Page 73 - increasing-the-value-of-age-guidance-in-employers-age-management-strategies

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

CHAPTER 5.

Age management guidance at work

5.1. Introduction

The starting point for this chapter is the conceptual model, presented in Chapter
2 (please refer to Figure 1). This chapter deals with the organisational context in
which guidance takes place in relation to the conceptual model. First it describes
the rationale behind age management strategy, addressing the arguments why
an organisation decides to establish an age management strategy (Section 5.2).
Then, it addresses the types of approach to deal with the challenges of active
ageing and how these can be embedded in the overall human resources policy.
Section 5.3 describes how guidance activities are integrated in the age
management strategies studied. Section 5.4 deals with the involvement of
internal and external actors in the development and implementation of the age
management strategy, their approach and guidance activities. Section 5.5
provides some conclusions and explores framework conditions at organisational
level that stimulate the establishment and implementation of guidance activities
for older workers.

5.2. Strategy and approach

5.2.1. Starting with strategy
Before focusing on the guidance element in age management, we analysed
whether and why age management strategies and approaches have been
implemented in the 20 cases studied. Assessing the active age strategy and
approach provides the opportunity of shedding more light on the organisational
context, to understand better the (potential) problems and challenges older
workers face in the organisation and the choices organisations have made in
combating these (potential) problems.
Table 5 presents the various background factors and rationales used when
deciding to implement an age management strategy. It shows the name of the
organisation, the background and aim of the strategy, an inventory of the cases
on the most emerging rationales for developing age management policies:
productivity, sick leave, culture, knowledge and retirement. (Complete information
on the case studies can be found in Cedefop, 2015).

66