144 Chapter 5 of the benefits of prevention on the longer term. Several stakeholders at sociopolitical macro level do not agree with that, as they mentioned that is not a matter of not knowing the benefits, but a matter of employers not wanting to invest in prevention: S13 (socio-political macro level): “It is a kind of primarily human behavior that we struggle to distinguish long term goals from short term investments. You see it everywhere, even in the whole establishment of prevention. We have a ministry of health, but nearly 100 billion is going to curative healthcare and very little is going to preventive care. I always say, you can also see it in society, if your house is on fire then the fire fighters come, and we all pay for it, that is publicly funded, so curative. But if the same fire fighter rings the doorbell the night before the big fire and says: can I give you some advice about escape routes and other things, then you have to pay for it yourself. It is very complicated and apparently, we have the tendency to see the dangers and then pay for it.” Several stakeholders at socio-political macro level stated that we need to work out business cases and develop innovative preventive services to convince employers to invest in prevention. At last, several stakeholders explained that the amount of support from key stakeholders in organizations for prevention (e.g. supervisor, HR manager) is just as important. If there is no support from key stakeholders for prevention, it was mentioned that it is very hard to convince employers to invest in prevention. Difficulties in Early Identification of Employees at Risk for Health Problems The majority of the stakeholders mentioned that methods for the identification of employees at risk mainly focus on indicated prevention (i.e. target high risk employees to prevent health problems). Therefore, employees are mainly identified when they may already experience health complaints and are at risk for health problems. This makes it very difficult to identify employees before they have problems on multiple life domains. Several stakeholders at organizational and socio-political macro level indicated that we should address problems on multiple life domains preventively by having conversations with employees regularly: S14 (socio-political macro level): “Just have regular conversations with these people about how their lives work, to tackle or even prevent problems as quickly as possible. But prevention is always difficult. So at least tackle it as quickly as possible, and in the context of sustainable employability to prevent them from falling through the ice.”
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