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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.

Older workers are increasingly prized in the workplace, though they still represent an undertapped resource. What can be done to meet the needs of employees over the age of fifty so that they can enjoy a sense of self accomplishment, job satisfaction, personal growth and self respect—all while optimizing their contributions to the organization? This article uses the situations of six diverse “silver collar” employees to consider meaningful actions employers can take.

The purpose of this article is to examine the existence of biased stereotypes about older workers. What are the economic implications of such biased stereotypes? Finally, what policy measures are required in order to achieve efficiency in the labor market?

The authors grouped 25 opinions about older workers into three categories of stereotypes. The first category dealt with the productivity of older staff. The other two categories addressed their reliability and adaptability. The authors then questioned 312 Israeli respondents about the degree to which they agreed or disagreed with the opinions. Finally, the authors examined theoretically the economic effects of biased stereotypes about older workers.

The study demonstrates that individual and organizational characteristics affect employers' attitudes. Age was a significant factor in all three categories. The older the respondent, the fewer prejudices he or she had against older workers. Other characteristics such as gender, interaction with older workers, the nature of the respondent's work in the organization, the age of the employees, and the size of the organization were all significant, but not always, and not in all three categories. The findings imply that there are biased stereotypes about older workers, so the allocation of workers is distorted, which leads to a failure of the market.

The results strengthen the economic justification for policy intervention to correct the distorted level of employment of older workers in the labor market.

This paper aims to explore the views of human resource (HR) professionals on work motivation and retention of older workers. Furthermore, it seeks to generate qualitative data to inspire measures for future survey research.

The study adopts a qualitative approach, using focus groups. A total of 15 participants were purposefully selected from different organisational settings (e.g. private and public organisations, various sectors, various organisational sizes, HR departments and HR consultants) and from different areas of HR practice (e.g. recruitment, selection, training, evaluation, diversity management, industrial relations). Several procedures are applied to carry out a rigorous qualitative analysis (i.e. interview guide, video recording and field notes, prompt transcripts, double coding, direct quotes and rich data slices when presenting findings).

The paper reveals that focus groups generate rich interaction and their content analysis results in five topics: definition of older workers, diversity amongst older workers, work motivation of older workers, retention policy and practices, and contexts of work motivation and organisation retention policy/practices.

Three focus groups with HR professionals give just a glance of the intended retention practices. Broader qualitative and quantitative research with HR professionals and older workers is needed, preferably carried out by an international and multidisciplinary team.

The paper provides preliminary advice to HR professionals as to which practices aim at retention of older workers, based on insights in theories on work motivation.

The study takes place within Belgium where far‐reaching societal reform is still needed to promote employment of older workers and to move away from the early‐retirement culture. The paper confronts the wealth of work motivation theories and the plethora of HR practices with HR professionals being challenged to retain older workers and to keep them motivated.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce new measures of stereotypical beliefs about older workers' ability and desire for learning and development and test relationships with key antecedents and outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – In a sample of workers over 40 years of age from across the US workforce, a two‐wave survey study was unique in that it examined stereotypes held by aging workers themselves in relation to their own behavior. Findings – The psychometric qualities of the scales were positive and findings tied the stereotype measures to important outcome constructs involving retirement, interest in development, and self‐efficacy/concept for development. Relationships of the stereotype measures also existed with antecedent variables, including experience with the stereotyped behavior and general beliefs about changes with aging. Research limitations/implications – These are critical constructs for managerial psychology in the coming decades, and the findings and measures presented here can contribute to future research, not only on older workers themselves but also on younger workers' stereotypes and behavior toward older workers, which were not addressed here. Practical implications – The measures can be used as diagnostic tools and the findings offer potential ideas for organizational policy or interventions to target stereotypes. Originality/value – Because employee development is increasingly important and the workforce is rapidly aging, there is a need to understand development behavior by aging workers. While stereotypes can be a problem in this area, there is a lack of measures of these stereotypes and there is no research on the stereotypes by aging workers themselves.

Based on organizational support theory, the aim of this paper is to examine the associations among perceived organizational support, successful aging in the workplace, job satisfaction, and the intentions to stay in organization among older workers.

In total, 242 employees, aged over 45 years, were recruited to participate in a study from May to September 2009.

Correlation showed that perceived organizational support and all five dimensions of successful aging in the workplace, (i.e. adaptability and health, positive relationship, occupational growth, personal security, and continued focus on goals), were significantly related to the intentions to stay in the organization. Structural equation modeling showed that perceived organizational support was positively related to successful aging in the workplace, and the latter is related to the intentions to stay, both directly and via the mediation of job satisfaction.

All data were self‐reported and collected at one time point. Thus, common method variance may be an issue and causal inferences are not warranted.

Successful aging in the workplace was significantly related to older workers' intentions to stay. Managers may provide a wide range of organizational support and enhance successful aging in the workplace for older workers.

This is the first study to empirically test the relations between successful aging in the workplace and intentions to stay among older workers. Implications of these findings, the limitations of the study, and directions for future research are discussed.