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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.

A model of stereotypical beliefs that older workers have difficulty learning and developing and are not motivated to learn is presented. Three categories of antecedents of the stereotypical beliefs are addressed: (1) experience with stereotype-consistent behaviors and promulgation of the stereotype by others; (2) perceived learning and development inhibitors internal to the older worker; and (3) perceived learning and development inhibitors external to the older worker. Potential consequences of the stereotypical beliefs for older workers and employing organizations are also explored. Individuating information and knowledge of within-older-group differences are posited to attenuate the influence of group-based stereotypes. Processes and tactics within organizations that should increase this information and knowledge are presented. The proposed model provides a framework to help guide future research on this topic and also some suggestions for managing a work place where these beliefs may exist.

Facing the aging workforce but older workers’ vulnerability in the labor market, this chapter empirically explores factors and policy implications to enhance older workers’ entered employment rates (EER) after exiting the national workforce program. After reviewing older workers’ attributes and the unique methods to train them, the chapter examines demographic, socioeconomic, and program attributions to older workers’ EER, controlling for cyclical changes in the labor market. The chapter relies on three sets of models including logistic regression, multi-level mixed-effect regression, and multilevel mixed effect logistic regression models, as well as longitudinal Workforce Investment Act Standardized Record Data and Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment data. Older dislocated workers and older adults are examined separately. Some Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act training and related service combinations are identified to contribute to older adults and older dislocated workers’ EER and to inform strategic decision-making about future allocations of funds and policy efforts to serve older workers.

As demographic changes impact the workplace, governments, organizations, and workers are looking for ways to sustain optimal working lives at higher ages. Workplace flexibility has been introduced as a potential way workers can have more satisfying working lives until their retirement ages. This chapter presents a critical review of the literature on workplace flexibility across the lifespan. It discusses how flexibility has been conceptualized across different disciplines, and postulates a definition that captures the joint roles of employer and employee in negotiating workplace flexibility that contributes to both employee and organization benefits. Moreover, it reviews how flexibility has been theorized and investigated in relation to older workers. The chapter ends with a future research agenda for advancing understanding of how workplace flexibility may enhance working experiences of older workers, and in particular focuses on the critical investigation of uses of flexibility in relation to older workers.

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.