Ability to work
Ability to work is the psychological and physical ability of an employee to successfully cope with the work tasks assigned to him . The opposite is the inability to work .
General
The ability to work includes both individual aspects such as the health and skills of a worker and general aspects of the work environment such as working conditions or management style and corporate culture . It therefore not only describes the individual prerequisites of a person in order to meet the work demands that arise, but includes both aspects in equal parts and thus contains a balanced relationship between the individual abilities of a person and the specific conditions and requirements of the activities or tasks to be performed. of a job .
Today's concept of work ability can be traced back to the Finnish researcher Juhani Ilmarinen from 2004, who defines it as “the ability of a person to do a given job at a given point in time”. His “House of Work Ability” includes work ( leadership , work environment , work content , work organization , requirements ), values ( attitudes and work motivation ), competencies ( qualifications , knowledge , abilities and skills ) and health (physical, mental and mental).
Models
House of work ability
A well-known model for work ability comes from the Finnish scientist Juhani Ilmarinen, who maps the essential factors in his "House of Work Ability". The main influencing factors on a person's ability to work are presented on four floors: health, competence, values and work.
In addition, influencing factors on the macro level are taken into account, through which individual work ability can be influenced ( family , personal environment , regional environment as well as society, culture, politics, etc.).
Working ability group
Another model is the work skills circle, which arranges work skills according to social skills, self-image and emotional skills in the upper semicircle. The lower semicircle, on the other hand, deals with the elementary skills that are important for almost every profession and the subject-specific skills that are dependent on the choice of profession . This model is used in vocational rehabilitation and work diagnostics , e.g. B. in the context of occupational therapy or psychiatry . The circle was created in the Arbeitsdiagnostisches Zentrum in Osnabrück and represents a modified version of the functional circle by C. Haerlin Cumming and Cumming in 1962. It also represents an extension to the international classification of functionality . A subdivision can look like this:
| elementary
Skills |
subject-specific | social skills | Self-image | emotional skills |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
analysis
With the “ Work Ability Index” (ABI or WAI), the ability to work can be measured and thus it can be demonstrated whether or not specific measures can increase the ability to work. For example, Ilmarinen was able to show in various studies that the work ability of employees, in particular through a combination of various measures at the level of the house of work ability, could be significantly increased or maintained with increasing age.
Projects
As part of the AKKu project (ability to work in small and micro-enterprises) of the New Quality of Work initiative (INQA), the Central Office for Continuing Education in Crafts (ZWH), the Institute for Ergonomics at RWTH Aachen University and the Institute for Safety Technology at the University Wuppertal and the demography consultancy d-ialogo tools for maintaining the ability to work in companies adapted to the requirements of micro and small businesses with fewer than 15 employees and prepared using multimedia (keyword: "Workability 2.0"). In Austria, the European Social Fund and the Ministry of Social Affairs finance demographic advice for employees and companies.
The aim is to encourage the discussion of this topic both at the employee level and at the level of the managing directors and company owners and thus to make a contribution to “good work”. The New Quality of Work initiative is funded by the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs .
Legal issues
The ability to work not assessed according to the last transmitted activity , but after the workers because of the employment contract due performance that the employer would conform with the contract must accept. The ability to work thus triggers an employee's duty to work . According to the employment contract, the employee has to perform his full work (100%) when he is ready to work. Otherwise he has to stay away from work due to incapacity for work. This therefore excludes a dutiful employee going to work sick ( presentationalism ). However, the employment contract does not usually establish the obligation to align all private life and behavior outside of work with the employer's interest in ensuring that the employee does not become incapacitated. The employee is therefore free to organize his leisure time as he likes.
The ability to work does not apply if there are obstacles such as illness , imprisonment , alcoholisation , withdrawal of the driving license or a ban on employment . Since the employee bears the risk of the road, he is unable to work if he does not reach his workplace due to objective obstacles such as traffic disruptions ( e.g. driving ban due to smog alarm , failure of public transport , road closure ) or natural events (such as floods , snowdrifts , icy ice ).
This is to "objective performance obstacles" in which the obligation of the employer from the legal point of § 616 BGB is eliminated. Thus, at the expense of the employee, § 297 BGB intervenes, according to which the employer is not in default if the employee is unable to provide the service owed by him at the contractually stipulated time. In this context, “being unable” is to be understood as not only subjective, but also objective impossibility of performance, as the wording of the law makes clear.
literature
- Gottfried Richenhagen: Age management and the need for skilled workers . Guest lecture at the IAW of the RWTH Aachen, 2011.
- Juhani Ilmarinen, Jürgen Tempel: Ability to work 2010. What can we do to keep you healthy? 2002. (in English: J. Ilmarinen: Aging Workers in the European Union - Status and promotion of work ability, employability and employment . 1999. and J. Emarinen, V. Louhevaara (ed.): FinnAge - respect for the aging : Action program to promote health, work ability and well-being of aging workers in 1990-96 . 1999)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Juhani Ilmarinen: Aging workers. In: Michael von Cranach , Hans-Dieter Schneider (Hrsg.): Older people in companies. 2004, p. 39 ff.
- ↑ Presentation based on J. Ilmarinen and J. Tempel (2002)
- ↑ Aid for making findings / work diagnostics. (PDF) Retrieved September 25, 2019 .
- ↑ Beate Kubny-Lüke: Ergotherapy in the field of psychiatry . Georg Thieme Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-13-125571-4 ( google.de [accessed September 25, 2019]).
- ↑ Kristina Adorjan, Nadja Kistner, Sabine Fink, Sandra Dehning, Peter Falkai: Return to working life also as therapy . In: MMW - Advances in Medicine . tape 156 , no. 15 , ISSN 1613-3560 , p. 49-52 , doi : 10.1007 / s15006-014-3410-2 .
- ↑ Hans-Jürgen Möller, Gerd Laux, Hans-Peter Kapfhammer: Psychiatry and Psychotherapy: Volume 1: General Psychiatry Volume 2: Special Psychiatry . Springer-Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-540-33129-2 ( google.de [accessed September 25, 2019]).
- ↑ Kirsten Köhler, Friederike Steier-Mecklenburg: Work therapy and work rehabilitation - fields of work of occupational therapy . Georg Thieme Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-13-168351-9 ( google.de [accessed September 25, 2019]).
- ^ Work Ability Index
- ↑ Juhani Ilmarinen: Aging workers. In: Michael von Cranach, Hans-Dieter Schneider (Hrsg.): Older people in companies. 2004, p. 39 ff.
- ↑ AKKu (ability to work in small and micro businesses)
- ^ Institute for Industrial Engineering
- ^ Institute for Safety Technology at the University of Wuppertal
- ↑ d-ialogo
- ↑ Demographic advice | for employees + companies. Retrieved March 27, 2019 .
- ↑ BAG, judgment of January 20, 1998, Az .: 9 AZR 812/96
- ↑ Horst Schäfer: Duty to promote health-promoting behavior? In: NZA. 1992, p. 529.
- ↑ BAG, judgment of November 7, 1975, 5 AZR 459/74
- ^ BAG, judgment of December 18, 1986, Az .: 2 AZR 34/86
- ↑ BAGE 41,123 BAG; Judgment of December 8, 1982, Az .: 4 AZR 134/80
