The Work Ability Management (WAM) project focuses on addressing the issue of supporting the employment of (not only) aging workers through the concept of work ability. Finland began to deal with a systematic solution of this area with a considerable lead over other European countries already in the 1980s. The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH), most importantly Professor Juhani Ilmarinen , participated on the solution. Individual factors of work ability were identified by FIOH experts, a method for measuring the work ability with the Work Ability Index was developed and this concept and its methods were spread especially in countries of Western Europe and many other countries all over the world. Central European countries work very little with this concept. The main aspect of the proposed project is social inclusion, the activities aim to support the work ability of employees and those currently unemployed, to eliminate age discrimination of aging employees, to promote gender equality and to seek new innovative approaches for maintaining their employability through education and counseling activities. The consortium that will implement the project consists of specialized workplaces that have been working on the concept of work ability for a long time: Blik op Werk from the Netherlands, Arbeit und Zukunft (Association of Labor and Future) from Germany, National Public Health Center (NKK) from Hungary, Slovak Association of Age Management and NGO Age Management from Czech Republic. The main objective of the proposed project is to bring together European expert organizations dealing with the issue of work ability and age management, to share their methods and to develop new products focusing on the individual needs of employed and unemployed people, including support through digital technologies. In Central European countries, there is a significant lack of trained adult education and career guidance professionals who are able to work with this concept and transfer this knowledge to other target groups, both employed and unemployed, in order to support their work ability in the long term. The main target group of the project is therefore trainers/ counselors/facilitators and other experts working in the field of adult education and career counseling. The proposed project activities support the achievement of the main objective with four major outputs. At the beginning of the project implementation, an electronic publication “Promoting Aging in the Workplace” will be developed. It will collect a description of methods, tools, examples of good practice, teaching methods, training programs and analytical tools of partner´s organizations in the field of work capacity support (used in social inclusion, prevention of social exclusion, lifelong learning support) in all participating countries. This handbook will be followed by the development of a methodology of work ability management for the target group of people employed or considering a change of profession as well as a methodology for managing work ability support for the target group of the unemployed. The fourth major output is the web-based digital coaching platform, which aims to map a person's potential, support learning and planning, and teach him/her to manage career change. This created platform will also be the part of the multiplication actions of pilot validation of newly developed methodologies for both employed and unemployed people, which will be implemented in all participating countries. A total of 30 pilot events for 80 people will be implemented. In order to support the development of all major outputs, two short-term training events for trainers/counselors/facilitators will be implemented, namely “Work Ability Support” in Germany for 13 lecturers and “Towards Successful Seniority” in the Czech Republic for 11 lecturers. Great emphasis will be put on dissemination activities with the aim of disseminating essential outputs at all levels. To support them, a final conference in the Czech Republic will be organized, to which representatives of important institutions dealing with this issue will be invited. All project outputs will be translated into all languages of the partner´s countries involved as well as in English and will be freely available to all interested parties on the websites of the promoter and partner organizations. In the area of long-term impact, the project aims to create the conditions for extending the concept of work ability and age management as a possible tool to address the aging population in working life, as has been done in Finland. This concept is still rarely used in Central European countries, and its effectiveness has been confirmed by many scientific studies. The project will last 36 months and its working language will be English.
The main goal of the proposed project was to connect professional European workplaces that deal with the issue of work ability and age management, to share their used methods and jointly develop new products focusing on the individual needs of employed and unemployed persons, including support through digital technologies. The basic pillar of the project was the sharing of experience, examples of good practice, teaching methods, educational programs and analytical tools of partner organizations in the field of support for work ability and its dissemination within the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Germany and the Netherlands. All these countries involved face demographic aging and new challenges to adapt the labor market to an aging workforce. The goal of the project was to create practical tools for getting to know the concept of work ability and at the same time their availability and wide usability in the countries involved in the project, or within the EU when implementing measures to support the aging workforce. At the same time, the aim of the project was to train the target group (lecturers/counselors/facilitators and other experts working in the field of adult education and career guidance) with newly developed methodologies.
The "Work Ability Management (WAM)" project was focused on solving the issue of supporting the employment of (not only) aging workers through the concept of work ability. Finland began to deal with the systematic solution of this area in the 80s of the last century, with a big time lead over other European countries, and subsequently other Western countries began to deal with this issue. In the area of Central and Eastern Europe, the concept of supporting work ability has been very little developed so far, even though it was clear that these countries will also have to deal with the aging of the population, including work life. In the countries of Central Europe, there is also a significant lack of trained experts in the field of adult education, as well as career counseling, who can work with this concept and transfer this knowledge to other target groups, i.e. employed and unemployed persons with the aim of long-term support of their work ability. The intention of the project was therefore to create an effective partnership between countries that have been working with the concept of work ability for a long time, to transfer their experience to partners within the countries of Central Europe and to jointly create methodologies that can be used in all participating countries.