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Introduction
Human capital and employee well-being, seemingly two different concepts, can be regarded as on one side an explicit way of acknowledging qualitative differences in people, including their qualifications (Winterton and Cafferkey, 2019) and on the other, a rights issue, the interests of employees are often compromised by the external and contextual pressures of the 21st century (Guest, 2017). European Network for Workplace Health Promotion (2007) in the Luxembourg Declaration emphasizes that an organization's future success depends upon a competent, motivated and healthy workforce. The value of human capital is not limited to the “stock” variables belonging to employees but to employees' actual capacity to generate economic outcomes determined by the health status and factors related to well-being (Nunez and Prieto, 2019). Individuals will bring their knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAO) to an organization, but such contributions are intertwined by their health and well-being. Therefore, organizations must devote resources to protecting and sustaining human capital effectively (Nunez and Prieto, 2019). Such efforts must be geared towards enhancing employability (Gratton and Ghoshal, 2003) and towards a broader outlook of human resources.
It should be noted that this use of KSAO, popularised by Ployhart and Moliterno (2011), is conceptually confused, since knowledge and skills are themselves abilities and “other characteristics” amounts to a vague catch-all. Moreover, as a construct for human capital, it lacks any underpinning theory, compared with the more widely accepted knowledge, skills and attitudes, even if the latter should probably be described as behaviours (Le Deist and Winterton, 2005). In technical terminology, these are reflected in European policy instruments as cognitive, functional and behavioural competencies (Markowitsch et al., 2008; Winterton et al., 2006), which are grounded in Bloom's taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001), as well as the work of Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986). Whilst there are differences in their application according to country context (Winterton, 2009), these competencies are sufficiently comprehensive to capture the elements of human capital most relevant to the context of work.
In a broader sense, human capital highlights the acquisition, utilization and development of competence. From organizational perspectives, human capital's emergence extends beyond formal training and encapsulates social boundaries, work processes and culture. Access to deploying and developing productive capacities through the workplace will maximize human...