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

Keeping workers productive and retaining expertise

Keeping older workers productive is the most important reason why organisations
decide to implement an age management strategy; they are also keen to retain
the knowledge and expertise held by older workers. Therefore, age management
strategies tend to be problem-oriented, aiming to address a specific challenge,
such as health problems, negative stereotypes, skills obsolescence, or retaining
workers’ expertise. This introduces a normative element in age management and
strongly influences practices.
Most age management strategies include training, learning and mentoring,
and career development reviews. In terms of guidance, the most common
methods are signposting and informing. Advising is less often available because
many age management strategies rely on the provision of information to
employees, who are then to take responsibility for the next steps.

Weak focus on guidance quality

In most cases, guidance is provided by internal staff such as managers or direct
supervisors. Providing guidance is seen as a management task and is part of
appraisals, career development reviews or informal on-the-job coaching and
advising. External actors, such as guidance and counselling experts and training
institutes, tend to be involved ad hoc, mostly when launching the age
management strategy.
Limited attention is paid to the specific skills of internal staff providing
guidance: managers and supervisors are supposed to have the right skills to offer
guidance and additional training is not considered necessary. Nevertheless,
when training is provided it appears to contribute to improving guidance quality
There is no explicit attention given to the quality of the guidance in most
cases, though quality may be indirectly fostered by involving external experts,
protocols or guidelines or the identification of good practices.

Benefits for individuals, organisations and society

The cases studied show that age management strategies have a positive effect
for the individual: their job satisfaction and self-confidence increase and they stay
longer in their jobs. Employees gain and transfer knowledge and skills for their
own benefit and for the organisation.
Organisations usually achieve their specific goals but there are also positive
overspill effects. Better cooperation between generations tends to increase

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