When the European Heads of State met in Vienna last weekend, they endorsed the new employment guidelines for 1999 which commits member-states, for the first time, to supporting an increase in the participation of older workers in the labour force.
That such an endorsement was necessary is evident from the radically changing profile of the European workforce and, not least, by the emergence of labour shortages in Ireland. Within the next 10 years, the number of people aged 15 to 19 years in the EU is set to decline by more than one million, while the number of those aged 20 to 29 is expected to fall by 9 million. Moreover, the numbers aged 50 to 59 will grow by 5.5 million, while there will be an extra one million people aged 60 to 64.
Mr Rob Anderson, research manager at the Dublin-based European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, says: "At last, the ageing workforce and older workers are coming onto the employment policy agenda."
Once employers and governments encouraged older workers to take early retirement, now they must "rethink the management of an ageing workforce - things like reintegration, retention, recruitment and retraining," he says.
The debate about the ageing population and lifelong learning "has been highly prejudiced as many of these issues are about the ageing workforce - the assumption that older workers are less productive or that they can't learn certain skills. The literature doesn't seem to support that at all." Talk of Ireland's labour shortages should add impetus to the debate here.
"A lot of the skilled workforce is over the age of 45 and that's the audience that we're really talking about," says Mr Anderson. We're not talking about people aged 63. "We're talking about the fact that people aged 45 and over tend to get less access to training courses and all sorts of assumptions start being made about their capacity to undertake this task or that task.
"And when you do become unemployed - and this is certainly true in Ireland - over the age of 45, prospects for returning to the labour market are not great."
In fact, a recent publication by Area Development Management looks at the development of initiatives for long-term unemployed people in Ireland "over the age - the great age - of 35", he says.
Another book, Managing An Ageing Workforce: A Guide To Good Practice by Prof Alan Walker, which the European Foundation will publish shortly,
argues that increasingly employers are seeing an "early exit" as a waste of experience, resources and investment in the workforce.
Prof Walker says employers who don't consider older candidates for posts artificially limit the field of candidates and he groups good practice into five categories:
Job recruitment: Older workers should have "either equal or special access to the available jobs". For example, a medium-sized Swedish company recruits "a small number of older workers to ensure an age-mixed workforce and to avoid shortages of skilled labour", he says.
Training, development and promotion: Older workers should not be neglected in training and career development. Opportunities for learning should be offered throughout working life and training methods should be appropriate to older workers, he says. For instance, a medium-sized Dutch company runs a course in "workplace technology" for staff aged 40 and over, while a large aluminium manufacturing company in Greece "encourages older workers to participate in all the training programmes it offers, including training in the use of information technology," he says.
Flexible working practices: Older workers should have "greater flexibility in their hours of work, or in the timing and nature of their retirement". This in turn can benefit younger staff too. For instance, a medium-sized Belgian finance company allows men over 60 and women over 55 to work two hours a week less without loss of earnings, he says.
Ergonomics/job design: A large food production company in Finland has "invested in a project aimed at adding one or two years to an employee's working life with the company". New working equipment was purchased to help people maintain better postures, while "personal pause exercises" and fitness programmes were introduced.
Changing attitudes within organisations: Prof Walker says: "Sometimes the desire of senior managers to create equal opportunities for older workers is thwarted by line managers with direct responsibility for recruitment and training. Therefore changing the attitudes of such staff towards older workers may be a vital prerequisite to the development of good practice."
