An Age To Work

The Canadian population is aging, bringing with it an increasing number of social and economic challenges. With the aging of the workforce, the reconceptualization of older workers and retirement, the increasing share of women in the labour force, the elimination of mandatory retirement, the fluctuating economy, and the changes to the pension system, barriers to employment for older workers, such as ageism, need to be of central concern. Ageism at Work examines the subjective experiences of older workers in Canada and explores how they negotiate ageism and manage their interactions in the employment setting. Further, this book looks at the intersection between age and gender and the pervasiveness of gendered ageism in the labour market. Finally, this book examines employers’ attitudes towards older workers quantitatively, while also exploring their first-hand accounts about them through qualitative inquiry. Understanding how ageism plays out in the labour market, how it intersects with sexism, and its consequences on a personal level are critical to moving the discussion on discrimination and human rights forward in Canada.

Age at Work explores the myriad ways in which ‘age’ is at ‘work’ across society, organizations and workplaces, with special focus on organizations, their boundaries, and marginalizing processes around age and ageism in and across these spaces. The book examines: how society operates in and through age, and how this informs the very existence of organizations; age-organization regimes, age-organization boundaries, and the relationship between organizations and death, and post-death the importance of memory, forgetting and rememorizing in re-thinking the authors’ and others’ earlier work tensions between seeing age in terms of later life and seeing age as pervasive social relations. Enriched with insights from the authors’ lived experiences, Age at Work is a major and timely intervention in studies of age, work, care and organizations. Ideal for students of Sociology, Organizations and Management, Social Policy, Gerontology, Health and Social Care, and Social Work.

The edited volume Age and Work: Advances in Theory, Methods, and Practice presents a systematic collection of key advances in theory, methods, and practice regarding age(ing) and work. This cutting-edge collection breaks new ground by developing novel and useful theory, explaining underutilized but important methodological approaches, and suggesting original practical applications of emerging research topics. The book begins with a prologue by the World Health Organization’s unit head for aging and health, an introduction on the topic by the editors, and an overview of past, current, and future workforce age trends. Subsequently, the first main section outlines theoretical advances regarding alternative age constructs (e.g., subjective age), intersectionality of age with gender and social class, paradoxical age-related actions, generational identity, and integration of lifespan theories. The second section presents methodological advances regarding behavioral assessment, age at the team and organizational levels, longitudinal and diary methods, experiments and interventions, qualitative methods, and the use of archival data. The third section covers practical advances regarding age and job crafting, knowledge exchange, the work/nonwork interface, healthy aging, and absenteeism and presenteeism, and organizational meta-strategies for younger and older workers. The book concludes with an epilogue by an eminent scholar in age and work. Written in a scientific yet accessible manner, the book offers a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students, academics in the fields of psychology and business, as well as practitioners working in the areas of human resource management and organizational development.

Work plays an essential role in how we engage with the world, reflecting our desire to be productive, creative, and connected to others. By exploring the inner experiences of people at work, people seeking work, and people transitioning in and out of work, this book provides a rich and complex picture of the contemporary work experience. Drawing from extensive interviews with working people across the US, as well as insights from psychological research on work and careers, the book provides compelling evidence that the nature of work in the US is eroding-- and with powerful psychological and social consequences. From this conclusion, the book also illustrates the rationale and roadmap for a renewed agenda toward full employment and toward fair and dignified jobs for all who want to work. The emotional insights complement the conclusions of the best science and policy analyses on working, culminating in a powerful call for policies that attend to the real lives of individuals in 21st century America. By weaving these various sources together, Blustein delineates a conception of working that conveys its complexity, richness, and capacity for both joy and despair.

This Handbook incorporates a variety of disciplines and approaches in order to provide a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the issues that result from increasing age diversity at work. Despite interest in this area exploding over the past few years amongst academics, practitioners and policy makers, the analysis of age diversity has remained primarily within disciplinary ‘silos’ such as Psychology or Sociology with a focus on ageing or generational differences, rather than a combination of approaches to understanding age diversity. Unique in its coverage of multiple perspectives, it considers not only generational and ageing perspectives to age diversity, but also highlights the importance of context in driving both the impact and response to this issue. The Palgrave Handbook of Age Diversity and Work includes contributions from leading scholars in age and generational diversity from across the world, discussing cutting-edge research findings about the nature and impact of age diversity and presenting approaches to managing this phenomenon.

"This book is a tour de force." --Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take A revolutionary new history of humankind through the prism of work by leading anthropologist James Suzman Work defines who we are. It determines our status, and dictates how, where, and with whom we spend most of our time. It mediates our self-worth and molds our values. But are we hard-wired to work as hard as we do? Did our Stone Age ancestors also live to work and work to live? And what might a world where work plays a far less important role look like? To answer these questions, James Suzman charts a grand history of "work" from the origins of life on Earth to our ever more automated present, challenging some of our deepest assumptions about who we are. Drawing insights from anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, zoology, physics, and economics, he shows that while we have evolved to find joy, meaning and purpose in work, for most of human history our ancestors worked far less and thought very differently about work than we do now. He demonstrates how our contemporary culture of work has its roots in the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago. Our sense of what it is to be human was transformed by the transition from foraging to food production, and, later, our migration to cities. Since then, our relationships with one another and with our environments, and even our sense of the passage of time, have not been the same. Arguing that we are in the midst of a similarly transformative point in history, Suzman shows how automation might revolutionize our relationship with work and in doing so usher in a more sustainable and equitable future for our world and ourselves.

Work plays an essential role in how we engage with the world, reflecting our desire to be productive, creative, and connected to others. By exploring the inner experiences of people at work, people seeking work, and people transitioning in and out of work, this book provides a rich and complex picture of the contemporary work experience. Drawing from extensive interviews with working people across the US, as well as insights from psychological research on work and careers, the book provides compelling evidence that the nature of work in the US is eroding-- and with powerful psychological and social consequences. From this conclusion, the book also illustrates the rationale and roadmap for a renewed agenda toward full employment and toward fair and dignified jobs for all who want to work. The emotional insights complement the conclusions of the best science and policy analyses on working, culminating in a powerful call for policies that attend to the real lives of individuals in 21st century America. By weaving these various sources together, Blustein delineates a conception of working that conveys its complexity, richness, and capacity for both joy and despair.