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

There is also a difference in the number (and percentage) of older
employees in the different sectors within the EU. In manufacturing and in
accommodation and food services, the percentage of older employees is
relatively low.
In education and real estate activities the percentage of older employees is
relatively high. ‘Although the typical pensionable age is 65 years, the average exit
age from the labour force in 2009 was about 61.5 years [and this will steadily
increase over the years], 42% of Europeans believe that they will be capable of
doing the work they are currently doing beyond the age of 65, while 17% expect
that they will not be able to carry on in their current job until they are 60. One third
of Europeans say that they would like to continue working after they reach
retirement age, and the idea of combining a part-time job and a partial pension is
more appealing than full retirement to almost two thirds of Europeans’ (European
Commission, 2012b, p.1; see also Lissenburgh and Smeaton, 2003; Smeaton et
al., 2009).

1.4. Challenges to overcome for older workers

Despite the growing policy attention on active ageing and the increasing
participation figures across countries, older workers still face challenges that
hamper remaining employed longer or, conversely, stimulate early retirement.
These challenges can be classified into three categories:
(a) institutional challenges (related to the system level);
(b) situational challenges (related to the organisation level);
(c) dispositional challenges (related to the individual level) (based on Cross,
1981, among others).
The challenges at these three levels consist of an intertwined set of barriers,
affecting each other at all three levels, as described in Table 1.
Systemic challenges are those practices and procedures that exclude or
discourage older workers from remaining employed longer. Institutional barriers
are found within the system itself and are often structural in nature.

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