Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

prevention does not play a role yet (as it increasingly does in German firms). Thus, it can be
ascertained that a sustainable health management is not taking place in Polish companies,
which poses a barrier for the preservation of workability.
Another barrier is the lack of an integrative or holistic age management strategy
encompassing all areas of personnel policy. If companies in my sample deal with age
management, the focus is mostly on ´soft´, qualitative measures like workplace health
promotion, ergonomic design of workplaces or know-how transfer. ´Hard´ areas of
personnel policy which can be measured in quantitative terms – recruitment and employee
exit – are not employed as a vehicle for the introduction of age management. Older
workforce is recruited or retained past retirement age only in rare cases (e.g. for know-how
transfer) and not as a part of an age management strategy. In those two personnel policy
fields – recruitment and employee exit, even firms which employ ´good practice´ measures
in other areas of personnel policy diverge in the direction of ´bad practice´, or at best, nonreaction
and ´muddling through´.
Another barrier to prolonged employment in most of the studied Polish and German
firms is not taking account of the life course perspective. If age management policies are
designed at all, they often have a palliative character and are designed for older workers as
a group – e.g. sheltered workplaces, downgrading protection, extra holidays or exemption
from certain work.
Moreover, institutional changes (labour market and pension policy) have shown only
limited impact on the personnel policy of Polish firms. Reasons were the dominant role of
structural factors (the situation on the labour market, sectoral changes and restructuring of
Polish economy), the delay in the termination of early retirement, and the long phasing-in
period of pension reforms. A common pattern in both countries was the priority assigned to
labour shedding in times of unstable economic development and to restructuring (in the
meaning of internal reorganisations of the firm or corporation). Those tasks overshadowed
all other goals of personnel policy and even led to a stagnation or reversal of hitherto wellprogressing
age management policies.
However, a positive development, and a chance for the prolongation of working life,
was the influence of the raising of retirement ages and of pension deductions on the agency
of some German firms in the field of employee exit.
In the firm case studies, I however found also several opportunities (or rather:
supportive conditions) for the prolongation of working life. A person committed to age
management in the company, or the influence from abroad (e.g. in the case of German firms
232