Rob van Dijk
Manager
Rob is a consultant with a strong passion for innovation and organizational development. With 15 years of experience across a range of companies, he helps organizations build future-proof, people-centered ways of working.
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Experts: Rob van Dijk & Tony Brugman (ModellenWerk / nlmtd)
“Is more staff really an option?” With that provocative question, Rob van Dijk and Tony Brugman opened Create the Future’s second expert session. Their answer, backed by data from CBS, the UWV, and their own ModellenWerk Intelligence platform, was unequivocal. The Dutch labor force is shrinking, scarcity is structural, and organizations that continue to look for more staff are solving yesterday’s problem.
A Labor Market Under Structural Pressure
The Netherlands has reached a demographic tipping point. The share of people over 65 now exceeds the number of young people entering the labor market. Nearly half of all vacancies are hard to fill, and sectors such as construction, healthcare, and engineering face shortages that directly constrain production. At the same time, redundant roles in administration, customer service, and data entry continue to grow. The labor market is not only tight, it is skewed. And the issue is not just quantity. Participants noted a decline in the quality of graduates from technical schools, forcing companies to invest heavily to bring new hires up to standard. Meanwhile, organizations ranging from defense to energy are competing for the same ever-shrinking pool of engineers and technicians.
Five Levers Instead of a Single Recruitment Strategy
Instead of competing more aggressively for the same talent pool, Van Dijk and Brugman presented a framework built around five workforce levers: reducing or reorganizing market demand, improving talent inflow and retention, leveraging innovation and technology, increasing internal efficiency, and pursuing external collaboration. Each lever was illustrated with a real-world example, from Bernhoven Hospital, which reduced the healthcare burden through collaborative decision-making, to Unilever’s internal talent marketplace, which redeployed more than 8,000 employees, to childcare organization Smallsteps, which automated administrative work so employees could spend more time with children. The message was clear: organizations that focus solely on hiring are overlooking four equally powerful levers.
From Efficiency to Enjoyment
The interactive discussion revealed a recurring tension between ambition and reality. As one participant put it, “We keep optimizing for efficiency, but we forget that people should also enjoy their work.” Several participants questioned the assumption that technology automatically solves capacity issues, noting that while most organizations have implemented some form of AI, only a small fraction see measurable productivity gains. Others pointed to the paradox of invest now, reap later. Building workforce capacity takes years, while boards expect results within a single year. “You have to invest now to have capacity in a few years. That’s not a popular idea in boardrooms these days,” one participant observed. Beneath it all lies the human dimension of change. Functional redesign is only one part of the equation. The social layer, where people find meaning and manage stress together, is just as critical.
“People can only process a limited amount of change.”
Outlook
The session closed with practical advice: assess your organization across all five levers, identify where untapped potential lies, and start investing now, even if the results will only become visible years from today. The message was unmistakable. Workforce strategy can no longer be treated as a purely HR issue. It demands the same rigor and investment logic that organizations apply to technology, infrastructure, and finance. The organizations that succeed are those that stop trying to solve structural change by simply hiring more people, and instead start building the workforce their strategy truly requires.
