Page 24 - increasing-the-value-of-age-guidance-in-employers-age-management-strategies

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

Further to its potential function in removing situational and dispositional
barriers, guidance can stimulate and support the development of the full potential
of persons as workers (and in other aspects of life) in all stages of their careers.
For older workers, guidance can help them enhance their productive contribution
to organisations and society as well as enable successful and more profound
transmission of knowledge, skills and values between workers of different
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generations ( ).
In 2008 the Council adopted a resolution on better integrating lifelong
guidance into lifelong learning strategies. In the resolution the Council identifies
four priority areas: ‘encourage the lifelong acquisition of career management
skills; facilitate access by all citizens to guidance services; develop quality
assurance in guidance provisions; encourage coordination and cooperation
among the various national, regional and local stakeholders; [… and] invites the
Member States to strengthen the role of lifelong guidance in their national lifelong
learning strategies’ (Council of the European Union, 2008b, p. 5). The importance
of high quality lifelong guidance has subsequently been stressed in the Education
and Training 2020 strategic framework (Council of the European Union, 2009).
One of the key questions is how, on the one hand, guidance activities are
embedded in active age management strategies at company level and, on the
other hand, whether older workers are targeted within career guidance policies.
This brings together two worlds often studied separately.
Research on active age management shows that policies are generally still
not fully embedded in organisational human resources policies. Limited research
is available on how guidance activities are embedded in an organisation’s active
age management strategies, although we know that many organisations deploy
activities in the context of active ageing, that can be considered as (partly)
guidance. Some common cases are yearly appraisal and development talks, self-
help packages for older workers on the internet and intranet, formal and informal
coaching and mentoring arrangements, and handbooks for older workers.
Research on career guidance in the workplace, done by Cedefop in 2008,
shows that there are no clear processes for ‘career advice and guidance in the
workplace […] although positive examples of good practice exist. Most support is
targeted at key talent groups [such as management staff and young recruited
employees] while most other employees [including older workers] are expected to
take responsibility for their own career development’ (Cedefop, 2008a, p. 31).

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( ) This process is described in literature as ‘generativity’. See, for example, Clark and
Arnold, 2008.

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