices. Also the sector of the organization does hardly seem to play a role. Only
organizations operating in ‘Transport, Information and Communication’ seem to implement
fewer employability practices compared with those in ‘Agriculture or Industry’.
Conclusion and discussion
This article set out to investigate the extent and conditions under which employers provide
employability-enhancing practices specifically focusing on older workers. Studying
employability practices directed towards older workers rather than assessing the role of
‘general’ employability practices is relevant in the context of an ageing population and
workforce. We embedded our expectations in a context where the costs of investing in
employability-enhancing practices played a role but employers made decisions dependent on
organizational and labour market characteristics and formulated hypotheses both for
underinvestment and investment in employability practices. Empirically, we made use of a
large company data set with information on 860 Dutch organizations to test our expectations.
These encompassing data allow drawing general conclusions about Dutch organizations and
are comparable with other Dutch data sets (Henkens, 2005; Henkens et al., 2008).
M. Fleischmann et al.12
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Our findings can be summarized as follows. First, regarding the implementation of
employability-enhancing practices, we find that especially those practices that are most
feasible, very easy to implement and least expensive are on organizations’ employability
agenda. Such mea sures include alleviating older workers’ tasks, taking ergonomic
measures or using older workers for coaching. Measures that are supported through
occupational pension schemes or formulated in collective labour agreements, such as part-
time retirement, additional leave days for older workers or adjusting their working hours,
are also considered by employers. This clearly shows that employers are generally not
averse to impleme nt practices that help older workers sustain their employability. However,
exactly those employability practices that are increasingly important in the changing
economy, where older workers will need to participate longer, are rarely implemented or
considered. Expensive measures, those that allow workers to detach from the organization
for a longer period, or involve organizational restructuring are not even considered by
employers. Examples for these practices are: developing educational trajectories for older
workers, facilitating long-term care breaks and career breaks (sabbatical leave). These
descriptive results are in line with prior research assessing that rather ‘politically correct’ or
collectively agreed upon than ‘hard’ measures are used in organizations (Remery et al.,
2003; Van Dalen et al., 2006). Furthermore, we replicate research noting that employability
practices can be subdivided into practices that relieve older workers’ tasks or ‘spare’ them,
and those where investment in workers’ employability takes place (Van Dalen et al., 2006;
Ybema et al., 2009). In an ageing population, it will become important for both public and
organizational policy to increase the attention on practices that allow older workers to make
considerable changes in their career paths. Even though this might involve that jobs are
re-designed (Conen et al., 2011; Hedge et al., 2006; Taylor & Walker, 1998), older workers’
participation on the labour market might be prolonged as a result.
In the second part, we investigated under which conditions employers implement
employability-enhancing practices directed towards older workers. We find that
employers in larger organizations invest more in employability practices. This is in line
with our theoretical explanation that the mar ginal costs of an investment, such as the
provision of employability practices, decreases if it is made for a larger number of
workers. This finding might also be explained by the internal labour markets larger
organizations have. If employers intend to recruit their own workers, the incentive to
invest in workers is higher.
The hypothesis that more employability-enhancing practices are provided
in organizations with a higher share of older workers is not supported (H1). This is
surprising because the practices we studied are explicitly directed towards older workers.
Further research is advised to study whether the number of older workers increases
the provision of employability practices. We also inve stigate employers’ perceptions
towards older workers. In organizations where older workers are perceived more
positively, the provision of employability-enhancing practices is higher. Theoretically,
this finding can be explained by organizational cultur e theory that supposes that specific
perceptions are shared among the members of an organization (Schein, 1985; Zacher &
Gielnik, 2014). This means that even employers that might not have daily contact with
older workers share the positive perception of these. The established organizational
culture might thus increase investments in older workers’ employability. We also included
an interaction between the perceptions towards older workers and the percentage of older
workers in the organization (results not reported). A higher fraction of older workers in
an organization comb ined with positive perceptions does, however, not appear to play a
significant role for the implementation of employability practices.
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Finally, our analyses reveal that the labour market dependency of the organization
plays a role. Especially in organizations where employers expect a scarcity in labour
supply for the fut ure, more investment in employability practices takes place. This can be
interpreted in several ways. Either, employers invest in their older workers to keep them
capable and employable for a longer time, or emp loyers invest in them in order to increase
the attractiveness of the organization. This might pay off in two ways; it might detain
workers from leaving for a different organization (De Grip et al., 2004; De Vries et al.,
2001) and, in general, attract new employees (De Vries et al., 2001; Knoke & Kalleberg,
1994; Lado & Wilson, 1994). Employers might thus use employability-enhancing
practices as a tool for competitive advantage.
There are several limitations of our article of which we address the most important
in the following. First, as it is common with company surveys, the response rate of our
study is low. Studies investigating organizations usually have to deal with high non-
response (Henkens et al., 2008; Kalleberg et al., 1996; Van Dalen et al., 2006); one reason
is that respondents can oft en not be personally addressed because it is not exactly known
who fulfils which position in the o rganization. Furthermore, and relevant in our case, we
did not have telephone numbers or email addresses of the organizations, which made it
impossible to approach respondents that way. Anticipating a predictably low response rate
and in order to guarantee a large enough sample of Dutch organizations, we sampled 8000
organizations. Even though the non-response is high, we are confident that our analyses
relying on 860 organizations reflect the Dutch organizational landscape. This is even more
the case because we applied sampling and stratification weights.
Second, the employers participating in our survey are a rather heterogeneous group. As
discussed in the description of our respondents, more than one-third of the respondents
fulfilled the position of ‘Chief executive officer of the HR department’, about one-fifth of
the respondents were the owner of the company and another fifth were the staff member of
the HR department. This exemplifies that whom we call ‘employer’ in this study is not
exclusively ‘employer’ in the strict sense. However, by making this decision in wording,
we follow the example of many prior studies (De Vries et al., 2001; Henkens, 2005;
Henkens et al., 2008; Karpinska et al., 2011; Remery et al., 2003; Van Dalen et al., 2006,
2010). Therefore, we are confident that our respondents are taking HR decisions or are
involved in these.
Third, our study has a cross-sectional design; thus, we only know which employability
practices employers considered to implement in the period the data were collected. These
considerations (intentions) do not necessarily reflect their actual behaviour. In this light,
organizations might easily indicate to consider specific employability practices as a way of
providing a ‘socially desirable’ answer. However, it becomes clear that social desirability
bias is probably limit ed because a substant ive fraction of employability-enhancing
practices are not even considered by organizations (cf. Figure 1). For further research, it
would be interesting to repeat the data collection to assess which of the practices, that were
initially considered, are implemented in the following.
To conclude, our study shows that both organizational and labour market
characteristics affect employers’ decisions whether to provide employability-enhancing
practices for their older wor kers. It appears that for example especially larger
organizations invest in their older workers’ employability. Policy measures might be
discussed as a possible means to increase the incentives for smaller firms to invest in their
workers. Financial subsidies might trigger smaller organizations to provide employability-
enhancing practices. The expansion of employability practices is especially relevan t in the
context of an ageing population and ageing workforce. Under these circumstances, a
M. Fleischmann et al.14
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higher labour market participation of older workers and a delayed retirement is becoming
ever more important. In addition, the type of employability-enhancing practices should be
addressed more frequently in policy debates. As there is no ‘one size fits all’ employability
practice, employer-provided practices that increase older workers’ employability should
consider the requirements of older workers as compared with their younger colleagues, but
leave room for indivi dual wishes.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This research is funded by the project ‘Productive in multiple ways: In search for activating
institutions’, Stichting Instituut Gak [SZ2025].
Notes
1. Even though we sampled organizations with more than ten employees, there might be
organizations that recently laid-off workers; therefore, the organizational size might be below
10.
2. Dutch correspondent degrees: MAVO [Middelbaar Algemeen Voortgezet Onderwijs], VMBO
[Voorbereidend Middelbaar Beroepsonderwijs], LBO [Lager Beroepsonderwijs], LO [Lager
Onderwijs].
3. Dutch correspondent degrees: HAVO [Hoger Algemeen Voortgezet Onderwijs], VWO
[Voorbereidend Wetenschappelijk Onderwijs], MBO [Middelbaar Beroepsonderwijs].
4. Dutch correspondent degrees: HBO [Hoger Beroepsonderwijs], WO [Wetenschappelijk
Onderwijs].
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Appendix
Table A1. Percentages of organizations implementing or considering the 15 organizational
measures for age-conscious personnel policy.
Already
implemented
Is/will be
considered
Will not be
considered
Continue working in combination with part-time
retirement
27.9 45.9 26.2
Exempt older workers from working overtime 27.7 36.2 36.1
Develop educational trajectories for older workers 12.8 36.9 50.3
Offer expanded leave/vacation opportunities for
older workers
42.9 25.3 31.8
Alleviate older workers’ tasks 32.8 45.4 21.8
Conduct personal interviews specifically focusing
on the last career stage
18.4 52.6 29.0
Adjust working hours 26.6 42.7 30.6
Facilitate long-term care breaks 17.7 38.1 44.2
Demote position and wage (demotion) 7.7 44.8 47.6
Take lengthy career breaks (e.g. sabbatical leave) 8.8 29.1 62.1
Take ergonomic measures 44.7 40.3 15.0
Establish age limits for irregular work/shift work 20.0 27.5 52.5
Employ older workers to coach younger
colleagues
31.5 49.7 18.8
Encourage working in mixed-age teams 27.5 39.1 33.3
Move to less burdensome position within the
organization
24.2 50.4 25.4
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