Page 93 - increasing-the-value-of-age-guidance-in-employers-age-management-strategies

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

(c) industrial funds that help stimulate specific areas (partly/completely)
overlapping with the goals of the age management strategy, which can be
laid down in collective labour agreements (such as the intersectoral bipartite
fund, Fondimpresa, used by Rossimoda).

A governance partner can also be involved as a guidance provider. These
are organisations such as trade unions, employer organisations, public
employment services (PES), adult learning centres, external experts. Although
internal actors provide most career guidance in the case studies, some report on
the use of external sources, mainly private consultants, trainers and public
employment services. For example, employees at the UCLH (the UK) have the
opportunity to make an appointment with their pension provider to talk about the
consequences of retirement on their income.
Different actors may work together, as at the career and counselling centre
of Kronoberg where employees are informed about occupation paths for older
workers. Similar to the learning centre, the career and counselling centre is a
physical space and here employees receive counselling and advice from
education advisors, the public employment service, the social insurance agency
and the county council.
Such guidance activities enable employees to become better informed about
different career paths. It is difficult to assess the skills of these external guidance
providers and it is left to the hiring organisation to ensure their skills are
appropriate.
Comprehensive cooperation is not seen in many cases. Internal actors are
usually responsible for the guidance provided and the roles of external parties
are more often in education and training, frequently on an ad hoc basis instead of
being embedded in the approach. As seen from Table 8, most guidance provided
by external parties is during start-up.

5.5. Concluding
Some conclusions can be drawn on stimulating or hampering guidance activities
for older workers in the workplace floor:
(a) keeping older workers active and productive is considered by promoters the
most important aim for implementing an age management strategy,
approach and guidance. There is a strong link between the challenges that
the age management strategy addresses and the approaches implemented.
However, one approach can help in dealing with more than one challenge so

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