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

Executive summary

This report reviews practices in employers’ age management strategies and the
role of guidance therein. Several challenges and messages for policy and
practices are identified.

Age management strategies: critical but neglected

Age management strategies are critical to aims to increase retirement age while
ensuring longer and fulfilling working life for individuals. Despite many good
practices and examples, age management is generally not embedded in human
resource policies in organisations, nor supported by national policies and
institutions.
The concept of age management is relatively new and there are few national
policies or mandatory guidelines for active age management at the workplace,
except in France. In most countries, active age management is mainly stimulated
through financial incentives, aimed either at employers or employees. Laws and
regulations can, however, stimulate the development of age management
strategies that would otherwise be overlooked by organisations (as occurs in
France).

Guidance not formally integrated in strategies

Even where active age management policies were developed over the past
decade, guidance is usually not formally included. Older workers are not a typical
target group for national guidance strategies, which tend to be focused on young
people and the unemployed. There is, however, a trend towards opening up
guidance to the employed, making use ICT and so allowing older workers access
to such services.
Previous research on career guidance at the workplace has already shown
that there are no clear processes for career advice and guidance in firms and
organisations. Where guidance exists it tends to be addressed to management
staff and young recruits, while most other employees, including older workers,
are expected to take responsibility for their own career development.
Nevertheless, the study carried out by Cedefop helped identify a number of
examples of practices, reviewed in this report.

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