Chair: Nicholas Boreham, University of Stirling, Scotland

Description

This symposium discusses policy implications for the practices that need to be adopted by workplaces and educational institutions, and by workers themselves, to maintain the effectiveness of older workers, including assisting their work transitions. Both the European Union and Australia share concerns about maintaining the workplace effectiveness of older workers’ competence and capacities to manage transitions to new work, new ways of working and new work requirements. Older workers (those over 45 years of age) will become an increasing large component of both European and Australian workforces, at least over the next two decades. Organisation of Economic and Cultural Development (OECD) (1998) projections hold that the proportion of older workers aged from 45-59 will increase between 27and 33 per cent in EU in the next decade. Similarly, the National Strategy for Ageing Australia (2005) claims between 1998 and 2008 older workers will comprise 65% of the growth in the Australian workforce and this has a number of consequences for practices in workplaces and educational institutions. Firstly, changes in demographic patterns of the workforce brings comes the prospect of a predominantly older working population. Secondly, it is likely that individuals in both continents will be required to have a longer working life, because of any greater reliance on financial self-sufficiency as publicly-funded welfare support is stretched by ageing populations (NSAA 2005). Thirdly, the skills and capacities of older workers will become essential to the goods and services provided by both private and public sector enterprises. Fourthly, like all workers, those over 45 will be faced with confronting changes to the work that is available, including the demise of some occupations and the transformations of others; changes in the way that work has to be done; and changing requirements of work (Billett 2006).

The symposium aims to delineate bases to: (i) inform policy for both workplaces and education institutions about how to effectively utilise and support the development of older workers’ capacities and work transitions; (ii) a identify appropriate learning strategies to assist the development and maintenance of these capacities and secure successful work transitions; and (iii) identify, evaluate and share instances of good practice in workplaces and educational programmes that support older workers’ workplace competence. This will be achieved through a process of: (a) discussing conceptualisations of age and aging in the context of labour market, cultural and life history of workers (b) understanding the range of individual, workplace, and educational factors that impinge upon older workers workplace competence; (c), the exploration of these factors in both Australia and the EU; and (d), a comparison of findings and understandings. It is these that will lead to the development of guidelines for policy and practice within workplaces, educational institutions and for government. The symposium represents the first outputs of a network comprising four research clusters: UK; Germany-Netherlands; Denmark-Finland and Australia.

The central question for this network is:

How best can policy and practice in vocational and higher education, and workplaces contribute to maintaining older workers’ competence and capacities to successfully secure work transitions within their work, across new work tasks and, possibly, to new occupations.

Older workers’ labour market participation.

Some of these issues have been delineated through a series of narrative interviews with older workers and guidance workers carried out across a range of projects by researchers at the IER, University of Warwick. The themes arising draw upon notions of ‘semi-retirement’ and ‘personal career re-definition’. The former can be seen as a way of easing the transition from work to full retirement. Semi-retirement is associated with self-employment, with employees moving from permanent to fixed- or short-term contracts, with a reduction in working hours and with a move away from people’s main line of work (see also: Department for Work and Pensions Research Report No 200 'Factors affecting the labour market participation of older workers' by Humphrey, Costigan, Pickering, Stratford and Barnes (2003)). The latter notion could be illustrated in the major career shifts illustrated in the ‘case histories’ of older workers. The implications of this for education, training and guidance were in line with those found by Ford (2005) ‘Am I still needed? Guidance and learning for older adults, University of Derby, Centre for Guidance Studies): ‘guidance services that older adults find particularly helpful are mainly highly personalised and people- focused initiatives that combine a range of guidance and learning activities into an integrated service.’

The issue of ageing workforce and innovation in Italy

The Kok Report claims that an ageing Italian workforce will impact negatively on the country’s economic growth from 2015 and to achieve the Stockholm European Council’s target of 50% of 55-64 years old employed by 2010 (Kok 2004) it will be necessary retrain significant sections of the older workforce. The paper critically appraises this recommendation in the case of Italy on the following bases. Factors pertaining to older workers: low levels of training experienced by most older workers (Migliore 2005); low participation in LLL among people aged 50-64 years old (Migliore 2005); little interest in VET amongst older workers. Factors pertaining to employers: cost/benefits of training is negative for older employees and management not oriented to supporting older workers. Consequently, to address older workers’ needs it will be necessary to develop: new innovation management practices in the workplaces to combat entrenched attitudes towards viewing older workers as a cost’; new rules in the labour market to facilitate flexible retirement, abolition of early retirement, financial incentives to work longer, to hire and keep older workers; and new strategies for accessing VET to older workers.

The Voice of Seniority – Older Workers and Senior Policies in Focus

Bearing the ageing of the work-force in mind, there seems to be an increasing need for retaining and employing more older workers in companies. So an active effort to introduce initiatives on the public and private labour market that can help to increase the occupational frequency among the group of unskilled male workers over 50 seems at present to be relevant. This research project at Roskilde University, Denmark was designed with elements of qualitative methods and a bottom-up approach because the idea was to let the voice of the older workers themselves come forward. Many discourses, policies and recommendations have had other rationales, i.e. company efficiency, state expenditure cut downs etc. The paper concludes in results about new methods of how to bring forward the voice of the older workers themselves and consequently formulate senior policies based on the experiences and motivations of workers themselves – a democratic and sustainable path to walk.

Older Workers and Knowledge Society

Older workers have substantive portfolios of knowledge and experiences gained from their work practice. Often, much of this knowledge and experience is lost when older employees leave the workplace, thereby representing a significant loss to the company and colleagues. Yet, it is very difficult to make older workers’ implicit knowledge explicit in order for younger and less experienced employees to learn from it. Moreover, companies often ignore the potential that can result from sharing these workers’ experiences and knowledge and do not have mechanisms in place to facilitate their employees’ continuity of learning and knowledge transfer across generations of workers. Such procedures would benefit the company and its staff members, as well as recognising the value of older employees’ contributions to the work place. Based on empirical research from different European research projects, the German contribution will present some examples of strategies that aim at facilitating knowledge transfer and workplace learning between different generations of workers through, for example, knowledge management, expert networks, counselling and mentoring systems, expert-novice learning, etc. and investigate the role that such mechanisms can play for the societal and labour market integration of older employees.

Learning, well-being and active aging at work

Based on the demographic developments, many European countries face similar challenges with a growing proportion of people on pension and ageing workforce. Ageing people are defined being from the age of 45 and aged people from the age of 55. Finnish aged people have had very different educational and working possibilities compared to the younger generations were several national initiatives respond to the problem. Key amongst these is the Finnish National Program of Ageing Workers to promote occupational health and working conditions. However, our focus is on studying the challenges of learning, maintenance of competence, transfer of tacit knowledge and well-being of aging people in different work contexts. We draw upon the existing qualitative data in service sector and in textile industry occupations and ongoing projects in SMEs and municipal sector workplaces and approach these challenges from the point of views of workers’ experiences, workplaces strategies and practices.

Aging and Lifelong Learning - Societal and Subjective dimensions

There is a need for a broader theorizing of the relation of learning and ageing seen as a biographical result of societal conditions, biological development and subjective experience. Especially the societal organisation of work as well as the subjective significance of work are seen as productive. The paper is based on examples and ideas from a theoretical and methodological project on life history approaches, theorizing competences and learning in the perspective of the subjective experience of historical changes in work and labour market relations. A couple of examples illustrate how this approach analyses the subjective aspect of critical transitions (labour market incidents), in which gender relations play a significant role, and the way in which they inhibit and/or enable learning.

Older workers’ agency in work and work transitions

This paper proposes that older workers will not be able to rely on the support of employers in the latter years of their working lives, because of a preference for youth, so will need to develop personnel epistemologies to individually and collectively maintain the capacity to be effective in work and through work transitions. Further, as maturation processes, in part, work against older workers they will need to rely on their experiences and accumulated practice in strategic ways and guided by critically reflective capacities.

Methodology or methods/research instruments or sources used:

The symposium will report the outcomes of a shared desk audit of the current literature, both research and policy providing perspectives from the three European and one Australian research clusters, on: (i) the capacities and potential of older workers; (ii) cultural norms and values; (iii) workplace practices, including the changing requirements of work; (iv) educational institutions’ programs and practices; and (iv) policy focuses for older workers skill maintenance. This audit will comprise the first six months of the project and will be reviewed and consolidated at the first project meeting in September 2006.

This review will identify the existing knowledge across these five areas and will be used to identify key sets of issues and potential practices to assist the learning and promotion of older workers’ skills. These outcomes will then form the basis for a subsequent set of interviews and surveys for each participating cluster to elaborate and verify the initial propositions and also identify how these differ within and across the participating countries.

Conclusions or expected outcomes or findings:

The intended outcomes of this symposium are to delineate means by which to:

• (i) inform policy for both workplaces and education institutions about how to secure and effectively support older workers’ capacities and work transitions;
• (ii) identify appropriate learning strategies and pedagogic practices that will assist the development and maintenance of these capacities and transitions;
• (iii) identify, evaluate and share instances of good practice in policy measures, workplace practices and educational programmes in support of older workers’ workplace competence; and
• (iv) develop effective working relations across Australian and European network, including government in vocational and higher education.

The project that symposium informs has specific focuses on and will generate policy related outcomes and benefits for:

Older workers:

It is anticipated that a clear understanding of the kinds of learning requirements and processes of learning that older workers will need to engage in will arise from this project. As well as informing practice in workplaces and educational institutions, it should also assist understanding and elaborating the roles that older workers themselves need to play in maintaining their workplace competence and successfully managing workplace transitions.

Workplaces:

An aging population poses a great challenge, yet potential for both employers and workers. Employers may stand to gain access to a stable, reliable and productive workforce if appropriate practices are enacted. They may require models of practice that demonstrate how to support older workers to re-train etc and to overcome their largely ungrounded fears that it is difficult to re-train older workers. Likely, older workers will require different kinds of support to engage with new and broader work roles within their current place of employment and to assist them to make the transition into an entirely new occupational field. It is anticipated that this project will provide some models and principles for support.

Education Institutions:

Older workers have become a significant component of the student cohort in both vocational education and higher education in Australia (NCVER 2004) and the European Union (EU 2000). Therefore, understanding more about the needs of older workers, and how best there engagement with education institutions might proceed, stands as a basis to enhance the provision within vocational and higher education.

References:

• Billett S (2006 in press) Work, change and workers. Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands
• Commission of the European Communities. (2004) Increasing the employment of older workers and delaying the exit from the labour market. Communication from the commission to the council, the European parliament, the economic and social committee and the committee of the regions.
• Department of Health and Ageing (2005) Employment for Mature age Workers. http://www.health.gov.au/internet/wcms/publishing.nsf/Content/ageing-ofoa-wllplan-emppaper.htm (access 24th November 2005)
• Elder, G H. Jr. 1975. "Age Differentiation and the Life Course." Annual Review of Sociology 1:165-190.
• Iacci, P, Gianni R, Giorgio S, and Romano Trabucchi. 2005. Troppo vecchi a quarant'anni? Milano: Il Sole 24 ORE.
• Kok, W 2004. "Facing the challenge. The Lisbon strategy for growth and employment." Europeen Communities, Luxembourg.
• Migliore, M C. 2005. "The contribution of cultural historical activity theory in analysing vocational e-training of older workers." Pp. 476-481 in Lifelong E-learning. Bringing e-learning close to lifelong learning and working life: a new period of uptake, edited by A. Szücs and I. Bø. Helsinki, University of Technology: EDEN, European Distance and E-learning Network.
• Organisation of Economic and Cultural Development (1998)'Employment Outlook' OECD, Paris

Older Workers' Careers: upskilling, reskilling and transitions

Sally-Anne Barnes, Jenny Bimrose & Alan Brown, University of Warwick

The Issue of Ageing Workforce and Innovation in Italy

David Guile, University of London & Maria Cristina Migliore, Institute of Economic and Social Research of Piedmont

The Voice of Seniority - Older Workers and Senior Policies in Focus

Leif Emil Hansen, Roskilde University

Older Workers and Knowledge Society

Simone Kirpal, University of Bremen & Alexander Kühl, Berlin SÖSTRA Institute

Learning, Well-Being and Active Aging at Work

Kati Tikkamaki, University of Tampere

Older Workers' Agency in Work and Work Transitions

Stephen Billett, Griffith University