Page 31 - increasing-the-value-of-age-guidance-in-employers-age-management-strategies

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

Table 2. List of guidance activities

Name Description
Signposting information on guidance provision and outreach to older workers
Informing information about career opportunities available, according to life stage
and career path
Advising helping individuals and groups to interpret information and choose the
most appropriate option, regarding retraining, CMS development,
redeployment options, among others
Counselling working with individuals to help them discover, clarify, assess and
understand their own experience, and to explore alternatives and their
possible implementation
Mentoring offering client-focused support: can work as intergenerational dynamic
allowing for mutual development and exchange of knowledge among
workers in different career and life stages
Assessing helping individuals, by formal and informal means, to obtain a structured
understanding of their personal, educational and vocational development:
for experienced workers, assessment of their skills, needs and aspirations
is a fundamental step in planning the mature career stage
Teaching and training learner-centred experience to enable individuals to acquire knowledge,
skills and competences, related to making career management,
education, and career decisions and transitions: can refer both to
technical and key skills, such as social interaction or ICT skills
Sampling providing work experiences, work trials, learning tasters, and other
opportunities for individuals to gain first-hand experience to assist and
clarify decisions: for experienced workers it might open paths to
redeployment in different functions from the ones performed
Enabling supporting (groups of) older workers in dealing with organisations
providing or influencing employment and learning opportunities
Advocating negotiating directly with organisations on behalf of individuals or groups
for whom there may be additional barriers to access; for example, older
workers frequently need organised representation before their employees
Following up keeping in touch with individuals after main guidance interventions
Networking establishing links with a range of individuals and organisations, such as
employment services, social security, civil associations, to support and
enhance guidance provision
Feeding back gathering information on the needs of individuals or groups and
encouraging providers of opportunities to respond by adapting or
developing provision for specific age groups
Managing managing guidance activities in a coherent programme, with the
necessary human and organisation resources, and evaluation
Innovation/system supporting developments and changes in origination and guidance
change practices to improve the quality and organisation of provision, better
serving integrated career support along the life-span
Source: Adapted from Ford (2007).

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