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The purpose of this paper is to assess risks and prospects for older workers and to provide a number of recommendations designed to marshal the interests of employees, business and government.

The paper examines the terrain of competing interests and dynamic complexities of workforce ageing, by elaborating on the topic of economic globalisation, the policy approaches adopted by government, the actions taken by industry and the working and life preferences of older workers.

In the absence of a deep understanding of the current relationship between demographic ageing, the labour market and economic globalisation, the policy aspirations of government face the prospect of limited success. The currently popular premise, that ageing populations go hand‐in‐hand with ageing workforces, appears to be contradicted by much of the available evidence, which points to rather more complex scenarios, in which outcomes are uncertain, but clearly where late career workers may not necessarily fare well.

The paper brings analysis to the area of ageing populations and the labour market in the context of globalization – a complex and important topic that is usually dealt with far too simply.

Although the world is rapidly ageing, the alarming explosion of youth unemployment seems to have removed the workforce ageing issue as a priority from the policy agenda. The purpose of this paper is to test and investigate the main needs and willingness to work among the older population, as well as the main advantages for organizations employing older workers.

The main research objectives were: first, to explore the effect of demographic and socio-economic predictors on an older person’s intention to work; and second, to focus on the main advantages that should induce organizations to retain older workers in their workplace. The paper is based on a survey and an interdisciplinary review of the literature.

The study indicated that educational level led to improved active behaviours in the labour market. In other words, people who obtained a higher level of education showed a greater likelihood to desire a prolongation of working life, while lower educational attainment may have lessened the willingness and capacity of older people to remain in the workforce. The main benefits for organizations with older workers are highlighted.

The survey has a number of limitations: the sample is small and was completed with reference to a single country, making it difficult to generalize results beyond this country study; the questionnaire relied solely on a few areas, while it would be better to gather additional information; the survey only targeted retired people, while it would have been interesting to also collect answers from workers nearing retirement. The association between individuals’ educational levels and their intention to work in later life suggests that continued development of educational programmes for workers could favour greater retention in the workplace.

As the ageing population is an increasing phenomenon, the participation of older people in the labour force and lifelong learning should become commonplace in the perspective of a more equitable society. The main challenge is to rethink retirement, by abolishing the mandatory retirement age and by providing more flexible work options.

Changes in national system and corporate strategies are required to meet the economic challenges of ageing populations.

This study advances research on age management because it provided evidence that educational background plays a fundamental role in determining the willingness to return to work. In addition, the paper proposes a new integrated approach of sustainable social change.

It is estimated that we spend at least a third of our working lives in the workplace and the duration of this, due to the extension of working lives through legislative changes and increased pension ages, is set to increase. Ageing of the workforce is a growing concern but health and safety issues cannot be used as an excuse for not employing older workers. A healthy workplace is one where the risks are managed and where workers and their managers work together to improve the work environment and protect the health of the workers. Furthermore, linking this to personal health resources and the local community can improve the health of all involved. Within the workplace this includes both the psychosocial and physical work environment. To create a healthy workplace there is a need to ensure risk management measures are in place and our older workers participation in risk assessment and risk reduction programmes. In addition to this, targeted occupational health promotion programmes may be beneficial. There are few integrated policies with regard to age and work but research does identify good practice, including participation of employees in change measures, senior management commitment and taking a life-course approach. While there are challenges in relation to age-related change, the work ability concept can improve understanding. The use of a comprehensive approach such as Age Management can help employers who have a critical role in making the workplace age-ready.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the experience of human resource (HR) professionals in managing career development for older workers. It focuses on the influence of personal, social and organisational experiences of HR professionals on (1) their approach to career development of older workers and (2) their organisation's career development practices for older workers.

Data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews with 14 HR professionals from large organisations with at least half of their workforce aged 45 and above. The transcripts were analysed thematically, with the coding process informed by Ricoeur's theory of interpretation.

Three main themes emerged within the HR professionals' narratives. They identified with (1) the protagonist mindset in career development stories, (2) the enabling enforcer of individualised career development practices and (3) the agent for change in career development practices.

This study shows that a narrative thematic analysis can be used to explore how the experiences of HR professionals can affect the design and implementation of career development strategies for this cohort of workers. Further, recruiting HR professionals with a protagonist mindset can generate organisational practices inclusive of older workers.

This study is one of the first to focus on the role of HR professionals in managing career development practices for older workers and the influence of supportive managers on their attitudes and actions with older workers.

The purpose of this paper is to take into consideration the propensity to offer vocational training of a large sample of Italian private firms by retrieving cross-sectional data from INDACO (2009).

Estimating a probit model, the author assesses how the age and the gender composition of the employed workforce, as well as a set of relevant corporate characteristics, such as size, sector, geographical location, innovation strategies, R&D investments and use of social safety valves, are linked to the willingness of firms to supply on-the-job training.

First, as far as the average age of the whole employed workforce is concerned, it was found that the propensity of surveyed firms toward training provision follows an inverted U-shaped pattern. Furthermore, it was shown that larger firms have a higher training propensity with respect to small firms, and the same attitude holds for productive units that adopted innovation strategies and/or invested in R&D projects. By contrast, it was found that the propensity to support training activities is negatively correlated to the percentage of employed women and the use social valves.

The sample of business units taken into consideration is quite large, but it has some biases toward larger and manufacturing firms. Moreover, the cross-sectional perspective of the analysis does not allow implementation of the finer identification procedures that can be applied with panel data. Furthermore, the lack of employer – employee linked data does not allow to fully address the issue of compliance to training activities.

From a policy point of view, the results shown throughout the paper suggest some broad guidelines. First, especially in small firms, vocational training for young and older workers should be somehow stimulated. Moreover, as far as mature employees are concerned, those interventions should be framed in an active ageing perspective. Subsidies and targeted job placement programmes are often claimed as being the most appropriate ways to improve the underprivileged position of older workers. However, continuous learning during the whole working life still appears as the most effective device to reduce the employment disadvantages in the older years.

While there are a number of papers that study the age patterns of training participation by using workers’ data retrieved from personnel and/or labour force surveys, this work is the first attempt to provide a probabilistic assessment of the decisions of Italian firms regarding training provision by taking into account the ageing perspectives of the incumbent workforce.

HR managers have known for many years about the demographic time bomb, and more recently have been urged to take age positive1 approaches to the management of their organisations. However, conversations and seminars with many of those who devise and steer human resource management policies in organisations, suggest that understanding of demographic change is sometimes limited and coping strategies often absent or inchoate. This paper will briefly explore the demographic context and comment briefly on the main policy responses in relation to workforce issues. It will then consider the sorts of measures that might be needed to make work compatible with a significantly older working population. Taken together, these strands will hopefully weave a picture that meets our purpose of forward looking conjecture.

Adaptation to the requirements of digital economy is especially difficult for older workers, which is a challenge for today’s organizations due to workforce shrinking and ageing. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how it is possible to develop older employees’ potential in technology use in the business environment.

The authors examined how employees at various age perceive barriers during enterprise system (ES) adoption and use. This exploratory study is based on grounded theory and draws from the opinions of 187 Polish ES practitioners.

With age, emphasis on employees’ perception of mandatory ICT implementation projects is shifting from technology to people-related considerations. For older employees, job security and workload appear the most critical issues in such projects. Age-diverse collaboration appears necessary to address the problems posed by technology-related and demographic changes.

The findings imply that incorporating multiple stakeholder perspectives and age-related considerations into research on ICT adoption appears essential.

ICT adoption in the business environment can be successfully supported by age-balanced team building, cooperation between younger and older employees, and age-adjusted change management initiatives.

Supporting older employees during the implementation of mandatory business software should embrace reducing their negative attitudes to ICT-induced change by minimizing their perception of job insecurity.

Unlike many prior studies, the current research places age in the central role and discusses not only how it is possible to support older employees, but also how to leverage their potential in the process of ICT adoption and use in a mandatory setting.

The purpose of this paper is to review good practice examples which promote recruitment and retention of older workers and/or the employability of workers as they age and to examine pathways of practice.

Analysis of qualitative data, drawing on a cross‐section selection of 83 good practice case studies in labour organisations in eight European countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the UK.

The study presented good practice examples and pathways of practice for the four most frequently found dimensions in the sample (training, lifelong learning and knowledge transfer; flexible working; health protection and promotion and job design; career development and mobility management) as well as examples from small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) (construction) and the public sector (transport) adopting strategies that fall within these dimensions. These examples show that innovative solutions to the challenge of an ageing workforce have been developed with good outcomes, often combining a number of measures, e.g. mobility management, health promotion and knowledge transfer. However, there is an uneven profile of age management debates and company strategies across Europe (with countries such as Germany and the Netherlands being more advanced). There is also some evidence of a standstill or roll‐back of measures during an economic crisis.

The paper reviews organisational measures facilitating the extension of working lives, of which many are longstanding and include sectors previously underrepresented in good practice databases (SMEs, public sector).