New Business Perspectives On The Older Worker

Your organization needs older workers more than ever: They transfer knowledge between generations, transmit your company's values to new hires, make excellent mentors for younger employees, and provide a "just in time" workforce for special projects. Yet more of these workers are reporting to people younger than they are. This presents unfamiliar challenges that--if ignored--can prevent you from attracting, retaining, and engaging older employees. In Managing the Older Worker, Peter Cappelli and William Novelli explain how companies and younger managers can maximize the value provided by older workers. The key? Recognize that boomers' needs differ from younger generations - and adapt your management practices accordingly. For instance: · Lead with mission: As employees age, they become more altruistic. Emphasize the positive impact of older workers' efforts on the world around them. · Forge social connections: Many older employees keep working to maintain social relationships. Offer tasks that require interaction with others. · Provide different benefits: Tailor benefits--such as elder-care insurance programs or discount medication--to older workers' interests. Drawing on research in management, psychology, and other disciplines, Managing the Older Worker reveals who your older workers are, what they want, and how to manage them for maximum value.

Older employees are often seen as an obstacle and not as an opportunity for companies, especially regarding the transfer of knowledge and experience. Effective development and utilization of older professional and managerial employees is an important issue as most organizations are not prepared to tailor their training methods to the needs and preferences of these employees due to negative stereotypes. Managing a rapidly aging workforce and sustaining economic dynamism calls for systematic research to prevent age discrimination due to an incomplete knowledge of older workers and politically challenging policy choices that require strong political commitments, robust management leadership, and social consensus. International Perspectives and Strategies for Managing an Aging Workforce examines the differences in stereotypes of older employees compared to younger employees in companies; analyzes the impact of the aging workforce on retention, productivity, and well-being; and investigates organizational systems, processes, and practices for managing older workers. Covering a range of topics such as retention and retirement, this reference work is ideal for researchers, academicians, practitioners, business owners, managers, human resource workers, instructors, and students.

Across the world governments in mature industrial and post-industrial economies are concerned about the ageing population. Dealing directly and exclusively with the issue of older workers, this book brings together up-to-the-minute research findings by many of the leading researchers and writers in the field. The duration and quality of working lives and the timing and circustances of retirement are of growing concern, especially in those cases where employers' demands and imperatives clash with employees' wishes. The contributions in this volume focus upon various measures taken by the state and employers to foster the employment of older workers in Britain, mainland Europe, the US and Japan. The authors address key issues that will influence public policy, exploring what workers over 50 want, the impact of the ageing workforce on employer policies and the implications for governments in promoting and supporting extended working lives. The book is aimed at academics, students, policy makers and other professionals (such as training managers, HR professionals and trade unionists) interested in contemporary issues within social policy, the sociology of ageing, and human resource and diversity management. It wil also be of interest to older workers themselves.