Page 101 - increasing-the-value-of-age-guidance-in-employers-age-management-strategies

Increasing the value of age: guidance in employers’ age management strategies

since if the enterprise management decides that an employee must participate,
guidance activities are likely to be more intense.

Table 10. Relation required involvement and obligation nature
obligation level is: low medium high
Required involvement is:
low +++ ++ +
medium +++ ++ +
high + ++ +++
Source: Authors, based on Cedefop (2015).

Nevertheless a high level of obligation, does not necessarily mean that the
employee cannot refuse to participate; it means they were nominated to do so,
which may carry a certain level of personal pressure. Also, obligation does not
imply that employees are unwilling to participate in the activities.
Another aspect is how the nature and content of activities is perceived as
directive/prescriptive for future behaviours. Although participation may be
voluntary, the contents of the activities may be perceived more as an
empowering experience, or more as organisational traps which will result in
behavioural or career development constraints.
The following comment from a Wicke’s employee captures this fundamental
aspect of the perception of the role of guidance interventions: ‘When I got the
chance to take over the higher position of my superior, who was about to retire,
our personnel manager asked me if I would like to participate in the project. I
gladly agreed, as this gave me the unique opportunity to get acquainted with my
new tasks easily and to obtain knowledge from my superior in a well-structured
and direct way. I was highly motivated to learn about the experiences of my
superior with his tasks and his way of handling it. Although I was not obliged to
then handle things in the same way, this was a good starting point for developing
my own approach to dealing with the new job’.
When guidance is provided by internal parties, especially via the direct
supervisor, there are no apparent quality measures in place other than the
expected professionalism of the supervisor in question. Sometimes these
managers are trained in implementing active age management in practice, but
often they are not trained to provide guidance. The case studies also show that
the talks between the direct supervisor and employee are mostly unstructured.
This is especially the case in SMEs.
Kronoberg (Sweden) is one of the few cases where quality assurance was
an important dimension. One of the approaches in Kronoberg was the formulation
of a plan for manager training on issues such as age awareness and working

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