Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
4.1.1.
Work ability
Working conditions and “Work ability” are important factors from the point of view of
age, to combine ageing and work successfully. This joint purpose mainly concerns
individual workers, but it is also closely connected with the support of enterprises,
other organizations and society in general. The health and functional abilities of a
person at work decline with increasing age and there is an increasing need to
compensate this decline, e.g. by providing an adapted working place, but the mental
development nevertheless creates a good basis to succeed and develop in a person's
working life. For example, the ability to learn does not depend on age, but learning
strategies change with ageing. Thus it is important to promote the health, working
ability and wellbeing of ageing workers.
The “work ability” is well explained in different dimensions, using the concept of “the
house of work ability” (see Figure 5). The “house of work ability” has four floors. The
three lowest floors depict human resources, and the fourth floor covers all the
dimensions of work.
The floors of the house comprise the health and functional capacity (physical, mental,
and social functioning), the dimensions of competence, the values, attitudes and
motivation, and management, organization and environment. The “work ability”
concept suggests that work itself should also be improved for the workers, not only the
people improved for work, thus resulting in a healthy environment, where the worker is
able to work at that time, at that location, and in that style he likes (working healthy
every time, everywhere, how he likes it).
In this context, AAL applications and functionality play a fundamental role, above all if
they are related to elderly people and employees with disabilities to give support for
active ageing, including appropriate working conditions, occupational health status and
adequate incentives to work longer, adopting flexible retirement schemes and
discouraging early retirement.
4.1.2.
Employers' attitudes to older workers
At a time when populations are ageing, the economic cost of age discrimination is set
to grow. Valuable skills in the workplace are also being lost through early retirement or
the unemployment of older workers. Employers should seek to reflect the diversity of
age in the workplace, so achieving a better mix of younger and older workers.
The main challenge is to change the attitudes of employers and their expectations
of their ageing workers. This will require education and the raising of awareness of the
needs of older workers as well as the dissemination of models of good practice that
have been successfully introduced elsewhere.
4.1.3.
Training in and for the workplace
Employers do not always see training as an investment. However, the attitude to the
training of older workers is crucially important. As well as developing a more
favourable position by employers to training, there is a need for workers themselves to
view training in a positive light. Workers often exclude themselves from training
opportunities because of a lack of confidence in their abilities to participate or they see
it as something forced on them by management. Special attention needs to be paid to
tackling such issues.
