As a result of underperforming birth rates, higher life expectancy and a rising retirement age, the theme of sustainable employability has become important in recent years. However, sustainable employability is not a matter of course for lower educated 55+ in organisations. This target group turns out to be difficult to reach for sustainable employability activities and the supply of education and training aimed at sustainable employability often does not meet their needs. The lack of the right attitude and motivation to work on one's own employability is also a major problem. And without motivation to learn and develop, little or nothing comes of lifelong development. We know from scientific research that low motivation for learning among low educated employees is explained by, among other things, negative learning experiences, fear of exams and the feeling that one cannot do it. The aim of this ErasmusPlus project is to gain insight into opportunities to strengthen the sustainable employability of lower-educated 55+ in various European countries. We do this by means of the following activities: 1. making an inventory of experiences in Europe in the field of: - Motivating lower educated older employees for training for sustainable employability. - promote their self-management - decrease in their low self-efficiency 2. testing through living labs to what extent the pilot project carried out by the Dutch Police Force "Build your own job, right now!" can be applied in other European countries and what innovations we can add to this. 3. on the basis of this international inventory and living labs, acquire new insights (innovations) for organisations in the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Slovakia that want to improve the sustainable employability of lower educated older employees. Through the living labs we reach more than 200 low-educated 55+ employees spread over 4 different European countries and 12 different companies. Facilitators in each country are trained to help them gain control over their careers. The facilitators are trained in such a way that they can immediately supervise several participants after the project. We expect that the multiplier effect will then be ten times that of the scope we have with the living labs. We expect that the sharing of experiences and the implementation, evaluation and conceptualisation of the living labs will lead to a number of examples with which European companies can motivate their lower educated 55+ to take control of their own careers. Cocreation is very important and that is why we have chosen the Design Thinking method. A design method where co-creation is essential and which is very suitable for the search process for innovations. The assumption is that if we are able to make this group of working people vital, competent, happy and valued to reach retirement, this can also keep the quality of life at a higher level afterwards. In the long term, it cannot be ruled out that, in the event of positive experiences, these individuals will be able to make a certain contribution to society even after their retirement age.
In the project, together with the partner countries, we will look for working methods to keep older workers motivated, vital and healthy and thereby generate positive impact for the older workers' employer and society.
Sustainable employability for older workers is a topic that does not receive enough attention. The existing interventions to promote sustainable employability are not very effective for older workers.