Curing The Dutch Disease? Sickness Absence and Work Disability in The Netherlands

The purpose of the current paper is to provide an overview and evaluation, covering the past decade, of developments and experiences in the Netherlands with respect to the prevention and reduction of sickness absence and work disability. The government has made various attempts to restrict expenditure in this area by increasing the (financial) responsibility of employers. It is concluded that the legislative changes do not seem to have long‐lasting effects on sickness absence and work disability rates and have not worked out in practice as well as was foreseen. Employers — particularly small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs)— often buy minimum service packages from occupational health services (OHSs), show risk‐avoiding behaviour, and primarily undertake procedural and person‐oriented measures. Some lessons may be learned from the Netherlands' approach, concerning (1) the principle of self‐regulation; (2) the position of SMEs; (3) the privatizing of OHSs; (4) examples of good practice.