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Healthy Aging at Work

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Healthy at Work

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Abstract

In Germany as well as in most Western industrialized countries, the work-force is rapidly “aging”. Modern companies therefore increasingly need to abandon established approaches to occupational safety and pursue preventive strategies to protect and restore well-being, work ability, and good health across the entire lifespan. Hence, effective occupational health management needs to encompass strategic work and career designs. In response to these challenges, an interdisciplinary group of researchers at the Jacobs Center on Lifelong Learning and Institutional Development of the Jacobs University Bremen has zoomed in on two concepts that have so far received little attention in research on occupational health management; namely, person–environment fit and work–task mobility. Person–environment fit refers to the fit between individuals (e.g., abilities, behaviors, goals, attitudes) and their work environments (e.g., job profile, demands, support structures, culture). Work–task mobility refers to careers involving repeated intra-organizational changes of work tasks at the same level of job complexity (no promotion or demotion). This chapter reports on two research projects, Demopass and Mobilis, that aim to investigate person–environment fit and work–task mobility, respectively, as two important tools for systemic and dynamic occupational health management in times of demographic change.

Since July 2015, Jan Oltmanns works as an HR specialist for Daimler AG at Mercedes-Benz, Bremen.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Daimler AG, Mercedes-Benz, Bremen, Germany

    Jan Oltmanns

  2. Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin, Dortmund, Germany

    Götz Richter

  3. Jacobs University Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Ben Godde

  4. Columbia Aging Center, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Ursula M. Staudinger

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Correspondence to Jan Oltmanns .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), Berlin, Germany

    Markus Wiencke

  2. SOCIUM Research Center on Inequality & Social Policy, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Mirella Cacace

  3. Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany

    Sebastian Fischer

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Oltmanns, J., Richter, G., Godde, B., Staudinger, U.M. (2016). Healthy Aging at Work. In: Wiencke, M., Cacace, M., Fischer, S. (eds) Healthy at Work . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32331-2_6

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