Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 J Occup Rehabil DOI 10.1007/s10926-017-9720-3 Measuring Work Ability with Its Antecedents: Evaluation of the Work Ability Survey Jan‑Bennet Voltmer 1  · Jürgen Deller 1,2   © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 capacity scales can be used to guide interventions aiming at organizational characteristics to improve work ability. Keywords Personal capacity · Organizational capacity · Health · Demographic change · Retirement Introduction Origin and Conceptualization of Work Ability Early research on work ability originated in biomedical and insurance-related disciplines, aiming for the preven- tion of early dropout from the labor force by avoiding or coping with injuries and health impairments [1, 2]. Since the 1970s, factors outside the individual’s psychophysical health have been integrated into the concept of work dis- ability [2]. Consequently, work ability originated in a 1980s research project as a more positivist construct concern- ing the prolongation of work lives [3]. Work ability was defned as the capability of a worker “at present and in the near future […] to do his or her work with respect to work demands, health and mental resources” [4], as measured by the Work Ability Index (WAI) [5]. This defnition concep- tualizes work ability as the result of the balance between the work demands and the health and mental resources of the worker [6]. Comprehensive research on work ability in the following years led to the development of diferent conceptual models of work ability, for example, the holis‑ tic model of work ability [3, 6]. This describes work ability as a function of four factors: (1) individual characteristics of the workers; (2) characteristics of the workplace; (3) the social environment of the worker; and (4) the society [6]. Since this point, work ability has been shown to be related to work and retirement behavior [7–9], and it is Abstract Purpose The revised version of the Work Abil- ity Survey (WAS-R) assesses work ability on several sub- scales at the intersection of personal and organizational capacity, thus adding to the measurement of work ability by integrating the holistic model. It, therefore, improves on two features of the current standard measurement tool of work ability, the Work Ability Index (WAI): (1) a ceil- ing efect and (2) limited detail due to a focus on physi- cal health and personal capacity. Method In two samples (n 1 = 1093, n 2 = 359), psychometric properties and the structure of the WAS-R were analyzed. To evaluate con- struct validity, inter-correlations of the WAS-R and WAI, sickness absence, expected and desired retirement age, and post-retirement work intention were calculated. Results The WAS-R was found to be distributed closer to normal- ity than the WAI. The structural analyses yielded accept- able results for the hypothesized model. The WAS-R was adequately correlated with the WAI, negatively with sick- ness absence, and positively with desired retirement age. Conclusions The WAS-R extends the measurement of work ability, refecting organizations’ work demands. Its broad sub-scales lead to high acceptance of the results within the participating companies. In particular, the organizational Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10926-017-9720-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Jan-Bennet Voltmer voltmer@leuphana.de 1 Institute of Management & Organization (IMO), Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Wilschenbrucher Weg 84a, W.410, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany 2 Silver Workers Research Institute (SWRI), SRH Hochschule Berlin, Berlin, Germany