Aging
in the Workplace — New Visions for Older WorkersAging Baby Boomers are affecting every aspect of our culture, including how we work.
Most of us think of going through our lives in traditional phases. From the ages of 6 to 18 or 21, we’re in school full time. From 21 to 65, we’re working full time on our careers. Then, from age 65 on, we leave work behind and enter the “golden years” of retirement. This is still the way many people imagine their lives unfolding. That’s no longer the way things work.
Today, more older Americans are choosing to continue working past the traditional retirement age. According to a survey by the Society for Human Resources Management, two thirds of workplaces surveyed said their workforces included workers past the traditional retirement age who had retired from other organizations. In a recent American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) survey, 80% of workers headed for retirement say they expect to continue to work.
The reasons behind this change in our idea of retirement are predictably complex. Financial necessity is a motivating factor for many older workers. Some are concerned about the age of eligibility for Social Security rising while benefits decline. Others have doubts about their workplace pension plans, while approximately one half of all U.S. workers have no pension plan at all. Fueled by fears about the rising cost of living and healthcare, many older workers plan to work past the traditional retirement age to hold onto their health benefits.
Financial insecurities are not the only reason why more Americans plan to keep working past the age of 65. The desires to remain productive and find personal fulfillment are equally powerful motivators. Increased longevity plays an important role in this quest. Today, people aged 65 are facing the prospect of at least 20 more years of life, much of it in good health, and are looking to make best use of the time.
Whatever the reasons for this blurring of the traditional retirement age, Baby Boomers now edging toward the age of 65 have no intention of fading gently into a golden horizon—they intend to stay, and they intend to stay productive. They also have very specific ideas about how their working lives should be organized. They’re interested in flexible options such as choosing their own hours, taking time off for personal and family matters, and not having to work overtime hours with little or no notice. At the same time, they want to continue to assume the same level of responsibility while learning new skills.
According to the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, most older employees in salaried or wage-earning jobs do not have the kind of flexibility they’d like to see in their workplaces.
With aging Baby Boomers greatly outnumbering the generation of younger workers, adopting more flexible policies for older employees is no longer a matter of businesses simply meeting their employees needs—it’s a matter of their own survival.
The Impact on Business: The Need for New Models
The coming retirement age of the Baby Boomer generation will cause shortages
of two kinds for American businesses—first, a shortage of employees and,
second, a shortage of knowledge. Even if employers are able to find younger
employees to replace retirees, when older employees walk out the door, so does
their knowledge and experience.
While older workers’ ideas of retirement and employment are changing and flexible, those concepts have remained more or less unchanged for decades for most employers.
It was in recognition of the aging of the U.S. workforce that The Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility was created. With strong ties to Boston College’s graduate school of social work and supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the center focuses on workplace issues facing older workers and strives to stimulate dialogue among workers, employers, and policymakers.
Mick Smyer, codirector of the Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility and professor of psychology at Boston College, sums up the center’s mission. “What we’re trying to do is carry out a program of research that helps business leaders, the media, and researchers understand how to improve the fit between the demands and expectations of businesses of varying sorts and the preferences of older workers.”
As not only researchers but would-be instigators of social change, the center’s staff are faced with the challenge of making the case that flexible work options for older workers are beneficial to the employer as well as the employee—not always an easy sell.
“As for making compensations for the work-family issue, some companies still believe that modifying workplace practice to assist employees in their work and family responsibilities is an altruistic gesture, and that what happens at home needs to stay at home,” says Jennifer Swanberg, PhD, assistant professor in the college of social work at the University of Kentucky. “But research suggests that creating an organizational culture that’s responsive to employees’ work and non-work responsibilities is a win-win situation for both the employer and the employee.”
“Some employers get it,” says Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, PhD, associate professor at the graduate school of social work at Boston College and codirector of the Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility. “They get the fact that their workforce is aging, that they may be facing some pretty critical labor force shortages. They are beginning to think about transmitting knowledge, and how to be creative about it, so they’re looking at some flexible work arrangements as good business practices. These forward-thinking employers realize that they need to make some changes in the way they organize employment opportunities so they can capture some of the value that older workers bring to the workplace.”
New Models
One model for older workers seeking to extend their working lives past the traditional
retirement age has been part-time employment. But while some older workers still
prefer part-time jobs, they are not an attractive option for many older adults.
Because part-time jobs are often not high-quality positions and are frequently
low-paying, they are not suitable for older adults with highly marketable professional
skills.
With most part-time positions based on the standard 12-month-a-year model of employment and requiring the employee to live in one place year-round, for the older adult who wants to work eight or nine months and then spend the summer months in a warmer climate or spend time with children and grandchildren, part-time employment is not a good fit.
Research shows many older workers would prefer to do contract-based work instead of part time, even if it means a loss of income. Older workers who’ve spent most of their lives focused on a specific career may reach retirement age and decide to pursue other tasks and responsibilities they’ve wanted to explore. Pitt-Catsouphes relates an example:
“A woman who had a professional career in the for-profit sector all her life also spent a lot of her spare time working for the local United Way, and she was very passionate about it. When it was time for her to retire from her ‘career-job’, she decided that she wanted to continue her work with the United Way as an employee, not as a volunteer, but she didn’t want to work full-time. She wanted to be able to give back to her community, and she also wanted to spend more time with her family. So she said to the United Way, ‘I’ll help you with this needs assessment plan, or this publicity campaign, but I don’t want to become a full-time employee.’ She wanted to continue to give back, but she did not want to feel that she always had work according to somebody else’s schedule.”
What Is Flexibility?
In a new study in progress, Workplace Culture and Flexible Work Arrangements,
Swanberg and her colleagues are studying the employee and organizational benefits
associated with cultivating a work environment responsive to employees’
work and family responsibilities at one national retail company. The study focuses
on one particular company that has what Swanberg refers to as a “culture
of flexibility.”
The first part of the study involves key informant interviews with senior management at the various organizational levels to determine the management practices associated with a culture of flexibility.
“In the second part of the study,” Swanberg explains, “we’re examining employees’ perceptions of their work-environment. In particular, we want to understand what workplace practices constitute a flexible work environment and how these workplace practices affect employees’ work and family lives.”
Swanberg notes the concept of flexibility in the workplace is already growing beyond “flex time.”
“Employers are beginning to look at concepts such as ‘flex-place,’ a practice that allows older workers to work in two locations throughout the year. For instance, older workers sometimes spend winters in warmer climates. Rather than losing valuable employees, some companies are allowing employees to work in one location during the summer months and in another during the winter months. If a company has good employees, they don’t want to lose them. Companies are learning that one way to keep valuable employees is to create arrangements that blend with older workers’ lifestyles.”
While issues of flexibility in the workplace can be complex in nine-to-five professional jobs, hourly jobs in the service industry come with their own unique set of challenges.
“The idea of flex-time for workers in hourly jobs is fairly new,” says Swanberg. “The usual conundrum supervisors encounter is how to create flexibility in positions that are typically thought of as very fixed and rigid?
For salaried workers, “flex time” often means altering the starting and ending times of the workday. However, this type of flexible work arrangement does not translate for workers in hourly jobs. In the service economy, employees starting a new shift are replacing employees in the previous shift. Thus, starting work late is viewed as poor work behavior. Moreover, job schedules vary from week to week. The number of hours and shifts that employees are assigned often changes from week to week, so other definitions of “flex time” are needed.
“For example,” Swanberg says, “flexibility for employees in hourly jobs may mean having some say into their assigned schedule. For instance, an employee may need to attend school on Tuesday nights during one semester, and therefore she requests that her supervisor not schedule her to work that night. It’s also important for employees in hourly jobs to have some advanced notice of when they will be assigned to work. This allows employees to prearrange their family or personal responsibilities around their schedule.”
Swanberg is hoping the results of the study, when completed, will have some kind of positive impact on the relationship between workers and employers.
“We want to learn about the innovative flexible workplace practices that this company is implementing and we want to know how this company manages these flexible workplace practices,” Swanberg says. “Then we want to share those ideas with the business community. We’re hoping that, with our survey, we’ll be able to demonstrate that people who have access to a range of flexibilities in the workplace are both happy and productive, and that there’s not a big difference between the kind of outcomes that business is interested in and in employee job satisfaction.”
Diversity of the Workforce and Workplace
While much of the literature about older workers divides them into those compelled
to work out of necessity and those who choose to work for some kind of personal
fulfillment, Pitt-Catsouphes points out that these two groups are not necessarily
mutually exclusive.
“Sometimes we talk about people who have to work as if they hate working, and people who like working as if they can’t use the money—that’s not true,” says Pitt-Catsouphes.
She emphasizes that it’s equally important to understand that employers or businesses are often just as diverse as older employees. “We tend to think of businesses in the for-profit sector, but these issues play out in the not-for-profit sector as well.”
“It’s wrong to think in generalities about the business community,” says Smyer. “When most people think of ‘the business community,’ they tend to think of large, Fortune 500-type organizations, even though the majority of business jobs are in small and medium-sized firms. Part of the challenge for people who do research and policy development in the area of older workers is understanding that the complexity and diversity of the business community is just as great as the complexity and diversity of the older workforce.”
Why Social Workers?
A fair question to ask is why are social workers taking the lead in these issues
of aging in the workplace?
“Social workers need to be at the table around older worker issues because these are the kind of questions we focus on,” says Pitt-Catsouphes. “Social workers think about about these issues in a different way than people who do either organizational studies or management studies. Social workers look at a range of cutting-edge social issues with a particular eye to understanding issues of social justice and injustice, understanding some of the mismatch between the needs of different population groups and the resources out there.”
Perhaps the most important reason for social workers to be involved with older worker issues is their activist stance, their desire to not only study situations but to change them for the better.
“Our value orientation is that we begin to think of the kinds of ways we can start up conversations about how things could be different,” says Pitt-Catsouphes. “We want to be able to stimulate those conversations both with employers and with people who are thinking about policy options at both the state and federal level.”
With the coming wave of Baby Boomer retirements just beginning, the time for these conversations is now. Or, as Smyer says, “It’s a very interesting time to step back and challenge our assumptions.”
— David Surface is a freelance writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY.
Older Workers & Workplace Flexibility
The following findings are highlighted from the 2002 National Study of the Changing
Workforce:
How many older employees feel they have complete or a great deal of control over their work hours?
• 39% of salary or wage earning employees
• 78% of self-employed independents
• 86% of small business owners
How many older employees feel they have very little or no control over their work hours?
• 37% of salary or wage earning employees
• 10% of self-employed independents
• 5% of small business owners
How many older workers feel they can periodically choose their own starting and quitting times?
• 44% of salary or wage-earning employees
• 82% of self-employed independents
• 91% of small business owners
How many older workers feel they can change their starting and quitting times daily?
• 23% of salary and wage-earning employees
• 68% of self-employed independents
• 74% of small business owners
— DS