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Working and ageing
108 Guidance and counselling for mature learners

6.2. Theme one: retaining critical organisational skills

This first theme explores how organisations can reduce levels of stress to
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keep older workers from retiring (early) ( ). Loss of critical skills can be
devastating for an organisation and workers leaving for early retirements take
these critical skills with them. One main reason for workers leaving has to do
with the stress they experience in their relationship with the work organisation.
Stress is a powerful mechanism for leading older workers to leave the work
organisation and can be caused by different reasons, mostly linked to
organisational demands and individual capability. For example decreases in
physical work capacity and mental changes can result in stress. Regarding
the former point, most research shows that physical capacity is not a serious
issue for white-collar workers below the age of 70 (Barnes-Farrell, 2006).
Mental changes on the other hand are pertinent to this research and so are
discussed in some detail below, especially in regard to how these changes
affect the older employeeʼs relationship with the organisation.

6.2.1. Mental changes accompanying the ageing process
Mental changes accompanying the ageing process can be linked to changes
in mental functional capacity – considered to be the ability to perform different
tasks using oneʼs intellect. Research in geriatrics often points towards decline
in functional capacity for persons above 70 years of age in regard to cognitive
functions such as learning, understanding, memory, communication, etc., or
the relationships between individuals and their environments (Ilmarinen,
2001). Occupational health literature also looks at cognitive functioning, but
for people still part of the labour force. This is important because although
geriatric studies point towards severe decreases in cognitive abilities,
occupational health studies show something different.
Studies on declines in cognitive ability have shown the adage ʻyou canʼt
teach an old dog new tricksʼ is highly dependant on the age of the dog and
the type of trick one tries to teach (Korchin and Basowitz, 1957; Nauta
et al., 2005). The ability to learn new tricks is crucial to a knowledge worker
who must regularly process new information to solve organisational problems.
Although some aspects of information processing such as speed of
perception, memory and the ability to realise the outcomes of the decisions

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( ) Barnes-Farrall (2006); Bureau Bartels (2010); Ilmarinen (2001); Kanfer and Ackerman (2007);
van der Heijden (2001).