Duurzame inzetbaarheid van werknemers in de sector zorg en welzijn [Sustainable employability of workers in the sector health care and social work]

The central aim of this article is to describe the sustainable employability of employees in the Dutch health care and social work sector, and subsectors such as hospitals, general practices, nursing homes and home care. The main question addressed concerns the future sustainable employability of employees in this sector: until what age are employees willing and able to work? Are employees in the health care and social work sector at risk as far as their sustainable employability is concerned? The Netherlands Working Conditions Survey (NWCS) is used to empirically describe and explain the sustainable employability of employees in the health care and social work sector, as well as in its subsectors. The article presents how employee characteristics, the employees' sustainable employment, working conditions, and characteristics related to the subsector itself are related to differences in the dependent variables, being able and willing to work until a higher age. The results show that future sustainable employability of the employees in the Dutch health care and social work sector is unfavorable: employees want to work until a higher than average age, but generally think they will not be able to do so. Their sustainable employability profile is clearly unfavorable compared to the average profile of those employed in other sectors. This is particularly the case regarding working with dangerous substances and third-party violence. Employees working in nursing homes and home care have the most unfavorable profiles and are considered a risk group for sustainable employability. This article shows that our model can explain only 19% of the differences in perceived ability between the health care and social work sector and other sectors and 12% of the differences in perceived willingness. The main determinants are age and level of education of the employees. Working characteristics such as physically heavy work explain a limited amount of the variance. Explanations for these findings are discussed.