Dr. Philip Taylor, Professor at Monash University in Australia, is an internationally recognized researcher with significant expertise in the area of aging and work. For several years, he has served on the Center Strategy Council. Dr. Taylor is one of our guest bloggers. Responding to the policy recently adopted in Australia, which compensates employers for hiring older workers, Dr. Taylor raises a number of important points and raises some provocative questions that are relevant to the choices facing many countries around the world.

Philip Taylor, PhD Director, Research and Graduate Studies Monash University, Gippsland Campus Churchill Victoria Email: philip.taylor@monash.edu

Recently the Australian Government announced its response to the Final Report of the Advisory Panel on the Economic Potential of Senior Australians (EPSA) which proposes a range of funding initiatives to motivate employers to take on older workers. But do such well-meaning attempts at policy development actually encourage ageist attitudes among the public?

Age features heavily in public debate concerning the Australian workforce. We regularly read about studies showing that older workers are considered ‘dinosaurs’ by co-workers and managers, and face immense hurdles when looking for work. Conversely, the reports tell us that so-called Generation Ys do not want to work as hard as their parents – they work to live rather than live to work.

The issue is how society responds to commentary about older and younger workers that almost always casts them in a negative light.

As part of its response, the Government proposes that Aus$10 million be allocated for the introduction of a Aus$1000 Jobs Bonus for employers who recruit an older jobseeker and retain them for more than three months. Also proposed is Aus$15.6 million to extend the Corporate Champions program, which provides support to employers who wish to promote older worker employment at their workplace.

The intention is to help overcome the initial reluctance of some employers to appoint older jobseekers. But by drawing attention to older workers in this fashion, policymakers may simply be alerting employers of the need to be wary of a particular segment of the workforce. A segment whose deficiencies are deemed so great that they require government subsidies to find a job. Added to this, such schemes are administratively burdensome for employers who might not consider the incentive as being worth the effort.

The Opposition’s Employment Participation plan contains a very similar proposal for a Aus$3250 Seniors Employment Incentive Payment for employers that hire workers aged 50 or older. This plan also includes yet another attempt at age-based policymaking, this time targeting young people. The Opposition proposes to introduce new Job Commitment Bonus Payments to encourage long-term unemployed young Australians to find a job and keep it. Those aged 18 to 30 who have been unemployed for 12 months or more and are on NewStart Allowance or Youth Allowance will receive a Aus$2500 Job Commitment Bonus if they get a job and remain off welfare for a continuous period of 12 months.

According to the Opposition such payments provide an incentive to get young unemployed Australians off welfare and into paid work and, by making the payments conditional upon retaining work for an extended period, will encourage those who secure a job to remain employed. However, such an approach risks feeding stereotypes of young people as lacking a desirable work ethic.

Aged-based public policy is not the answer. Chronological age is a poor predictor of the employment-related needs of an individual, and public programs that use it as a selection criterion send the wrong signals to employers, workers and society as a whole.

Such policies risk deepening age prejudice and institutionalising age discrimination, against both young and old. Such an approach is, by its very nature, ageist, and can in fact further erode self-worth by categorising some people as ‘difficult to employ’ or ‘workshy’.

Much of the present public discourse may only reinforce the prejudices of a society already obsessed with age. Instead, we need to see more examples of older workers making successful transitions to employment and the many thoughtful employers who are embracing the talents of people, regardless of their age. This way will lead to a reshaping of public attitudes. Here the extension of the Government’s Corporate Champions program is a sensible approach, if these examples of employer good practice are widely promoted amongst the business community.

Above all, policymakers need to avoid falling into the trap of offering simplistic solutions that could add to the difficulties faced by segments of the workforce. There is no doubt that ageism exists, but the challenge now is for commentators, advocacy groups and policymakers to tackle this positively, not merely to remind us.

Professor Philip Taylor researches age and the labour market at Monash University.

Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, Center Director, has served on the Advisory Committee to the Tapping Mature Talent project. She invited Phyllis Snyder and Michael Barth to be guest contributors to AGEnda.

Michael C. Barth, PhD Economist and Independent Consultant Washington, D.C. Email: mcb1mcb@gmail.com

Phyllis Snyder Vice President CAEL Phone: 215-731-7160 Email: psnyder@cael.org

Everyone seems to know that Americans live in a rapidly aging society, but it helps to look at the numbers to get a sense of the magnitude of the changes we face. In 2010, 13% of the U.S. population was age 65 or older. The Census Bureau projects that by 2030, this figure will jump to 19.3%, or almost one in five. Of course, as the population ages, so does the labor force. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that in 2010 there were 30 million people aged 55 and older in the labor force; in 2020, this will swell to 41.4 million, or one in four. Now there are about seven million people age 65+ in the workforce. In contrast, over the next decade, as the number of those 65+ grows by 75%, the growth of those aged 25-54 will only be two percent.

In the U.S., we have gotten used to the idea of people going from full-time work to full-time retirement in their mid-sixties. However, we are now in a time when we will be seeing more mature workers continuing to participate in the labor market, whether out of financial need or out of continued ability and preference. This new trend promises greater financial security for older citizens and an opportunity to meet the skill and talent needs of employers.

Many mature workers will need help in navigating a very complex labor market, however. They will need counseling to understand what career pathways would be good for them, and to determine how to use education and training to get the right kind of job for this next stage in their work lives. Unfortunately, workforce development programs and postsecondary institutions currently design their programs for younger demographic groups. Mature workers are hard-pressed to find programs tailored to their needs.

Recognizing this problem, in 2009, the US Department of Labor supported a three-year Aging Worker Initiative (AWI). This initiative funded ten sites to test new models of serving mature workers. As this initiative comes to a close, the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), which provided technical assistance for the project, will invite leading experts on the mature workforce to review what happened at the sites and develop a set of recommendations for policy makers and employers.

The best thinking of these experts will be presented at a conference in Washington, D.C., on May 3: Tapping Mature Talent: Policies for a 21st Century Workforce. http://host.msgapp.com/Extranet/95687/forms.aspx?msgid=ou4zpiptli3vwaeqouftlycb

Here are a few recommendations that will be discussed:

• Provide a basic level of financial literacy to workers to help them make good decisions that will affect their transition into retirement.
• Engage employers and “sell” them on the contributions of mature workers through strategies such as internships, reverse job fairs and targeted outreach.
• Reshape the public workforce system to provide access to high quality, affordable, and labor market driven education and training to help adults of all ages prepare for and remain in the labor market.

We need more creative thinking. What are your ideas? Please post your comments below or join us for the meeting on May 3rd in Washington, D.C.

Stephen Sweet, PhD Organizational Studies Expert Sloan Center on Aging & Work Boston College Phone: 617.552.9195 Email: sweets@bc.edu

Kevin E. Cahill, PhD Research Economist Sloan Center on Aging & Work Boston College Phone: 617.552.9195 Email: cahillkc@bc.edu

The health care sector is already challenged to recruit and retain workers at all levels of skill. Demand for staff to provide services can only grow as the swell in population represented by the Baby Boom moves into old age. Recognizing the needs and interests of older workers—as well as the needs of the multigenerational workforce as a whole—may help health care-sector employers face big staffing challenges that are just on the horizon.

First, the numbers. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 14.3 million people were employed in the health care sector as of 2008. Opportunities are expected to expand far faster—by 22.5 percent from 2008 to 2018— in this sector of the economy than in any other. At that rate health care will create more than 3.2 million new jobs by 2018. While some jobs will require high-level skills and technical expertise (for example, doctors and nurses), most will require less than a four-year college education (for example, receptionists and maintenance workers).

Given current and anticipated labor needs, one would expect most employers in this sector to be paying close attention to their long-term workforce requirements, but this does not seem to be the case. A study conducted in 2009 by the Sloan Center on Aging & Work shows that fewer than one in four employers (23 percent) in the health care sector had projected their retirement rates and that only one in two employers (50 percent) had gauged supervisors’ ability to anticipate and plan for staffing needs.

The aging of the society is going to increase demand for health care services, as well as exacerbate challenges in attracting and keeping workers. These challenges will vary with employment setting (for example, hospitals versus home care) and geographic locale (such as rural, suburban and urban areas). Many workers will need both “hard” (technical) skills and “soft” (people) skills.

To avoid large-scale losses over a short period, employers will have to replace older members of their existing workforce who choose to retire, as well as find ways to retain at least some of their existing employees. In many respects, older workers are an ideal match to serve the aging population, not only because of the skills they have honed from years on the job but also because of the cultural and generational experiences they share with older patients.

One strategy to attract and retain workers is compensation. Jobs in the upper tier of the health care sector can pay quite handsomely; for example, according to the BLS, as of 2008, the average wage earned by registered nurses in hospitals was $30.71 an hour. But not all jobs pay as well. For example the average wage of hospital housekeeping staff was only $10.28 an hour. Rising costs to deliver health care may make it difficult to substantially improve pay levels for lower-tier workers, unless the efficiency of service delivery is improved or current wage standards across industries are changed.

Wages are just part of the story, however—especially for those in upper-tier jobs, where improvements in the design of jobs and careers can matter to some employees as much as satisfaction with compensation. One indicator of concern surfaced in the 2009 Sloan Center study, which found that conflicts between the demands of work and family are much more common among health care workers than among those laboring in other sectors of the economy. Health care-sector employees are also considerably more likely than workers in other sectors to rate flexible work hours as an important or very important job incentive. This is understandable, given that four in five health care workers (79 percent) are women. So long as workers in this sector continue to run out of time before they are able to get their work done (45 percent) or come home from work too tired to do their chores (48 percent), the push to exit work may be stronger than the pull to keep working, especially when they have a choice, such as the option to retire.

Evidence indicates that the opportunities and challenges that an aging workforce will present are going to catch many employers in the health care sector flat-footed. Health care employers by and large do not know the risks that demographic changes pose for their organizations, and they continue to structure work in ways that employees disfavor. Many older workers and women across age groups are attracted to part-time jobs. An increasing percentage of men across age groups are, too. One effective way that health care employers can solve their current and future staffing needs is to notice this trend and reconsider how they manage and array schedules.

Kevin E. Cahill, PhD Research Economist Sloan Center on Aging & Work Boston College Phone:617.552.9195 Email: cahillkc@bc.edu

Stephen Sweet, PhD Organizational Studies Expert Sloan Center on Aging & Work Boston College Phone: 617.552.9195 Email: sweets@bc.edu

The trend toward earlier and earlier retirement is over and has been for more than two decades. Older Americans are now staying in the labor force later in life and forging new and, in many ways, “nontraditional,” paths to retirement. It is common for older workers to switch employers (in fact, the majority of career workers do so) and it is also common for older workers to change careers, or to request changes in the terms of their existing jobs. With older workers in mind, this blog is geared toward forward-looking employees who might want to know where they can expect to see job openings in the years ahead and how to best position themselves to take advantage of those opportunities.

Job openings can come about in two ways: by creation and by replacement. Economic growth, technological innovation, and demographic changes create new jobs. When workers move up in their careers or leave their jobs for other reasons — because they retire, relocate, or change employers — they open the door for others to replace them. We start our discussion with a focus on where the new jobs will be.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes 10-year projections of the labor force every two years. For the period 2010 to 2020, the two industries with the largest employment growth in terms of sheer numbers, by far, are (1) health care and social assistance and (2) professional and business services. Within health care, the largest percentage gains will come from home health care services (6.1% annually) and individual and family services (5.5% annually). Within the professional and business services category, the largest percentage gains are projected to come from management, scientific, and technical consulting services (4.7% annually) and computer systems design and related services (3.9% annually).

One strategy that some older workers can use to navigate late-career job changes is not by changing what they do (i.e., bookkeeping), but instead changing the industry in which they perform this work (for example, from manufacturing, where the number of jobs is in steady decline, to health care). Another strategy, especially for older workers in occupations where job opportunities are diminishing, is to consider a more substantial career change. Consider that among the top fastest growing health care occupations projected between 2010 and 2020 are personal care aides, home health aides, and physical therapist aides. While some fast-growing occupations, such as biochemists and biophysicists, require significant time and financial investments in formal education, these fast-growing health care occupations have education requirements that consist of an Associate degree only or short-term on-the-job training. These jobs offer real possibilities for older workers who might want to make a shift to a different line of work.

Alternately older workers may benefit by considering opportunities that are projected to emerge through the process of replacement. These jobs include work as cashiers, retail salespersons, waiters and waitresses, and customer service representatives. Although these types of jobs tend to offer lower pay and fewer benefits, they commonly provide the types of flexibility that older workers value and require minimal qualifications for entry level positions.

The $64,000 question (unadjusted for inflation) is whether employers will be interested in hiring older workers. One reason why not is because older workers tend to have salary requirements that are higher than those of younger workers – higher than their increased productivity is worth, dollar for dollar. They also have higher health care and life insurance costs, and higher costs associated with such fringe benefits as vacation time and sick time (which tend to increase with tenure). Older workers may also be more likely than others to request part-time and flexible work arrangements, making them less attractive to employers, all else equal. And age discrimination continues to be a concern, despite numerous efforts to counter the tendency for some employers to view older workers with disfavor.

On the other hand, older workers offer many things that are unique and extremely valuable to employers, not least of which is a lifetime of experience. Today’s older workers are also healthier than older workers used to be and jobs are generally less physically demanding than they once were. Plus, Americans today are more highly educated than at any other time in history. One in four Americans currently aged 65 to 74 years has a college degree. Among the following cohort, those aged 55 to 64, nearly one in three Americans has a college degree. All of these factors bode in favor of the prospects that older adults who seek employment will be able to find jobs in the future as the economic recovery (hopefully) continues. But also, as Barry Bluestone and Mark Melnik have pointed out, there simply might not be a sufficient number of younger workers to fill all of the new jobs that will be created in the future. This suggests that older workers might not only be well positioned to find work, they may even be able to negotiate personalized work arrangements that fit their needs and preferences, as employers are increasingly receptive to extending flexible work to valued employees.

We are optimistic for the future of older workers and the prospects that they will be able to locate employment. For some this will involve retraining in their current occupation. For others it will require rethinking how to reposition their existing talents with new employers, perhaps even in a new line of work. In our next blog, we consider why employers, especially those in the health care sector, would be wise to consider older workers as a less than fully tapped resource.

REFERENCES:

Bluestone, Barry and Mark Melnik. 2010. “After the Recovery: Help Needed.” Northeastern University, Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy.

Cahill, Kevin E., Michael D. Giandrea, and Joseph F. Quinn. 2011. “How Does Occupational Status Impact Bridge Job Prevalence?” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Working Paper, 447 (July).

Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Health Expenditures by Age, 2004 Age Tables. Retrieved from http://www.cms.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/04_NationalHealthAccountsAgePHC.asp

Johnson, Richard W., Jeanette Kawachi, and Eric K. Lewis. (2009). “Older Workers on the Move: Recareering in Later Life.” AARP Research Report, pp. 1-55.

Munnell, Alicia H., Kevin E. Cahill, Andrew D. Eschtruth, and Steven A. Sass. 2004. “The Graying of Massachusetts: Aging, the New Rules of Retirement, and the Changing Workforce.” The Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC).

Quinn, Joseph F., Cahill, Kevin E., & Giandrea, Michael D. (2011). Early Retirement: The Dawn of a New Era? TIAA-CREF Institute Policy Brief (July).

Sweet, Stephen and Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes. (2010). Talent Pressures and the Aging Workforce: Responsive Action Steps for the Manufacturing Sector (Industry Sector Report 1.1). Chestnut Hill, MA: Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College. Retrieved from TMISR01_Manufacturing.pdf.

Sweet, Stephen and Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes. (2010). Talent Pressures and the Aging Workforce: Responsive Action Steps for the Health Care & Social Assistance Sector (Industry Sector Report 2.1.0). Chestnut Hill, MA: Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College. Retrieved from TMISR02_HealthCare.pdf.

Sweet, Stephen and Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes. (2010). Talent Pressures and the Aging Workforce: Responsive Action Steps for the Accommodation and Food Services Sector (Industry Sector Report 4.1.0). Chestnut Hill, MA: Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College. Retrieved from TMISR04_Accommodation.pdf

Sweet, Stephen and Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes. (2010). Talent Pressures and the Aging Workforce: Responsive Action Steps for the Retail Sector (Industry Sector Report 3.1.0). Chestnut Hill, MA: Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College. Retrieved from TMISR03_Retail.pdf

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections, 2010-20; Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecopro.pdf.

U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012 (131st Edition) Washington, DC, 2011 (Tables 230 and 231); Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/.

Samantha Greenfield Employer Engagement Specialist Sloan Center on Aging & Work Boston College Phone: 617.552.9117 Email: samantha.greenfield@bc.edu

Kim Lee De Angelis, PhD Research Associate Sloan Center on Aging & Work Boston College Phone: 617.552.2890 Email: kim.deangelis@bc.edu

In 2006, the Sloan Center on Aging & Work published a brief titled “How Old Are Today’s Older Workers?” by Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, center director, and Michael A. Smyer, former co-director. The brief offers a perspective that employers today would be wise to keep in mind.

In it, the researchers discussed the difficulty of pinning down what employers mean when they refer to “older workers,” “mature workers,” “senior workers,” and “experienced workers.” Here’s the problem. In times past, Dr. Pitt-Catsouphes and Dr. Smyer pointed out, a “mid-career worker seemed to become an older worker once they started to plan for retirement.” What’s more, the “status of being an older worker signaled the end of a career.” Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showing many adults choosing to work past the age at which they could claim retirement benefits indicated to Dr. Pitt-Catsouphes and Dr. Smyer that a more dynamic view of age than proximity to eligibility for benefits was in order. They argued:

The results of a 2009 survey conducted by Careerbuilder.com offer further evidence that old ideas about “who is old” have lost their usefulness. One in five employers (21 percent) reported that as their employees approach retirement age, they ask to continue working. Most employers in that situation (86 percent) said they were happy to oblige, and for the following reasons:

• Employers want to hold on to [older workers’] intellectual capital (65 percent)
• Mature workers can help train and mentor others (61 percent)
• Mature workers know how to weather a tough economy (42 percent)
• Employers have more time to transition responsibilities (36 percent)

In a recent blog, Jacquelyn B. James, Ph.D., the Sloan Center’s research director, stated:

The new reality she describes is a challenge for managers and human resources administrators at a time when many workers nearing and passing retirement age are not, in fact, retiring, but instead are continuing to work and add value to their companies.

With this demographic and cultural shift, the words employers and employees use to describe age and the old ideas that underlie the words must change. The 2006 Sloan Center brief quoted Victor Marshall, a scholar at the Institute on Aging at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as follows:

So, who are you calling old? A more perceptive and precise vocabulary is the gateway to new responses that can energize talent management and retention initiatives now and in the future.

About the authors:
Kim Lee DeAngelis, Ph.D., is a research associate at the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College. She focuses on current case studies and workshops related to the center’s research. Previously, she was director of human resources at Talbots, Inc. She earned her doctorate in human and organizational systems at Fielding Graduate University, where she conducted research on Generation X in the workplace.

Samantha Greenfield is an employer engagement specialist at the Sloan Center on Aging & Work, connecting employers around the world with the center’s research projects. She has worked in the human resources department of two large Boston law firms. She has a bachelor’s degree in communications from Elon University, in North Carolina.

Kevin E. Cahill, PhD Research Economist Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Boston College Phone: 617.552.9195 Email: cahillkc@bc.edu

Early or late starting and quitting times, compressed work weeks, part-time and part-year employment, working off-site by computer, and phased retirement are just some of the flexible work options that companies can use to manage when, where, and how much employees work.

These time and place management (TPM) policies were daunting enough for employers to test-drive when the United States economy was on a fast track. Since December 2007, however, we have endured an 18-month recession, followed by a recovery that has been more sluggish than any other in recent memory. In the early 1980s it took seven quarters for the economy (i.e., Gross Domestic Product (GDP)) to “bounce back” and reach its pre-recession high, in the early 1990s it took five quarters, and in the early 2000s it took just one quarter. We are 16 quarters past the pre-recession high in 2007 and only now have we reached GDP levels that were achieved prior to the downturn. In such a business environment, employers are understandably nervous about making big workplace changes.

But is today’s lackluster economy really a signal to hold back on introducing or expanding a TPM policy? Here are five reasons why forward-looking managers see a green light where others see red.

1. Improvements in productivity are always welcome. Most studies show a positive association between TPM policies and employee performance and well-being. Evidence suggests that a policy that is implemented well can benefit employers and employees alike, because the satisfaction that employees get from them can lead to increased productivity. More important, perhaps, these benefits are not dependent on economic conditions. They are valuable whether the macro economy is in recession or a boom.
2. Attracting and retaining top talent is always a priority. Employees often cite flexible work options as being important dimensions of job quality. Employers seem to be getting the message. In June 2011, Bank of America Merrill Lynch reported the results of a national survey of chief executive officers, chief financial officers, human resources executives, and benefits administrators on workplace benefits. Half of the respondents said they use flexible or customized work schedules to retain older workers; 45 percent said they use these tools to attract younger workers. According to a report by Corporate Voices for Working Families, the role of flexible work arrangements on retention and recruitment is “one of the best-documented and most strongly argued aspects of the flexibility business case.” Like productivity, top talent is always in demand, regardless of the economic conditions of the day.
3. Competition is alive and well. Firms compete no matter the economic climate. Innovation is a key part of this competition and innovations in the workplace are no different from innovations in a line of products or services. Firms that innovate not only what they produce but also how they do it have a competitive edge.
4. Technology continues to advance. Economic growth may be slow, but new technology continues to move TPM forward, opening up options for employees and employers. Web-based self-scheduling software (for example, Stay Staffed and Celayix Software) helps full-time, part-time, and contractual employees manage their time in tune with the demands of the workplace and of their personal lives and lets supervisors plan and monitor effectively. Software for document sharing and virtual meetings allows employees in scattered locations to work collaboratively. Managers must stay up to date with innovations in TPM strategies. Options that might have been prohibitive — technologically or otherwise — recently could now be viable and valuable to pursue.
5. The economy won’t be stuck in the mud forever. Business leaders are looking ahead to shape the way their companies will emerge from this period of slow economic recovery. Leaders know they must have a workforce positioned to respond quickly when the inevitable increase in demand takes place. Adopting TPM policies is one way to get ready.

There are at least two good reasons why managers might hesitate to adopt a new TPM policy or change one that’s in place. One reason is that more research needs to be done to determine the precise impact of TPM policies on business-relevant outcomes. (An innovative study launched in June 2011 by the Sloan Center is addressing this issue.) Another reason is that company-specific challenges, such as the process of obtaining buy-in among key decision makers, can make adopting a TPM policy difficult. These are valid objections. Our weak economy is not.

		Stephen Sweet, PhD Organizational Studies Expert Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Boston College Phone: 617.552.9195 Email: sweets@bc.edu

Just because the personnel manuals of many — maybe most — companies in the United States profess to offer flexible work arrangements of some sort doesn’t mean that these arrangements really are widely available and improving people’s lives.

For one thing, there’s a difference between an option that’s on the books and one that employees can choose without adverse consequences. All too many flexible work arrangements impose significant career costs. Years ago, when my twins were babies, my employer would have let me scale back my hours. I didn’t do it, because my career would have died as a result. My experience marks the difference between an option that’s available and one that’s usable, with no catch-22s.

Even if we take the policies on companies’ books at face value and assume they’re at once available and usable, a lenient research standard has exaggerated the access to flexibility. Most studies of personnel practices give a company credit for a flexible work option if at least one person on staff can take advantage of it. By this standard, a company can appear to be a shining example of workplace flexibility even though the vast majority of its employees aren’t eligible for the options it offers.

According to surveys of U.S. companies in all sectors that Boston College’s Sloan Center on Aging & Work conducted in 2009, most flexible work options are of the “move work” variety — allowing employees to choose where or when they will do their jobs. These options rarely reduce workloads and only limited segments of the labor force have the resources needed to pause work — such as to take a temporary break from their jobs (to care for a family member, for example). That’s a big problem for many workers at stressful junctures in their personal lives, and leads to overwork, which studies show diminishes productivity. The types of flexibility that workers need most — cutting back on hours or going on leave — are least likely to be within their reach.

The availability and types of flexible work arrangements vary by type of job and type of business. When they’re in place, do they truly help employees manage work and family affairs? Do they make employees’ lives more manageable and, in so doing, benefit employers, too?

In sectors that employ highly skilled workers (such as law, medicine, and academe), the bright side of flexible work options is visible. Employers in these sectors use these options to attract and engage people whose specialized knowledge puts them in a competitive position in the labor market. These workers can demand some autonomy in order to balance the requirements of their work and family lives.

Workers laboring in sectors that rely on low-skilled jobs (such as accommodation and food services) commonly experience the dark side of flexibility. In these sectors, flexibility is not an option to be desired. Instead it’s a source of unpredictability, with work shifts and the number of hours on the job subject to change from week to week. For these people, the problem is not finding ways to reduce workloads but rather, finding ways to scrape enough work together to make a living on low wages.

The bright side of flexibility is unlikely to be the natural evolution of workplace design. Unions could push for flexibility, but it’s at best a secondary concern for them, and in any case their power to enact change has been greatly diminished. While some employers (particularly those in the high tech sectors) will clearly benefit from making flexible work arrangements more widely available and usable, others may find it hard to establish a business case.

The question today concerns how to expand the bright side of flexible work to wider segments of the workforce – especially the options to reduce work. Until we are able to do this, lives will continue to be reconfigured to match the workplace, rather than workplaces configured to match lives.

Biographical Note

Stephen Sweet is an associate professor of sociology at Ithaca College and a visiting scholar at the Sloan Center on Aging & Work. He is co-author of Changing Contours of Work: Jobs and Opportunities in the New Economy, published this year by Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA).

		Jacquelyn B. James, PhD Director of Research Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Boston College Phone: 617.552.2860 Email: jamesjc@bc.edu

“Keep busy and stay active.”

For many years, popular thinking about older adults has centered on this simple mantra. The most important thing retired adults can do, the thinking goes, is find ways to stay involved. Don’t just sit there—do something!

Perhaps this is in response to a time when later life was seen as a time of complete leisure or a time with little role definition, or few obligations to others. But is keeping busy enough? Perhaps not.

Recent observations at the Sloan Center on Aging and Work indicate that this focus on activity and involvement may be misguided. Activity is important, and certainly an improvement over the idea of retirement as a time to “sit on the porch,” but it’s not everything. For today’s generation of retirees, involvement is just the beginning. Increasingly, older adults are living and working in a way that demands a new mantra: it’s not just about staying involved as we age, but staying engaged.

As we know, growing old today is not what it used to be. Life expectancy has increased and older adults are healthier in many ways than previous generations were. For most of us, post-retirement is not merely a capstone stage of life, but a significant developmental period that will likely extend for many years. Consequentially, today’s older adults are not just looking for ways to kill time. They are working part-time and launching second careers; they are pursuing advanced training and education; and they are playing active roles in caregiving and raising their families. In all of these roles, older adults are doing much more than just finding ways to keep busy.

Recently, the Sloan Center on Aging and Work completed the first-ever study to examine engagement among older adults. The Life & Times in an Aging Society Study looked at three groups of adults: those under 50, ages 50 to 64, and 65 and over, measuring their levels of engagement in paid work, volunteering, caregiving, education and training. The study asked participants not only if they were involved in these endeavors, but whether they were engaged in them—if they were enthusiastic about them, dedicated to them and whether they could get completely absorbed in them as opposed to merely going through the motions. In three out of four categories—paid work, volunteering and education—the study found that adults over 50 are, on average, are more engaged than their peers under 50.

Most crucially, the study shows that this high level of engagement is directly linked to overall well-being among older adults. Those who reported being highly engaged in one of these activities also had significantly higher well-being scores than those who were relatively unengaged. Notably, those who reported being merely involved, but not engaged in these activities, had well-being scores no higher than those who were uninvolved. Involvement, it seems, is not the key to mental health in later life; engagement is. This difference was widest in the 65-and-older age group, suggesting that the quality of one’s experience with paid work, caregiving, education and volunteering may be particularly consequential for the well-being of older adults.

For policymakers, academics, employers and advocates, these findings represent a chance to change the way we think about aging. Today’s older adults have much to offer in terms of talent, energy and social contributions. Human development continues throughout the life span. Finding ways to reach this potential will have positive outcomes for both older adults and for society as a whole. Ensuring that this is achieved will require changes in the way that society makes opportunities for these endeavors available to older adults and a more nuanced understanding by all of us that older adults don’t just need to keep busy—we must engage as we age.

To learn more about Life & Times in an Aging Society Study, click here ».

		Tay K. McNamara, PhD Senior Research Associate Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Boston College Phone: 617.552.8971 Email: mcnamatd@bc.edu

In most workplaces, long-established norms hold that older workers manage younger workers. As the workforce becomes increasingly multigenerational, it’s important to ask if violating these norms is disruptive to morale and productivity.

Older workers don’t like working for younger bosses. Right?

The answer seems to be yes and no.

Some previous studies — as described in an article by Mary Hair Collins, Joseph F. Hair, Jr., and Tonette S. Rocco that was published in Human Resource Development Quarterly in 2009 — have found tension in the attitudes of older workers towards younger supervisors.

Other research, however, suggests that the relationships older workers have with their supervisors are not determined by whether the boss is younger or the same age. Moreover, data from a 2008 survey conducted by the Families and Work Institute — a nonprofit research organization based in New York City — found that employees of all ages who reported to younger supervisors generally viewed their supervisors as sources of support. Of those 50 and older, 90 percent said that their supervisors helped them solve problems at work. (The figure for employees younger than 50 was 86 percent.) Why do some studies show that younger supervisors are a workforce problem and other studies show they aren’t? A recent analysis of data collected in 2007 by Boston College’s Sloan Center on Aging & Work provides insight.

The Center’s Age & Generations study asked more than 2000 employees a host of demographic questions, work-related questions, and questions about how supportive they considered their supervisors to be. These employees were also asked if they saw their supervisors as about the same age (49 percent), at least 10 years older (33 percent), or at least 10 years younger (12 percent). About 6 percent of the workers surveyed said they really had no idea.

Generally, workers who described their supervisors as younger than them viewed their supervisors as less supportive as compared to workers who described their supervisors as older than them. However, workers whose responses suggested less positive assessments of their own competence, self-worth, and worthiness (very low “core self-evaluations,” as described in a 2006 article by Timothy A. Judge, Amir Erez, Joyce E. Bono, and Carl J. Thoresen) perceived older supervisors as more supportive than supervisors who were younger or even the same age.

Younger supervisors really may be a problem for workers who are feeling insecure already, but these workers are usually a small minority. Core self-evaluations are a stable personality trait: it doesn’t change much over time. However, might other sources of insecurity — like downsizing — trigger a preference for an older supervisor that’s more widespread in a workforce than it would be otherwise? The atmosphere within a company and in the economy as a whole could have a lot to do with whether, at any moment in time, older workers view their younger supervisors as threatening, undeserving, and unsupportive. The inconsistency of research findings on the level of comfort older workers feel with younger supervisors may be due in part to today’s tenuous economic circumstances, when more people feel less secure.

		Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, PhD Director Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Boston College Phone: 617.552.4033 Email: pittcats@bc.edu

By now, almost everyone has some level of awareness that the aging of our population is anticipated to have profound effects on life during the 21st century. We’ve seen the statistics.

But numbers, alone, don’t tell the story.

For the past several months, researchers and workplace aging experts affiliated with the Sloan Center on Aging & Work have discussed the need to launch a blog which will provide us with a space to address some of the controversies, dilemmas and flashes of brilliance. As with all our work, we will base our commentaries on evidence but we will use the blog to spark conversations and debate.

We will be launching AGEnda on January 11. The topics will range from employer innovation to age bias, from interactions across generations to concerns about the future.

We invite you to join in the discussions. Please do let us know how you think we are doing.

Regards,

Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, Director
Sloan Center on Aging & Work