Work Ability in the Digitized World: Organizing Work to Support Learning and Development

The digital transformation requires new forms of work organization that help employees preserving their ability to act in an uncertain environment. Healthy and capable workers are considered to be essential for organizational success and innovations. However, the digital transformation causes harmful consequences for workers if demands and individual resources are no longer balanced. Thus, jobholders need to be prepared for meeting new demands by a job design that enables workplace learning and permanent development of vocational competencies, including digital expertise, methodological skills, social skills and self-competence. Our presentation reports current findings from Germany relating to the preservation of work ability in the digitized world. For our analysis we use both quantitative and qualitative data from a representative survey of employees and from different case studies in financial, insurance and civil service sectors. The importance of workplace learning is demonstrated as well as opportunities for employees, supervisors and organizations to enhance work ability in a rapid changing world of work through work organization and an organizational learning culture.