Flex Work Research Centre

The idea that investing in employability is the answer to creative destruction caused insecurity originated in the context of Silicon Valley. Paradoxically, this ’employacurity‘ discourse has taken root in the Netherlands, a country in which the employment system is firmly based on the norm of job security, the total opposite of Silicon Valley‘s employment system. Although management gurus have built an attractive discourse on employability, an associated collective action problem detracts from its realism. The Dutch case exhibits mechanisms that may alleviate such a collective action problem. These mechanisms are explored via an examination of policy documents, a quantitative analysis of collective labor agreements and two cases, one of a large bank and one of an industrial company. A craving among Dutch employers for flexibility, fueled by the norm of security that impacts their perception of potential benefits of investments in employability is crucial to our understanding of employacurity in the Netherlands.

The Dutch employment system solves the public goods problem related to investments in enhanced employability in several ways. Foremost is that it creates the perception among employers that enhanced employability, apart from being a public good, entails private benefits for employers, in the form of flexibility.
Additionally, the co-ordinated nature of the collective bargaining process, in which the bipartite Dutch Labor Foundation sets the agenda, creates institutional pressure, and co-ordinated wage setting puts a damper on poaching employees. These factors operate regardless of whether collective labour agreements cover entire industries or, in the case of ING or Philips, just one company. Dutch law makes industry-wide enforcement of collective labour agreements possible, cutting out free-rider behaviour. There is also an abundance of ‘sector funds’. These engage in a variety of activities, of which training is the most notable. Their main source of income is a percentage of the wage sum contributed by the employers in a sector.

The Dutch state assumes little responsibility for employability, except for its own employees. In contrast, the European Social Fund (ESF) does subsidize investments in employability. Thirty per cent of the sector funds function as channels for ESF subsidies.