Abstract
People are choosing to delay retirement and continue working into their later years. Continued earnings are one incentive, but nonfinancial rewards also play an important part in the decision to remain in the workforce. Older people feel that employment allows them continued personal growth, as well as the opportunity to pass on knowledge and values in the workforce. Employers benefit from retaining older employees who know their work and workplace well, have evolved with the organization, and can be available to mentor younger employees. Yet the aging process can include attendant health and disability issues that few workers or employers are prepared to handle proactively. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the importance of retaining aging workers, describe challenges identified in doing so, and discuss workplace policies and practices that organizations can preemptively put in place to keep these workers productive and active longer into their working years. We begin with statistics that document the demographics of the aging workforce, and why workers are motivated to stay in the workforce longer, then explore employer readiness for an aging workforce, and document charges of workplace discrimination on the basis of age. The remainder of the chapter focuses on strategies to increase older worker retention identified in the literature and our own research. While older worker discrimination in the application and hiring processes is worthy of further examination, this chapter keeps its focus on the employer’s role in the retention and inclusion of older workers and ways to support continued productivity and job satisfaction.
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Notes
- 1.
The Disability Management Employer Coalition (DMEC) is a membership organization of over 700 employer and supplier member organizations representing over 9500 absence and disability management professionals from across the United States and Canada. It is focused on education, knowledge, and networking for absence and disability professionals through national education programs focused on workplace strategies to minimize lost work time, improve workforce productivity, and maintain legally compliant absence and disability programs (see http://dmec.org/).
- 2.
The ADEA prohibits employment discrimination against persons 40 years of age or older (see www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm).
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Bruyère, S.M., von Schrader, S., VanLooy, S. (2018). Employment Strategies for Older Adults. In: Gatchel, R., Schultz, I., Ray, C. (eds) Handbook of Rehabilitation in Older Adults. Handbooks in Health, Work, and Disability. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03916-5_14
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