Indicators of Sustainable Employability among Older Finnish Postal Service Employees: A Longitudinal Study of Age and Time Effects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors

It was my pleasure to review this manuscript again.
The manuscript is substantially improved over the previous edition. 
Regarding the perception of employability, both in the literature review and in the discussion, the manuscript is substantially improved.
As I suggested you have improved the tables, the reading of which becomes easier and more understandable now.
As I suggested you have formulated hypotheses. 
However, I would still improve the way of formulating the hypotheses, especially hypothesis 2. It is just A suggestion. I give here an example of how I would rephrase it:
Age groups have a significant effect on the mean scores of the indicators, during a two-year follow-up.
In line 241 you have an extra period.
My Best Regards

Author Response

It was my pleasure to review this manuscript again. The manuscript is substantially improved over the previous edition. Regarding the perception of employability, both in the literature review and in the discussion, the manuscript is substantially improved. As I suggested you have improved the tables, the reading of which becomes easier and more understandable now.

Response: Thank you very much for the positive feedback.

As I suggested you have formulated hypotheses. However, I would still improve the way of formulating the hypotheses, especially hypothesis 2. It is just A suggestion. I give here an example of how I would rephrase it: Age groups have a significant effect on the mean scores of the indicators, during a two-year follow-up.

Response: Thank you very much for this suggestion. We have now revised hypothesis 2 as per your suggestion.

In line 241 you have an extra period.

Response: Thank you, this has been corrected.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is perfectly corrected and supplemented.

 Congratulations to the authors.

Kind regards,

reviewer

Author Response

The paper is perfectly corrected and supplemented. Congratulations to the authors.

Response: We thank the reviewer for their positive feedback.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I was delighted to review this article, as the variables studied are in line with what I investigated. Besides I am 65 years old and will continue to work as long as I am able. 

I congratulate you on the subject.
However, here are my suggestions for improvements:

- In line 40 you have "65or" and you should have "65 or"

- In lines 50, 51 and 52, the sentence “In a literature search using the keywords of sustainable employability or employability index or employability or employment AND older workers or workers or older employees only gave 193 hits” is a little confusing. It should be written differently.

- In the method and results where there is, for example, "(n=2096)" there should be (n = 2096). According to APA rules, there should be a space before and after the (=) sign.

- In the line 121 where you put (56.43±3.41) you should put (M = 56.43; SD = 3.41).

- In line 192 where you put (SD 3.13). You should put (SD = 3.13).

- In table 1, where you put "N=1262" you should put "Frequency" and where you put "%" you should put "percentage".

- Also in table 1, we only see the mean and standard deviation of age. When performing the descriptive statistics of age, besides calculating the mean and standard deviation you should calculate the frequency and percentage for all ages, from 51 years to 67 years, since you used an ANOVA. In ANOVA the independent variables should be categorical and not quantitative. When we are presented with only the mean and standard deviation that variable is considered quantitative and not categorical. If you put the frequency and percentage for all ages, it becomes easier for the reader to interpret the results.

- Furthermore, we should take into account that an employee aged 51 belongs to generation X and an employee aged 67 belongs to the baby boomer generation. It would be interesting to compare these two generations.

- In this study, despite being considered exploratory, hypotheses should have been formulated, which did not happen. They should have at least formulated the hypothesis that leads them to use Repeated Measures ANOVA to analyse the data.

- In lines 275 and 276 where is “within-  and between-subjects” should be “within and between-subjects”

- In line 291 where you wrote "Skills" it would be more appropriate to write "competencies".

 - The references throughout the text are not in conformity with the journal's norms. You should consult the guidelines of the journal.

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewer for the careful assessment of our manuscript. Please find attached the point-by-point response to your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors have done good work, but there are minor changes are required before its acceptance.

1. The gap of this study is not cleared, authors usually discussed the definitions of the constructs in the introduction section. I suggest authors highlight the novelty of this research in the introduction section.
2. There is no literature review heading in the manuscript.
3. What was the criteria to determine the sampling size?
4. There is no common method test was done on data.
5. Kindly add more data in the methodology section. This is not enough.
6. There is no need to discuss the discussion by section. 
7. The limitation and future research direction section is missing in the data. 
8. The validity and reliability of the survey is missing in the manuscript.   

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewer for the careful assessment of our manuscript. Please find attached the point-by-point response to your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I have carefully reviewed the manuscript. In its current form, the manuscript is still in a very initial stage, pretty far from the quality standards of an academic paper. Therefore, it is far from being accepted for publication.

 

1. I suggest the authors to remove the heading from the abstract. As per the MDPI publisher abstract must be without heading. See other published papers in “Sustainability” journal and fallow the publisher pattern. It also suggests you conclude your study and explain the implications in the abstract.
2. I have not found any theory support in this study. Therefore, this study is not rationally fit to explain the theoretical building. The given arguments do not flow logically, and ideas are not well connected. Therefore, I suggest the authors read relevant papers and re-build your research model on the basis of supportive theory.
3. The introduction (background) part of this study is not well explained. It is suggested to provide a more rational background of the gap of the study and research questions. As well as explain your research questions in detail, what research you will do? I also suggest to the authors in the last paragraph of the introduction explain the structure of the paper.
4. Literature review part of this study is missing. Arguments do not flow logically, and ideas are not well connected.  It is difficult to figure out the research strategy followed. However, the manuscript appears rushed and not yet been fully developed, and contains numerous proofreading errors and inconsistencies. Moreover, I suggest you to develop the another heading with the title of the literature review after background and explain the concept of the Sustainable work, employment, well-being, older workers and aging. Also describe here the connection between the all of your variables.
5. The research methodology is not clear and not understandable. Which research approach did the authors use in this study? And what strategy authors fallow to write the research methods not understandable.
6. The current limitation that you have given are traditional. So, improve your limitation explanation. Moreover, the future research directions are also not clear.
7. The conclusion part of this study is also feeble. I suggest you re-write your conclusion and explain the novel contribution. Furthermore, the conclusion must be integrated with your study's introduction, theory, and findings.

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewer for the careful assessment of our manuscript. Please find attached the point-by-point response to your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this interesting paper, which I found as well written and addressing an important topic. 

Instead of the word "Background" authors should use word "Introduction".

The introduction should better clarify why this is an important research problem, and how the study contributes to the existing literature, i.e. the research gap is not clearly formulated. The research gap should be clearly pointed out accordingly to defined research aim in Introduction. 

Section Literature review  should include sub-sections with theory.

A description of the structure of the paper should be described in the  section Introduction - in the last paragraph (not in Conceptual framework).

The sections and sub-section should be numbered. 

Discussion and conclusion: Describe in more detail how a new knowledge could be used in practice. I recommend the authors to articulate clearly what the contributions of the paper are to:

• Theory – the body of conceptual knowledge
• Practice – to managers / employees / policy makers

Limitations and future research should be written as a separated section after Discussion. This section should indicate the main problems of research limitations and some guidelines for further research.

The paper needs to be proofread.

I wish you the best of luck,

reviewer

Reviewer 5 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for taking up an interesting topic on Indicators of Sustainable Employability among Older Employees: A Longitudinal Study of Age and Time Effect.

The aim of the paper has been achieved and it is a valuable voice in the discussion within the subject and referenced to the literature. The paper, however, is not free from several shortcomings. Thus, I have a few comments about the text:

• It should be clearly indicated in the title that the study concerns Finnish postal service employees. This group cannot be considered representative of all older employees.
• The abstract is too long and detailed. It is worth cutting it a bit.
• Figure 2 is redundant. It is hardly legible and does not contribute much.
• Are there implications and contributions of a study? It is worth highlighting them (both theoretical and practical).
• It is worth adding a table presenting the results directly related to H2: There is a significant change in the mean scores of the indicators between the age groups during a two-year follow-up.

The above remarks do not affect the overall positive assessment of the text. Regards,

The reviewer.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors

Thank you for making the changes I proposed.

However, I still ask you to make the following changes:

1. The following sentence is not in the correct place.

“This article is structured in the following way: We first present a short literature review to introduce/clarify the concepts of sustainable work, well-being, older workers and aging and theories around them. Next, we present the methods to describe the data, measures of the employability indicators and analysis procedure. Then the results are summarized, followed by a discussion of our findings with previous literature, and the strengths and limitation of the study”.

It should be at the end of the Background.

2. In row 273 where it is (p<0.011) it should be (p < .001).

3. In the title of table 2, where it is (N=1262), it should be (N = 1,262).

My Best Regards

Reviewer 3 Report

I have carefully reviewed the revised version of the manuscript and responses of the authors. I want to bring into your notice still this paper is not up to the quality standard of the publication. The authors have not taken it seriously, and all of the suggested revisions were not modified in the manuscript. The current manuscript is pretty far from the academic paper. Therefore, I suggest the editor reject this paper.