Employability policy in Dutch organizations

Abstract

Abstract The results from a study of more than 1,000 Dutch organizations indicate that less is being done about employability policy in Dutch organizations than the plentiful media interest leads one to expect. Though most organizations take measures to improve the employability of their personnel, only one-third has a formulated policy in this area. The most frequent employability-stimulating measures are: schooling and training, task expansion and task enrichment. There is far more activity in the government sector than in the market sector, in large organizations than in smaller ones, and the principal target group is younger people. Attention is not heavily directed at enhancing the position of weaker groups in the labour market. Only one-fifth of organizations have introduced recent changes in their employability policy, 25 per cent of them prompted by a growing labour shortage. Keywords: Netherlands