127 6 DISCLOSURE AND SUSTAINABLE EMPLOYABILITY AND WELL-BEING AT WORK INTRODUCTION The importance of well-being at work for sustainable employability and mental health has increasingly gained attention (1, 2). This is likely to increase even further in the coming decades due to the aging working population in Western countries (3), the current labor shortage in many industries (4), more importance given to work-life balance and flexibility (5) and workers searching increased compensation (6). Additionally, the pandemic from covid-19 has impacted well-being at work and mental health (7). Together this makes the topic of how employers can invest in workers’ health and wellbeing, a relevant topic. Sustainable employability refers to the ability of workers to participate in work and the labor market during their lifetimes (8). Traditionally, conceptualization of sustainable employability was mainly based on a medical and performance perspective, focusing on complaints (e.g. sick-leave (9)) and performance related indicators (e.g. work ability (10)). However, with the emerging subfield of positive organizational psychology (11), there is a shift in focus of the conceptualization of sustainable employability, with more focus on well-being at work (8). For instance, based on the capability approach, sustainable employability is defined as ‘throughout their working lives, workers can achieve tangible opportunities in the form of a set of capabilities. They also enjoy the necessary conditions that allow them to make a valuable contribution through their work, now and in the future, while safeguarding their health and welfare. This requires, on the one hand, a work context that facilitates this for them and on the other, the attitude and motivation to exploit these opportunities’ (8). According to this approach, these conditions lead to well-being at work. As the conceptualization of sustainable employability has shifted to more focus on well-being at work, the current study will focus both on sustainable employability from a traditional perspective and on well-being at work by including more novel measures. Colleagues and supervisors (e.g. the work environment) play a crucial role in well-being at work, and thus sustainable employability of workers (12, 13). This is even more important for workers with mental illness (MI), including substance abuse, as illness is a threat to sustainable employability itself (14). Workers with MI are amongst those with the highest risk of sick leave, disability pension and job loss, and recent studies increasingly suggest that this is not merely a result of their health problem, but also of workplace factors, such as a lack of supervisor and coworker support, stigma and discrimination (15-18). As MI is common, with the lifetime prevalence of 29% in the global population (19), it is important to examine the ways in which workers with MI can be supported through the work environment.
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