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CHAPTER 11
Maintaining senior employment: some lessons from best practices in France 221

when the time comes to identify them. It is common knowledge that
experience can trigger the appropriate movements or the right decisions,
regardless of the complexity involved. This is particularly true with older
workers. The knowledge-based experience identification and mentor training
stages, which include articulating experience, putting it into words and shaping
it into a story are decisive factors if such processes are to be a success. It is
difficult for the individual to carry out this process alone, and a competent
mediator needs to be appointed to show the way. The ʻintermediaryʼ role
played by local bodies such as OPCAs2, professional organisations (CPNEs3,
observatories) and consultants, has proved decisive in raising companiesʼ
awareness and supporting them as they consider and settle some aspects of
gaining and passing on experiential knowledge (Caser and Conjard, 2009;
Masingue, 2009).

11.5. Recommendations

Lessons learned from these three examples are very similar to lessons
learned from other companies with guidance and counselling practices. It is
as much the features intrinsic to these systems as well as their consistency
and interaction with employeesʼ work environments that appear conducive to
helping older individuals active in the workplace. Consequently, work on both
of these aspects, whatever the setting, appears fundamental.
The approaches observed in the study, while rarely tagged as having been
designed solely for senior workers, consider certain features specific to the
senior population, not in general, but in specific situations: for example, a long-
standing job in a changing environment, a strong job-specific identity, deeply
integrated competences, calls for adaptation of systems. In the call centre
case, a long monolithic experience and a strong job-specific identity can drive
adaptation of the training system. Without this adaptation, it could be quite
difficult for a worker with long tenure in a single job and not many opportunities
to learn, to acquire new competences.
Where ageing workers have to transfer their experience-based knowledge,
a key success factor is help of a mediator. The more experienced you are, the
more this experience is integrated: people are not always conscious of why they
do things in a particular way and sometimes simply cannot explain why they
work the way they do. The role of the mediator is to help experienced workers
to identify these specific deeply integrated competences they are not conscious
of, and the critical work situations on which learning will have to be based.