Search results

The purpose of this paper is to determine employee retention rates and describe factors affecting employee retention among older workers.

This study conducts a secondary data analysis using data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing (KLoSA) of Korea Employment Information Service. The authors use data on 1,264 newly employed older workers from the 2010 KLoSA and determine their employment retention status based on data from the 2012 KLoSA.

The employee turnover rate of older workers was 37.1 per cent between 2010 and 2012, indicating that one-third of older workers stopped work within the two years under study. The factors affecting the employment retention of older workers were education level, job position, job type, work-related stress, health status, and activity limitation due to health status.

This study concentrated on the South Korea context. Given the particular circumstances facing South Korea (as outlined in the study) it is unlikely that the findings would provide a base for informing employment retention strategies for older workers in other societies.

The South Korean government could use this study’s findings in formulating a policy for improving welfare in workplaces to increase the employment retention rate among older workers. Employers employing or intending to hire older workers would have a better understanding about factors affecting their retention. To reduce their work-related stress, older workers require a safe and healthy work environment that considers their health status.

This study is the first one to look at the factors affecting the retention of older workers in South Korea.

The purpose of this paper is to present the importance of i-deals, or idiosyncratic deals, especially for older workers in organizations.

The paper briefly reviews recent literature relating to the important benefits older workers bring to organizations and the elements of their work that older workers value.

Keeping older workers in the organization can have important benefits. Enhanced flexibility and autonomy is especially valued by older workers.

As a brief review, this paper summarizes other literature.

I-deals, or flexible work deals, must respond to the specific needs and desires of older workers. Older workers have increasingly diverse wants and needs, and it is important that they be heard in this regard.

As society ages, managing these challenges will become both more important and challenging.

This paper will be widely read and may drive practical change in organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the key themes in the area of the impact of demographic change on young workers and older workers in relation to education, skills and employment, as discussed in the papers included in this section. The authors have also drawn upon data from their project “From Young Workers to Older Workers” as a context for the papers.

This paper draws out the main themes from the papers contained within this section and presents original data from interviews with 97 older workers who were interviewed at two points in time – labour market entry and labour market exit.

The selection of papers in this section is outlined, as well as offering some findings from the authors’ research on older workers.

The papers in this section, including this paper, offer an overview of some of the key debates in relation to the impact of demographic change on both young workers and older workers.

This article investigates whether employers are more likely to employ older workers when faced with a shortage of qualified labour. Furthermore, it analyses whether in such cases age stereotypes moderate employers' preferences towards four employment options: (1) supporting workers to continue until the retirement age, (2) encouraging workers to continue beyond the retirement age, (3) recruiting someone older than 55 and (4) (re)hiring someone who has retired.

Data were drawn from a survey conducted among Finnish employers in 2021 (response rate = 66%, N = 1,442). Applying factor analysis to questions about older workers' qualities compared to those of average workers, a distinction was made between perceptions of experience-related and adaptability-related qualities. Generalised ordered logistic regression models were estimated to analyse the relations of preferences for each employment option with experiencing recruitment problems, workplace age stereotypes and interactions between these.

Experiencing recruitment problems was positively related to preferences for hiring a retired person. Employers with difficulties in recruitment were more likely to support work until the retirement age and recruit someone over 55, but only if they had above-average positive perceptions of older workers' experience-related qualities. Employers confronted with recruitment difficulties were more likely to encourage workers to continue beyond the retirement age if they had more positive perceptions of older workers' adaptability-related qualities.

This study shows that, even when confronted with labour shortages and population ageing, workplace age stereotypes still pose a potential obstacle for employers to make the best use of an older workforce.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the study of work-life balance (WLB) by exploring the influence of WLB amongst older workers. Theoretically, this study suggests that the psychological benefits of age on relationships between WLB and well-being might be stronger for those “younger” older workers than those working toward or beyond retirement age. This study tests a moderated mediation model whereby the effects of WLB on anxiety and depression (through job stress) are moderated by age.

Survey data from 512 New Zealand employees in three older age cohorts (55–59 years, 60–64 and 65+ years).

This study finds that WLB reduces job stress and leads to lower anxiety and depression. Job stress positively influences anxiety and depression and partially mediates the influence of WLB. Significant interaction effects are found by age, with the lower age cohort (55–59 years) reporting the strongest benefits from WLB and this effect reduces as employees get older but remains significant.

Even when focusing on older workers, the findings show younger older workers elicit stronger benefits from WLB toward well-being, although all age groups find WLB beneficial.

This paper offers novel insights into the question of whether the importance of WLB for well-being differs among older workers.

The global trend of an ageing workforce and government policy directions towards reversing early retirement trends raises the issue of the costs to employers of an older workforce. Data on older workers human resources costs are lacking generally in Australia and other countries. This analysis of human resource costs and benefits relies on aggregate Australia national human resources benchmarking data that are applied to older workers. The study is based on the ratio of duration of employment of older workers compared to younger workers and uses this ratio as a multiplier of human resource costs. The analysis considers recruitment, training, absenteeism and work injuries of older compared to younger workers. The analysis found that net benefits occurred through recruitment and training benefits over the costs of absenteeism and work injuries. Further non‐quantified benefits of older workers identified in international case studies are also explained. These quantified and non‐quantified benefits of older workers suggest that identified positive inducements to employers exist which support human resources investments in older workers.

Higher pensionable age in many countries that are part of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and a shrinking pension income force older people to postpone their retirement. Yet, age-based discrimination in employers' decisions is a significant barrier to their employment. Hence, this paper aims to explore employers' attitudes regarding the employment of workers aged 60–70, striving for a better understanding of age discrimination.

The authors used a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 30 managers, experts and employees in retirement age in Israel.

Findings reveal a spectrum of employers' attitudes toward the employment of older workers. The authors' analytical contribution is a conceptual typology based on employers' perceived ability to employ older workers and their stated attitudes toward the employment of older workers.

The insights that emerge from this research are fundamental for organizational actors' ability to expand the productive, unbiased employment of older workers.

By understanding employers' preferences and perspectives and the implications on employers' ability and/or willingness to employ older workers, this research will help policymakers formulate and implement policy innovations that address these biases.

The article's aim is to introduce the papers contained in this special issue of the Journal of Managerial Psychology.

Specifically the present article starts by discussing the meaning of the factor age and by considering who is actually termed an older worker. Next, the consequences of cognitive, physical and mental changes during the aging process for work and organizations are being discussed. Before presenting a general introduction to the research contributions that are included in this special issue, a plea is made for a more positive approach to older employees. The article presents a literature review, a discussion of the main topics and suggestions for future pathways for research and HRM.

It is indisputable that some cognitive, physical and mental changes take place while people grow older. However, what is less certain is how these changes impede on employees' well‐being. Recently, scholars seem to agree that the picture is not as negative as one used to think.

The implications are: use different conceptualizations of age; focus on the process of aging instead of on age as a factor; shift the focus from managing threats to creating opportunities.

It is in both employers' and employees' interest to make the best use of employees of all ages and to manage employees in accordance with individual attributes and capacities rather than by making assumptions based on age.

The article frames the issues and sets the stage for a more positive approach towards older workers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore responses of older workers and of managers to the call from the authorities to extend working life.

Data are from the Norwegian Senior Policy Barometer with interviews with samples of about 750 managers and 1,000 workers each year from 2003. There is no panel data.

Older workers increasingly prefer to extend their working career. The preferred age for exit has increased from 61 years in 2003 to 66 years in 2018. Managers seem less interested in expanding their older workforce. A majority of managers expressed quite positive conceptions of older workers' performance, but less often they liked to recruit older workers. As an average, managers told that they would hesitate to call in applicants above 58 years of age to job interviews. Age for hesitation is only moderately correlated (r = 0.29) to managers' beliefs about older workers’ performance at work. Thus, the managers' beliefs about older workers’ performance made only a small difference for their willingness to hire older workers.

The results suggest that counteracting stereotypes, prejudice and age discrimination in working life needs a broad approach, including attention to the affective component of ageism. For research, the measurement of the affective component needs consideration and further exploration.

The article brings data from a distinctive Norwegian context and approaches the rarely studied affective component of ageism in working life.

Social norms about the timing of retirement and stereotypes about qualities of younger and older workers are pervasive, but it is unclear how they relate to employers’ ageist preferences. The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of employers’ retirement age norms and age-related stereotypes on their preferences for younger or older workers in three types of employment practices: hiring a new employee; offering training; and offering a permanent contract.

Survey data from 960 Dutch employers from 2017 are analysed to study employers’ preferences for younger or older workers. Effects of organisations’ and managers’ characteristics, retirement age norms and stereotypes are estimated with multinomial logistic regression analyses.

Many employers have a strong preference for younger workers, especially when hiring a new employee, while preferences for older workers are highly uncommon. Higher retirement age norms of employers are related to a lower preference for younger workers in all employment decisions. When employers are more positive about older workers’ soft qualities (such as reliability and social skills), but not about their hard qualities (such as their physical capacity and willingness to learn), they rate older workers relatively more favourable for hiring and offering training, but not for providing a permanent contract.

This is one of the first studies to estimate the effects of retirement age norms and age-related stereotypes on ageist preferences for a diverse set of employment practices.