oa Oudere werknemers in het MKB

Summary Older workers in SME’s

In this article we describe how life-long employability in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Netherlands has been advanced in practice and which policies are possible in these organizations. An employee who is employable for life is defined as someone who is competent, engaged, satisfied and vital. These employees are and remain valuable for their employers. We find that the smaller the firm, the fewer measures and facilities for life-long employability there are. In general, engagement and satisfaction of employees are high, but there is insufficient attention for personnel development and health of employees in SMEs.We developed a model for an adaptation policy to give an overview what SMEs can do to advance long-life employability. The model consists of a mixture of ‘dispensation measures’ on the one hand, and developmental measures on the other, that can be customized to suit the employee. Not only large organizations can make use of these measures and facilities, SMEs can do so too.