The Deployment of Enriched Capacities: The Rights of Older Workers

Abstract

The basic assumption in this article is that growing older does not mean only, or even necessarily, a decline in one's labour capacities. Some capacities increase over the years, although this development is clearly not the same for each and every individual. The older workers' "enriched" capabilities are determined by certain aspects of job design. Older employees find, however, that their ability to learn and grow is hardly respected or addressed by their employer. Through action research in collaboration with a team of older female care workers with low educational levels, a new learning process was launched in a health care institution. The programme was designed in line with the team's own needs and experience. Thus, the initiative and learning demand lay with the participants. Their experiences and interests were key to the learning programme, which consisted of experimental and collective learning with the opportunity of self-direction. With the development of their capacities in the job and their improved performance, a change arose both in the employment relationship (the delegation of power and a more coaching oriented management style) and in the work content (the possibility of organising and cooperating in order to solve problems together). Due to new cutbacks and quality requirements in the standardisation of care processes, however, most of the changes have since disappeared.

Career success of older workers: the influence of social skills and continuous learning ability

“…However, it has been suggested that older workers may be less oriented to learning and development than middle-aged workers, but not less compared to younger workers (De Lange et al, 2010). On the other hand, other researchers found that older workers do look for training and development and showed that older employees find that their ability to learn and grow is hardly respected or addressed by their employer (Zinsmeister and Meerman, 2014). Despite studies that showed that older workers do seek out development in late career, older workers are still perceived to be slower, less creative, less flexible, more resistant to change and disinterested or even hostile toward training and development when compared to their younger counterparts (Billet et al, 2011).…”

With a little help from my friends: adopting a P-E fit perspective in understanding the value of organizational learning climate for sustainable employability

“…In other words, several studies have already indicated that age as such has no detrimental influence, but that the work context often does not facilitate older employees equally compared to younger ones ( Williams van Rooij, 2012 ; Lazazzara et al, 2013 ). For example, older employees are more likely to find themselves in jobs with little learning potential than their younger colleagues, often due to age-related stereotypes ( Van der Heijden, 2005 ; Zinsmeister and Meerman, 2014 ). In line with Mulvey et al (2010 , p. 597), we consider age-related stereotyping as “the attribution of traits to individuals based on group membership,” in this case age group (cf.…”