Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

a flexibility resource in times of downsizing, but also for general purposes of creating
vacancies and workforce rejuvenation. The training policy in most firms can be assessed as
internalising, giving equal access to workers of all ages. The lacking inclusion of older
workers in further training in some cases can be explained with their unwillingness to
undergo it. Concerning health management and the integration of impaired workers, firms
nowadays strive to integrate workers in the regular workplaces instead of providing
sheltered workplaces. Hypothesis 2B is therefore supported with regard to further training
and health management.
Hypothesis 3 (see section 2.2.) cannot be tested with regard to recruitment due to the
quantitatively low number of new recruits in the studied firms during my study – which was
sufficient for assessing the general direction of recruitment policy (hypothesis 2A/2B), but
not its correlation with structural and socio-demographic factors (hypothesis 3). It cannot
also be answered with regard to replacement demand in recruitment, as most companies in
my sample were shrinking that can be seen when comparing the number of employees at
the two interview waves (Table 15 and Table 17). The hypothesis cannot also be tested with
regard to further training due to missing age-linked policies in that field, but it is not
supported when solely the access criteria of older workers to training are taken into
consideration.
Hypothesis 3 is partly supported with regard to health management and the termination
of the work contract. All firms with externalising policies in the field of health and
integration management had to cut staff levels at the first or second time of the interview
and suffered from a negative development of the given branch of economy. Also those
firms where active pushing out of older workers on early retirement or other form of early
exit was taking place were reducing personnel at the time of the first or second interview.
The current age structure of the workforce exerted no impact here as driver for specific
policies, albeit firms have the ´optimum´ age structure in view as the outcome when
carrying through certain policies. This finding is in line with the firm-structural approach
(Wolf 1989: 97).
Hypothesis 4 (see section 2.3.) is supported with a restriction. According to
observations of the WCM and HRM in the studied firms, retirement incentives have evoked
expectations of workers regarding an early timing of exit. After the curtailment of some
early exit options, workers have adapted their retirement planning, albeit they still cling to
the idea of a shortened work life and even accept deductions in order to be able to still retire
early. A division into workers who can still afford early exit with pension deductions and
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