Informal workplace learning has become a prominent reality in the knowledge society of today. For this reason, developing appropriate learning conditions in order to enhance workplace learning is dominating organizational agendas. However, research that investigates the relationship between important learning conditions and learning outcomes resulting from informal learning is scarce. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to explore how learning conditions in the workplace are related to these informal learning outcomes of police inspectors in particular. A mixed method study, including a survey among 390 police inspectors and interviews with nine police inspectors, was set up to explore this relation. Overall, the results of the survey study suggest that the learning conditions ‘information’, ‘feedback’, ‘reflection’ and ‘coaching’ are good predictors for the acquisition of ‘generic learning outcomes’ and ‘organizational level learning outcomes’. The learning condition ‘coaching’ is also strongly associated with ‘job‐specific learning outcomes’. These results are in accordance with the perception of the interviewed police inspectors.

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Felt job insecurity is commonly seen as a stressor that is tied to a specific segment of employees and which implies overall negative outcomes. We challenge this view based on the new career rhetoric that assumes that felt job insecurity is widespread, although not necessarily problematic; rather, on the contrary, that felt job insecurity may promote career growth and development. Accordingly, our first aim concerns the distribution of felt quantitative and qualitative job insecurity, and our second aims concerns the connection between profiles and career correlates (i.e., perceived employability, individual and organizational career management). We used two samples of Belgian employees (N1 = 2355; N2 = 3703) in view of constructive replication. We used Latent Profile Analysis to compile profiles of felt quantitative and qualitative job insecurity and linked those profiles to career outcomes. Our results are similar across samples: five profiles were found, from relatively secure to relatively insecure (aim 1). The more secure profiles reported more favorable career outcomes than the less secure profiles (aim 2). This provided overall support for the common view. We connect these findings to what we see as the main risk, namely the potentially growing divide based on felt job insecurity and the relatively large group of employees in insecure profiles.

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This paper describes the development and validation of an instrument for measuring work-related learning, which can be applied in different occupational contexts. Based on a comprehensive literature review and group discussions among the authors, the instrument was carefully constructed and examined among a heterogeneous sample of Flemish employees (N = 3232). The dataset was randomly divided into two subsets. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the first dataset (n = 1616) to provide insight into the underlying structure of the instrument. The second subset of the data (n = 1616) was used to validate the retrieved structure by means of a confirmatory factor analysis and to investigate the internal consistencies, convergent and discriminant validity, and the measurement invariance across different groups. After six months, the instrument was retested among the same respondents to examine longitudinal measurement invariance and predictive validity. The results showed that three factors could be distinguished and confirmed, namely informal learning activities using personal sources, informal learning activities using environmental sources, and formal learning activities. The results regarding the reliability and validity of the instrument were satisfactory.