Age Climate in Organizations - Jacobs University

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VI. ORGANIZATIONAL AGE CLIMATE AND SUCCESSFUL AGING WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT 98 employee health and functioning since it minimizes monotony, mental fatigue, and stress, as well as repeated strain on singular parts of the body (Alcalay & Pasick, 1983; Broadbent, 1985; Hacker & Richter, 1984; Herbst, 1974; Melin, Lundberg, Söderlund, & Granqvist, 1999). Our findings suggest that it might be worth to additionally investigate effects of autonomous manufacturing also on the age climate in a company, that is, on how positive older workers are perceived. While many employers are reluctant to train older workers and in fact offer them less on-the-job training than their younger co-workers (Simpson, Greller, & Stroh, 2002), this is often based on stereotypic misconceptions. For example, managers often think that such an investment would not pay off due to a lower number of years older workers are expected to remain with the company. Our findings support this proposed link between negative age stereotypes prevalent in a company - in terms of an unfavorable OAC - and the encouragement (or lack thereof) for older workers to participate in further education with their company. Breaking this link will be one of the major challenges for companies in order to maintain high productivity with an aging workforce. Especially, since research has shown that older workers are much less likely to switch their employer and therefore guarantee an actually higher probability that new skills are actually applied at their current employer than younger workers (e.g., Hedge et al, 2006, Levine, 1988). Simpson and colleagues also highlight that the reference period for such a pay-off is often unrealistic. Rather than focusing on the remaining organizational life-time, the 3 to 5 year period that HR management professionals typically use to evaluate training investments should be considered. Moreover, continued company tenure alone is no guarantee that the company will be able to garner a return on its investment in employee development if the employee does not have the opportunity to actually apply the knowledge gained from training in the context of his or her work. It is particularly important to make sure that older employees also get the opportunity to apply the knowledge they acquire. Otherwise, their commitment to learning efforts and their
VI. ORGANIZATIONAL AGE CLIMATE AND SUCCESSFUL AGING WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT 99 job satisfaction could be jeopardized even more than was has been found for employees at younger ages (Montenegro, Fisher, & Remez, 2002). Of course, without the possibility to apply newly gained knowledge, also no transfer to the job can occur (Sterns & Doverspike, 1988). Consequently, Maurer and colleagues (2003) call for support at work for development activities of older workers. Such support might include the support for development by supervisors and coworkers, but also the availability of development and learning resources. Encouragingly Maurer (2001) described literature that found positive relationships between support for development, self-efficacy, and employee development. The findings of the present study suggest that also the age climate in a company could be considered such a support factor with company members expressing their faith in older workers’ learning abilities. Future research should investigate this link more closely. Finally, our results indicate that recruitment and retirement practices are worth investigating with regard to assessing their impact on the age-friendliness of a work environment. Our findings, hereby, support the notion that age discrimination in recruitment can influence the age climate in the company (Lahey, 2005). Our findings also support the idea that partial retirement in the sense of a phased retirement with part-time presence of older employees at least until they reach retirement age is to be preferred over early retirement with an ad-hoc exit from the labor market (Dychtwald et al., 2004; Hedge et al., 2006; Paul, 1987). This way, not only will the company be able to attract skilled older workers and retain productive retirement-age workers (Paul, 1988) but also will older employees be able to show that they can still contribute to both the company’s productivity and the social life at the organization. The resulting positive interactions between age groups will, in line with Allport’s (1954) Contact Hypothesis, help reduce younger employees’ negative stereotypes of older workers (e.g., Chiu et al., 2001; Hassell & Perrewe, 1995) and at the same time reduce the threat of knowledge loss, since key carriers of know-how remain with the company (DeLong, 2004).
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AGE CLIMATE AGE STEREOTYPES IN ORGA
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I
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TABLE OF CONTENTS III. Transition b
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TABLE OF FIGURES TABLE OF FIGURES F
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I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 9 I. GENERA
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I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 11 This wor
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I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 13 1.2 Orga
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I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 15 from tho
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I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 17 indicato
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I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 19 environm
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II. PSYCHOLOGICAL AGE CLIMATE AND O
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Page 123 and 124: REFERENCES 123 REFERENCES Abraham,
Page 125 and 126: REFERENCES 125 Baltes, P. B. & Balt
Page 127 and 128: REFERENCES 127 Broadbridge, A. (200
Page 129 and 130: REFERENCES 129 Contrada, R. J., Ash
Page 131 and 132: REFERENCES 131 European-Council. (2
Page 133 and 134: REFERENCES 133 Foster, S. W., McMur
Page 135 and 136: REFERENCES 135 Herbst, P. G. (1974)
Page 137 and 138: REFERENCES 137 Jöreskog, K.G. & S
Page 139 and 140: REFERENCES 139 Kubeck, J. E., Delp,
Page 141 and 142: REFERENCES 141 Major, B., & OBrien,
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REFERENCES 149 Schaie, K. W. (1996)
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REFERENCES 151 Slotterback, C. S. &
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REFERENCES 153 Tubre, T. C. & Colli
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REFERENCES 155 Nelson (Ed.), Ageism
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