Understanding the Aging Workforce Defining a Research Agenda (2022) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 Workplace and Job Factors
5 Workplace and Job Factors
Pages 99-116
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 99... ...
Organizations and the conditions they establish affect the career decisions workers make over their life course. So much of the retirement literature focuses on individual decisions and the role public policy plays in them; however, organizations and workplace practices also play a critical role in shaping retirement pathways.
|
From page 100... ...
THEORETICAL APPROACHES Some theoretical approaches emphasize universal working conditions, focusing on the conditions that characterize good workplaces for employees. The job quality and total-worker-health approaches have implications for older workers, but they typically emphasize practices that affect all workers regardless of age.
|
From page 101... ...
, among many others, points to the multiple-dimensionality of job quality. That is, job quality includes not only pay and compensation but satisfaction with the number of hours, the promise of promotion opportunities and job security, satisfaction with the type of work (whether hard physical labor and whether exhausting or dangerous)
|
From page 102... ...
. The dimensions of job quality and the total worker health approach primarily reveal a set of characteristics that reflect the interests of employees and what they would like from the work experience.
|
From page 103... ...
In other cases, interests will differ. For example, older workers' interests in more flexible retirement pathways or flexible work arrangements may conflict with employers' interests in facilitating the exit of older workers.
|
From page 104... ...
Developmental Practices Age-related development practices refers to workplace practices that help older workers acquire new knowledge, skills, and abilities (van Dalen et al., 2015; Kooij et al., 2014)
|
From page 105... ...
The typical practices include offering phased retirement, contingent work arrangements, and comprehensive benefit packages. Phased retirement means allowing older workers to continue working at a reduced workload and gradually moving into retirement.
|
From page 106... ...
used data from 3,888 organizations based on the Annual Workplace Survey implemented by the Society for Human Resource Management and showed that when age-inclusive practices were implemented, age diversity at workplaces had stronger positive effects on human capital and social capital, which eventually facilitated organizational performance. KEY PRACTICES In this section, we focus on particular practices associated with job quality: flexible work arrangements, training practices, a supportive climate for age diversity and inclusion, and compensation and benefits.
|
From page 107... ...
in shaping who has access to flexible work arrangements, alternative work paths, and other aspects of the opportunity structure. Corporate as well as public labor market and retirement policies and practices were developed in the middle of the last century 3Data are from The Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)
|
From page 108... ...
. In summary, work arrangements with flexible work times and places are increasingly common.
|
From page 109... ...
conflicting results. One study using data from Europe finds that training led to greater worker retention in the Netherlands for workers ages 50–64 (Picchio and van Ours, 2013)
|
From page 110... ...
Yet fewer than half of employers surveyed offer the kinds of flexible work options and transition strategies that older workers indicate are needed to make working longer possible. Neither have employers included age in their diversity and inclusion strategies (only 8% according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers (2015)
|
From page 111... ...
This Lazear contract encourages the worker to exert effort and benefits the worker as long as the present value of compensation is greater than the minimum acceptable wage the worker believes she can earn elsewhere in the labor market. In contrast to the human capital model, in the Lazear model earnings rise faster than productivity over the life course.6 These alternative models of rising earnings profiles provide different explanations as to why firms offer pensions to employees in an effort to shape retirement behavior.7 As Becker (1964)
|
From page 112... ...
Moreover, with an aging workforce, employers may face some difficulties in meeting labor demand needs if they cannot induce enough older individuals to remain in the labor market. Thus, the reduced incentives to retire generated by the shift from DB to DC plans may, over the next few decades, offer some advantages because of the need to try to keep older individuals working, even if, in the steady state, the shift in pensions might otherwise pose challenges to employers.
|
From page 113... ...
Despite ratcheting job demands and "always on" expectations, both job control and schedule control appear to reduce burnout and turnover and to promote job satisfaction, health, and well-being (Fan et al., 2015; Moen et al., 2017, 2011; Moen, Fan et al., 2013)
|
From page 114... ...
In contrast, labor unions in other countries have been more proactive in negotiating provisions that benefit older workers directly, such as partial retirement schemes or demography funds for older worker training (Flynn et al., 2013)
|
From page 115... ...
Older workers express preferences for greater "flexibility," but do not always have access to the flexible work arrangements that would keep them in their jobs. There are real equity concerns when flexibility is allocated in ways to meet the needs of some workers but not others.
|
From page 116... ...
We highlight various practices, including flexible work arrangements, training practices, a supportive climate for age diversity and inclusion, and compensation and benefits. Our discussion of these practices shows how different interests of employers and employees can shape practices and their influence on older worker employment decisions.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.