After having investigated attitudes towards risks and the willingness to share risks in the previous chapters, we now turn to the actual practices of risk sharing and risk management. Perceiving risks as social risks and being willing to share social risks is one thing, being able to transform these perceptions and willingness into actual policies is another. This is dependent, among other things, on the institutional environment in which these policies have to be developed and is dependent upon the organisations – firms and administrative agencies – in which they are to be implemented. We will investigate these processes in the following chapters.

We start our investigation of the actual practices of risk sharing and of risk management in this chapter by analysing the introduction of the idea of increased job security through enhanced employability in the Netherlands. We will look into the development of the policy discourse, the introduction of employability in collective labour agreements and the practice of employability policies in firms. Employability is introduced as a means to increase the job security of workers by investing in their capabilities instead of providing them with social security protection. However, this investment strategy creates collective action problems: Why invest in workers and consequently run the risk that they will leave the firm and that another employer reaps the rewards of this investment? What we learn in this chapter is that the ‘old’ institutions of the social security state – for which employability is often presented as an alternative – have fulfilled an important role in making the introduction of employability a relative success, because these ‘old’ institutions have helped overcome the collective action problems presented by the new strategy of enhancing employability.

Introduction

The risk of losing one's capability to secure attractive employment, or to maintain sufficient ‘employability’, has gained more attention during the last decade. In the debate on the transformation of the welfare state the loss of the capability to secure employment is seen as one of the “new social risks” that result from the transition to a post-industrial society (Taylor-Gooby 2004). When it comes to managing this risk, it is now assumed, at least in the Netherlands, that enhanced employability is the new job security – in short: employacurity. Employability offers a means for risk management in the Dutch welfare state.