Age Management in Danish Companies: What, How, and How Much?

Abstract

This article investigates Danish employers’ behavior in the area of active aging, which is made topical by demographic aging. It describes age management practices and explains why some companies are more prone to employ age management than others. The study is based on a survey conducted among a representative sample of Danish employers, and 609 interviews in total have been carried out. Data have been scrutinized using frequency analysis for descriptive purposes as well as binary logistic regression analysis for explanatory purposes. Findings indicate that structural, cognitive, and action-oriented variables have significance for whether companies develop and employ active age management policies.

Organizational Hindrances to the Retention of Older Healthcare Workers

“…These findings are somewhat contrary to the extensive literature on age discrimination in the labor market (Harris et al 2017). However, studies in the Nordic context also show positive attitudes among employers ( Jensen & Møberg 2012), and a Norwegian study of the hospitality industry (e.g., hotels) showed that underlying prejudice based on traditional stereotypes could be unfavorable for older workers, despite explicit positive attitudes (Furunes & Mykletun 2007).…”

“…The lack of policies acknowledging older workers as a specific group makes HR activities targeting older employees reliant on the personal engagement of individual managers and on deals negotiated on an individual basis. Although managers' motivation and willingness to support older workers are essential in creating the right workplace conditions (Furunes et al 2011;Jensen & Møberg 2012;Leisink & Knies 2011;Nilsson 2017), dependence on first-line managers' personal incentives can lead to arbitrary outcomes. The lack of age-management policies seems to generate passivity among many line managers and HR partners, even though they consider older workers a valuable resource, even though they face large unmet staffing needs, and even though many of their employees wish to work past retirement age (Nordic Council of Ministers 2014;SKL 2018).…”

“…However, this increase is probably not related to European employers' active measures to recruit or retain older workers, since research indicates that such measures are few or lacking (cf. Conen et al 2012;Fuertes et al 2013;Jensen & Møberg 2012).…”

“…Line managers' knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes toward older workers are essential for the age-management activities in an organization (Furunes et al 2011), so they may need training to develop sufficient knowledge of work and aging (Bal et al 2015;Ilmarinen & Rantanen 1999). Scholars suggest that employers' active engagement and measures at the workplace level are both critical to managing older workers and changing retirement behavior (Jensen & Møberg 2012;Nilsson 2011;Vickerstaff et al 2003). However, overarching age-management policies do not necessarily ensure actual activities at lower managerial levels (Boehm et al 2013) where line managers and their HR partners' role is to implement organizational goals in daily practice.…”

Working environment and work retention

“…In this study, the workplace actions were predominantly experienced by older workers who were placed high in the job hierarchy (Jakobsen et al, 2014). However, at a closer look only few workplaces had taken concrete measures to extend the working life of their older workers (Jensen & Juul Møberg, 2012), and only 23% of Danish workers report that their workplace have measures to adapt the work conditions to older employees (Andersen et al, 2016). This is in agreement with results from a new survey in which 75% of workers age 55+ years stated that the workplace did not offer actions to retain older workers, e.g.…”