Demographic changes, such as the ageing of society and the decline of the birth rate, are gradually leading to the loss of valuable knowledge and experience in the Dutch Labour market. This necessitates an explicit focus on workers' sustainable employment so that they can add value to the organisation throughout their career. This study looks into the way in which the workers' motivation might affect their investments into their own sustainable employment. It was conducted in a major industrial service provider, Sitech Services. The conclusion is that intrinsic motivation plays an important role in both younger and older employees, and that the younger workers undertake more action in order to give physical form to their sustainable employment than their older colleagues.
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BACKGROUND:Knowledge on long-term participation is scarce for patients with paid employment at the time of stroke. OBJECTIVE:Describe the characteristics and the course of participation (paid employment and overall participation) in patients who did and did not remain in paid employment. METHODS:Patients with paid employment at the time of stroke completed questions on work up to 30 months after starting rehabilitation, and the Utrecht Scale for Evaluation of Rehabilitation-Participation (USER-P, Frequency, Restrictions and Satisfaction scales) up to 24 months. Baseline characteristics of patients with and without paid employment at 30 months were compared using Fisher’s Exact Tests and Mann-Whitney U Tests. USER-P scores over time were analysed using Linear Mixed Models. RESULTS:Of the 170 included patients (median age 54.2 interquartile range 11.2 years; 40% women) 50.6% reported paid employment at 30 months. Those returning to work reported at baseline more working hours, better quality of life and communication, were more often self-employed and in an office job. The USER-P scores did not change statistically significantly over time. CONCLUSION:About half of the stroke patients remained in paid employment. Optimizing interventions for returning to work and achieving meaningful participation outside of employment seem desirable.
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Introduction This study aims to advance theoretical development on digital transformation (DT) skills that are essential for sustainable employment. Rapid and continuous advancements of digital technology, such as increased automation, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, cloud computing, robotics and internet of things (IoT), lead to huge transformations for society, economy, and its organizations (Ivaldi et al., 2022; Trenerry et al., 2021). For organizations to successfully transform, it is important to strongly invest in an organizational learning climate, while for employees, investment in the sustainability of their employment is key. Therefore, one of the greatest challenges is to identify and develop essential skills that contribute to both the collective learning climate and employment sustainability (Ivaldi et al., 2022). Because previous scientific literature has focused predominantly on mapping general 21st century skills, digital competences of citizens, or essential skills for specific professions, it remains largely unclear which employee skills are essential in the context of DT. Hence, the contribution of this study lies in identifying these essential skills and developing a comprehensive DT skills framework. The following research question is central: Which DT skills are essential for sustainable employment and how can these skills be synthesized into a DT skills framework?
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The focus of this project is on improving the resilience of hospitality Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) by enabling them to take advantage of digitalization tools and data analytics in particular. Hospitality SMEs play an important role in their local community but are vulnerable to shifts in demand. Due to a lack of resources (time, finance, and sometimes knowledge), they do not have sufficient access to data analytics tools that are typically available to larger organizations. The purpose of this project is therefore to develop a prototype infrastructure or ecosystem showcasing how Dutch hospitality SMEs can develop their data analytic capability in such a way that they increase their resilience to shifts in demand. The one year exploration period will be used to assess the feasibility of such an infrastructure and will address technological aspects (e.g. kind of technological platform), process aspects (e.g. prerequisites for collaboration such as confidentiality and safety of data), knowledge aspects (e.g. what knowledge of data analytics do SMEs need and through what medium), and organizational aspects (what kind of cooperation form is necessary and how should it be financed).Societal issueIn the Netherlands, hospitality SMEs such as hotels play an important role in local communities, providing employment opportunities, supporting financially or otherwise local social activities and sports teams (Panteia, 2023). Nevertheless, due to their high fixed cost / low variable business model, hospitality SMEs are vulnerable to shifts in consumer demand (Kokkinou, Mitas, et al., 2023; Koninklijke Horeca Nederland, 2023). This risk could be partially mitigated by using data analytics, to gain visibility over demand, and make data-driven decisions regarding allocation of marketing resources, pricing, procurement, etc…. However, this requires investments in technology, processes, and training that are oftentimes (financially) inaccessible to these small SMEs.Benefit for societyThe proposed study touches upon several key enabling technologies First, key enabling technology participation and co-creation lies at the center of this proposal. The premise is that regional hospitality SMEs can achieve more by combining their knowledge and resources. The proposed project therefore aims to give diverse stakeholders the means and opportunity to collaborate, learn from each other, and work together on a prototype collaboration. The proposed study thereby also contributes to developing knowledge with and for entrepreneurs and to digitalization of the tourism and hospitality sector.Collaborative partnersHZ University of Applied Sciences, Hotel Hulst, Hotel/Restaurant de Belgische Loodsensociëteit, Hotel Zilt, DM Hotels, Hotel Charley's, Juyo Analytics, Impuls Zeeland.
Client: ERA-NET Cofund Smart Cities and Communities, JPI Urban EuropeUrban tourism generates income for cities and create opportunities for its businesses and employment for its residents. However, it can also lead to overcrowding, pollution, noise and numerous other problems, thus reducing quality of life for residents and other local stakeholders and potentially leading to public discontent. This project introduces SCITHOS as a concept that consists of guidelines and tools to help cities find solutions to make the transition towards environmentally and socially responsible urban tourism that simultaneously contributes to long-term prosperity.Within SCTHOS this is done by combining hospitality principles, simulation tools, apps and serious gaming techniques to support policymakers and other stakeholders in generating collaborative deep reflections about barriers to sustainable urban tourism and the need for transition or adaptation strategies. The project supports the assessment of intervention strategies based on an interactive simulation-supported multi-stakeholder approach that triggers social learning and behavior change, while stimulating shared governance and smart citizenship.Guidelines/ tools and the full concept are developed through a series of living labs and field experiments in participating cities. What is more, a Smart City Hospitality network is set up to ensure accessibility to this concept, including all tools and experiences with using them. The final results of the projects are presented 10 and 11 September 2019 in Vienna, as a pre-session to the popular annual Tourism conference (TOURMIS).
TraCS3submitted to the 3nd Interreg Europe programme call Priority 1.1 (Deadline: the 30th of June 2017) Project duration: 5 years (Phase I will last 3 years: 6 Semesters and Phase II - 2 years: 4 Semesters)Project budget: 1,75 M Euro Partner contribution: 263,5 K EuroThe TraCS3 project addresses challenges how to improve the support for regional innovation infrastructure, its better employment and involvement in global innovation values chains, increase innovation capacities to build innovation and research excellence in the regions and how to enable interregional collaboration to help the regions open up their innovation potential to the world. Regional innovation infrastructures and innovation capacities are the backbone of dynamic regional innovation eco-systems. To innovate, industry, especially SMEs, partly rely on research and innovation institutions and their capacities to provide access to the necessary technology infrastructures for upscaling, prototyping and validation of new solutions before they can enter the market. In this context, partners will look for ways to stimulate the development and utilisation of innovation infrastructures, to find gaps, look for opportunities to address them and support further collaboration between existing infrastructures increasing innovation capacities. Seeking to strengthen regional innovation potential through the interregional collaboration, partners will explore opportunities to establish/improve financial schemes for the ERDF use outside programmes' area.
