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The Position of Older Workers

In most European countries, the participation of older workers in the labour force is relatively small (see: demographics). During the Lisbon conference of the EU, an agreement was reached to increase the level of participation of this group. In order to reach this goal, governments have taken measures and introduced laws, regulations etc. But the real change must come from organisations and from the older workers themselves. Organisations can introduce a policy for older workers, in order to increase their employability and make sure they stay healthy, productive, motivated and involved. For an older workers policy, the whole HR-policy and all HR-instruments must be assessed in order to remove or change elements that have a potential negative effect on older workers. Then, activities and policies must be implemented that enhance the position and chances of older workers.

An example of a older workers policy is to give senior workers the function of coach. In this way, the worker can make use of their extensive experience in the organisation.

Why an Older Workers Policy?

There are several reasons why organisations introduce an older workers policy. For many organisations, the natural increase of the number of older workers in their organisation per se is the most important reason: not paying attention to the specific needs and wishes of this group may result in absenteeism and other problems. The need to prevent this is growing now that it becomes more difficult to attract new, younger workers: the lower birth rates of the last decades make that the number of young people entering the labour force is decreasing, and thus the competition over new, young workers is growing. Many organisations nowadays can simply not allow older workers to leave the organisation before their retirement age: without them, there are not enough people to ‘do the job'.

In order to prevent older workers from leaving the organisation, to retain their knowledge and experience, and keep them in an optimal employable condition, a special policy aimed at older workers is needed. Next to that, the organisation should make sure that problems are prevented. For this, a pro-active policy aimed at all members of the organisation, is important. This policy should focus on the stronger and weaker points of workers of all ages. This type of policy is called age-sensitive policy.

Changes in Employability of Older Workers

The employability of a person depends on several factors: knowledge, experience, health, motivation and involvement. In general, the employability of workers decreases as they grow older. The speed of this process differs from person to person, and can be influenced by personal behaviour and organisational policy. In order to do so, one needs to know what changes as people grow older.

Decrease of physical and mental capacities

As people grow older, both their muscular power and endurance decrease, and the time they need to recover increases. Changes in the brain lead to slower reactions and a decrease of the memory-capacities. Whether these changes affect the employability of a person depends on the type of work and on the condition of the person: most workers never need the full 100% of their physical or mental capacities, so it may take some time before a decrease has an impact on their work. Also, part of the decrease in capacities is compensated by a more efficient way of working, a result of a longer experience on the job. The decrease in mental capacities can also be prevented by training: people who do a lot of brain-work keep their mental capacities much longer!

Increase of health problems

When people grow older, they have more chance of encountering health problems. They develop chronically illnesses like arthritis, or high blood pressure. The percentage of older people with a long sickness absenteeism is higher then for younger persons. However, older people have fewer days of short term absenteeism. It seems that older people are less often ill, but once they are, it takes longer for them to recover (and they develop more serious illnesses).

Part of the health problems of older workers are not so much related to their age, but to how long they did the same type of work. Doing the same job for a long time often means that one part of ones body becomes overburdened or wearied out. Many of these problems can be prevented by a regular changing of jobs of movements, and by healthy work conditions.

Changes in learning abilities

It is often thought that learning abilities decrease with age. However, this does not need to be the case. As with mental capacities, learning abilities remain intact when they are used, when the person stays ‘in training'. When this is not the case, and it has been a long time since one learned new things, this will be harder. The process can be made easier by relating the new knowledge to existing knowledge or a familiar situation. This implies that learning strategies of older and younger persons differ, and that thus the learning situation should be adapted to the needs of the specific group that is being trained.

Change in motivation

The position of work in the lives of people often changes over the years. For young people, work is often a place where they can show their abilities and compete with others. Older people find it more important to have work that is creative and meaningful, and where they can use the expertise they gathered over the years. When these preferences are taken seriously when decisions are taken on who does what, this has a strong influence on the motivation of the workers.

Increase of socio-emotional and political abilities

Older people have more life-experience and this makes that they often are better at dealing with conflict or emotionally loaded situations. They have also gathered a richer variety of strategies and methods for how to do their job, and are therefore often more suitable for many positions.

Concentration of experience

Older workers that did the same work for a long time, not only gather any new knowledge or new abilities. Because of this, they are very good at what they do, but it is not easy for them to learn new things or start a new job in their own or a new organisation/ This makes them extremely vulnerable in times of reorganisations and other organisational changes.

Reasons for Early Retirement

Most workers in the EU stop working before they reach the official retirement- age. When trying to increase the number of older people on the labour market, it is important to know the reasons for this early retirement. We summarise the most important reasons:

• A decrease in employability as described earlier. Note, however, that this decrease can easily be prevented or slowed. Even more important: since we use far less than 100% of our capacities, it may take some time before a decreases of them can actually be noticed
• Finances: often, all kinds of national or specific arrangements make that older workers can stop working with only a small loss of income.
• Stereotypes: the stereotypic image of older workers is that they are slow, unmotivated, often ill, and can not learn new things. Even though these images do not hold for most older workers, many people, including the older workers themselves, believe them and act accordingly. They will be reluctant to hire older people, and happy when an older worker decides to leave the organisation.

How to Start

The first step for organisations that want to start with a policy on older workers is to determine why they want this. Is it windowdressing, or is it vital for the future of the organisation. Once the organisation is convinced of the need for an older workers policy, an analyses is needed of the specific problems encountered by older workers in this particular organisation. For this, several actions may be considered:

• Making an overview of the number of older workers in the organisation, and where they work
• Analysing absenteeism and turnover by age: are the numbers and reasons different in different age groups? What is the specific situation for older workers?
• Interview older workers and their colleagues and supervisors: what goes well, what is difficult? This results in an overview of problems and potentials, but also of the culture of the organisation: what are the stereotypes about older workers, does the culture of the organisation allow for diverse ways of working, thinking etc.
• Analyse the present HR-policy: How does it affect older workers, is there a specific policy and/or practise, what are the needs and wishes

This information will help you to define whether or not a specific policy is necessary. It will also provide directions for the content of the policy.