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CHAPTER 7
Learning, work and later life in the UK: guidance needs of an ageing workforce 135

and often see them as problems. Second, the positive features which
employers identify are conservative ones, like reliability, experience, tacit
knowledge, and familiarity with the workplace and its practices, rather than
dynamic ones. It would appear that older workers keep a firm stable, but that
qualities like dynamism, creativity and innovation are associated with younger
people (McNair et al., 2007). As a result, older workers are more likely to find
themselves locked into undemanding and unrewarding jobs (and the average
time a person spends in a job rises significantly after 50) ( ), reducing
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motivation and in turn, feeding prejudices about older workers motivation.

7.8. Training needs and effectiveness

For many years the UK government has argued that the countryʼs international
competitiveness requires raising the general skills levels of the workforce
(DIUS, 2007; Leitch, 2006). Sometimes such assertions rest on relatively
crude international comparisons of qualification levels, and the economic
return on such qualifications. These may, however, be misleading in relation
to older workers because: they neglect the tacit skills which employers identify
as the key value of older workers; they do not allow for decay of qualifications
over the life course; and calculations of the economic value of qualifications
are often based on lifetime return on qualifications earned before the mid-20s.
The claim that older workers will be more employable if they are better
qualified may therefore be seriously mistaken.
Further, policy-makersʼ frequent claims that all firms and workers would
benefit from more training can overlook the difference between high and low
training sectors and occupations. Although policy-makers often suggest that
training is always a good thing, it is not surprising that doctors train more than
manual labourers, since the skills and knowledge base is larger and changes
more rapidly. Also, a high proportion of all work related training is induction,
or driven by law or regulation, like health and safety training. Older workers
are, by definition, more likely to have been in the firm a long time, and have
already done such training. Some variation in training between sectors and
occupational groups is therefore to be expected.
Government skills policy has also placed considerable weight on
international comparisons of qualifications, and funding has been heavily

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( ) UK labour force survey data.