Line managers' support for older workers

Line managers make a difference when it comes to older workers continuing to participate in the labour market. Depending on their coaching abilities, and their willingness to use these abilities, line managers can offer social support to those older workers that they supervise. This willingness is to an extent dependent on the opportunities for action that the organization provides to line managers. Contrary to earlier research, our study based on a survey of 160 front line managers, failed to find evidence that the social support that line managers provide is influenced by negative stereotypical attitudes about the lack of flexibility and the performance of older workers. This study adds new insights into the determinants of line managers' activities and underlines the essential role that front-line managers play in human resource practices for older workers.     

Associations between workers' health,and non-standard hours and insecurity: the case of home care workers in Ontario,Canada

This article examines associations between home care workers' health, and non-standard hours and insecurity. Health refers to symptoms of stress and musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), non-standard hours refer to part-time and casual hours, and insecurity refers to job and employability insecurity. Data come from our 2002 survey of 532 home care workers (nurses, therapists and personal support workers) in a medium-sized city in Ontario, Canada. Path analysis regression results for the conceptual model show that (1) part-time and casual hours and job insecurity are positively and significantly associated with symptoms of stress, (2) the associations between part-time and casual hours and MSDs are mediated by symptoms of stress, and (3) job and employability insecurity are directly associated with MSDs. Results provide evidence that non-standard hours and insecurity must be addressed in order to improve home care workers' health. We show the detrimental effects of non-standard hours and insecurity on workers' health, and the results have implications for employers, human resource managers, trade unionists and government policy-makers.     

Tackling age discrimination in employment in Singapore

In a country with an ageing work-force, a decline in the number of new entrants to the labour market and an acute labour shortage, it would be reasonable to assume that employers would encourage older workers to remain in employment for as long as possible. In the case of Singapore, however, private sector employers often retired employees at age 55 and hired younger workers in their place. In many cases older workers re-hired had to accept lower pay and lower grade jobs. In an attempt to tackle this sort of age discrimination in employment, the government passed the Retirement Age Act in 1993. Prior to its enactment, the government urged employers to raise the retirement age voluntarily, but the response was poor, especially in the non-unionized sector. This paper argues that employers resisted the extension of the retirement age because they perceived older workers in stereotypical terms. The main issues which gave rise to the Retirement Age legislation are discussed. So also is the possible impact of the legislation on some HRM practices. The paper also proposes some future directions for research on older workers in Singapore.     

Employers' attitudes,practices and policies towards older workers

Despite policy emphasis on the importance of older workers (i.e. those aged 50 and above) to current and future labour markets, relatively little is known about the ways in which employers' attitudes, policies and practices influence their recruitment and retention. Drawing upon previous work by Taylor and Walker, this article reports qualitative research among employers across Scotland, which sought to investigate further the relationships between employers' policies, practices and attitudes towards older workers. The findings indicate a complex set of relationships, and challenge the simplistic causal link between attitudes and practice. The conclusions discuss the implications of these findings for the future employment of older workers, and assess the extent to which the forthcoming age discrimination legislation in the UK is likely to tackle discriminatory attitudes, practices and policies.     

On the job and co-worker commitment of Dutch agency workers and permanent employees

This article explores the relationship between employment status (agency workers vs. permanent employees) and affective and normative job and co-worker commitment. Our study was conducted on employees from four metal companies in the Netherlands. As HRM practices seem to influence employee commitment, we performed 89 interviews across all four companies and included blue-collar workers, their managers (direct supervisors, HR managers and production managers), as well as works council members. To test our hypotheses on commitment differences, we conducted quantitative research within the companies (permanent employees N = 167; agency workers N = 54), all blue-collar workers. Results show that permanent employees and agency workers express similar degrees of commitment to their job and to their co-workers, apart from affective commitment to co-workers, which is lower for agency workers than for permanent workers. We argue that national legislation, as well as managers' attempts to offer HR practices equal to those of permanent staff, play a prominent role in stimulating agency workers' commitment.     

Ageing and employability. Evidence from Belgian firm-level data

The Belgian population is ageing due to demographic changes, so does the workforce of firms active in the country. Such a trend is likely to remain for the foreseeable future. And it will be reinforced by the willingness of public authorities to expand employment among individuals aged 50 or more. But are older workers employable? The answer depends to a large extent on the gap between older workers’ productivity and their cost to employers. To address this question we use a production function that is modified to reflect the heterogeneity of labour with workers of different age potentially diverging in terms of marginal products. Using unique firm-level panel data we produce robust evidence on the causal effect of ageing on productivity (value added) and labour costs. We take advantage of the panel structure of data and resort to first-differences to deal with a potential time-invariant heterogeneity bias. Moreover, inspired by recent developments in the production function estimation literature, we also address the risk of simultaneity bias (endogeneity of firm’s age-mix choices in the short run) using (1) the structural approach suggested by Ackerberg et al. Structural identification of production functions. Department of Economics, UCLA, (2006), (2) alongside more traditional system-GMM methods (Blundell and Bond in J Econom 87:115–143, 1998) where lagged values of labour inputs are used as instruments. Our results indicate a negative impact of larger shares of older workers on productivity that is not compensated by lower labour costs, resulting in a lower productivity-labour costs gap. An increment of 10 %-points of their share causes a 1.3–2.8 % contraction of this gap. We conduct several robustness checks that largely confirm this result. This is not good news for older individuals’ employability and calls for interventions in the Belgian private economy aimed at combating the decline of productivity with age and/or better adapting labour costs to age-productivity profiles.     

Perception of organization's value support and perceived employability: insights from self-determination theory

Perceived employability (PE; i.e. the worker's perception about available job opportunities) is portrayed as the upcoming resource for workers and organizations. However, organizations might particularly want to stimulate perceptions of job opportunities on the internal labor market (i.e. internal PE). In contrast, they may be hesitant in stimulating perceptions of job opportunities on the external labor market (i.e. external PE), as this might foster workers' voluntary turnover. The contextual influences adding to these different types of PE are relatively unknown. Building upon self-determination theory, we argue that the organization's support of intrinsic (e.g. personal growth) and extrinsic (e.g. status) values may play a critical role. In line with expectations, the results reveal a positive association of the perceived organization's support of intrinsic work values and a negative association of the perceived extrinsic value support with internal PE, both in terms of a similar job (i.e. internal lateral PE) and a better job (i.e. internal upward PE). Unexpectedly, perceived organization's support of extrinsic values did not relate negatively to external PE. These results show that employers can invest in the workers' employability without disadvantaging the organization. To arrive at a flexible workforce, the support of intrinsic values is of key importance.     

Unemployed Chinese workers: the survivors,the worried young and the discouraged old

The forces of globalization and the wave of economic reform in the People's Republic of China have led to government policies to downsize state-owned enterprises and support a competitive labour market. Chinese workers who have been laid off ( xiagang ) are leaving the 'iron rice-bowl' security of the socialist state. Unemployment produces personal challenges for laid-off workers and human resource policy challenges for the government. For workers, xiagang and unemployment status mean they must cope with the unfamiliar challenges of job search and the threat of economic hardship. But how unemployment influences workers' lives is strikingly diverse in its impacts. Distinctly different patterns emerge for workers depending on: 1) their position in the social structure and stage of life, 2) their available skills and coping resources, and 3) their experience of economic and psychological distress. The present study reports survey responses of a sample of 2,412 laid-off Chinese workers in seven cities in China and identifies three distinct sub-groups of unemployed workers: 1) 'Survivors': more confident and better educated workers, 2) 'The Worried Young': distressed younger workers with few coping resources, and 3) 'The Discouraged Old': older workers with less education looking towards retirement. Each of these groups of workers views their circumstances and life prospects in quite different ways. Our results are examined in the context of the literature on social change and the life course. Our findings also suggest different human resource policies for each of these groups of workers.     

Organisational practices and the post‐retirement employment experience of older workers

This study compared people aged 50 to 65 who had retired and returned to work (n = 90), who remained in their career jobs (n = 198), and who retired and remained out of the workforce (n = 321). The significant differences between post‐retirement and career employment were associated with the HR practices within organisations and were not related to the characteristics of the organisations in which post‐retirement and career jobs were found. The HR practices were rated as especially important in influencing the decision of retirees to return to work. The findings suggest that people in post‐retirement jobs are drawn to organisations that provide HR practices tailored to the needs and desires of older workers. The results also indicate that if employers expect to address labour shortages by encouraging retirees back into the workforce, they are going to have to implement those HR practices that are important to this group.     

Fitting the mould: the role of employer perceptions in immigrant recruitment decision-making

Human capital theory presumes that skill-accredited immigrant professionals can access positions in the labour market to match their skills and qualifications. It implies that employers have little power to influence the labour market outcomes of immigrant professionals. Using social identity theory, we examine the influence of similarity effect in recruitment decision-making involving immigrant information technology (IT) professionals in New South Wales, Australia. We assess how decision makers (N = 331) hiring IT professionals need to associate and identify with people that resemble themselves in some way more than those that do not, can influence their perception of the immigrant candidate's fit into their organisation. Particularly, we examine how the level of exposure to diversity, the decision maker's origin and the diversity of clientele can moderate the assessment of the candidate's fit to the organisation. We also assess how attire, name, accent and any overtly expressed religious affiliations influence employer perceptions. The findings indicate decision makers with lower levels of exposure to diversity or working in organisations with mostly Anglo clients tend to be more concerned of the fit regarding the Indians, South-east Asians and the Chinese. They were also more likely to be negatively influenced by the non-Anglo personal attributes.     

Boundary conditions for turnover intentions: exploratory evidence from China,Jordan, Turkey,and the United States

Over the past decade, employability has been presented by its advocates as the solution to employment uncertainty, and by its critics as a management rhetoric possessing little relevance to the experiences of most workers. This article suggests that while employability has failed to develop into a key research area, a deeper probing of its message is warranted. In particular, it is suggested that employability may have resonance with employees as workers rather than as employees of their immediate employing organization. This demands a slightly different approach to studying employability than some other related phenomena such as employee commitment, which has resonance only in relation to the employing organization. In adopting a social identity approach, the significance of the employability message is shown to lie not only in employees' willingness to disassociate from their existing work groups and pursue individual mobility, but also in its capacity to undermine workers' collective responses to grievances and unwanted organizational changes. A future research agenda is presented which highlights the need to address recent attempts to develop employability expectations among graduate career entrants, and for a closer critical engagement with management writings that attempt to justify the unnecessary espousal of the self-development message.     

Peer pressure and social comparisons with heterogeneous ability

When workers' efforts are not contractible, we investigate whether the display of workers' efforts to coworkers influences wage and effort decisions. We find that employers mainly increase the wages offered to the more valuable workers when they are observed that increases the difference in wages in such setting. We find evidence of peer pressure and strategic complementarity in efforts. Additionally, low‐ability workers are more sensitive to peer pressure than their more productive coworkers, and these workers exert less effort with increases in the reciprocity of their coworkers. Finally, the display of workers' efforts to coworkers is detrimental to the employer's payoff but enhances efficiency.     

Why demotion of older workers is a no-go area for managers

Abstract

Demotion – the reduction of an employee’s rank and salary – is often mentioned by managers and policy-makers as a means of increasing the employability of older workers in an ageing labour force. However, so far in practice demotion is rarely applied. This paper is the first empirical investigation of how managers perceive demotion as an instrument of human resource management. By means of a survey and a vignette study among managers in the Netherlands (N = 355), we examine whether managers consider demotion of poorly performing older workers a fair solution. Three contributions stand out. First, based on attribution theory we find support for the hypothesis that managers judge demotion to be fair in those cases where deterioration in task performance is caused by controllable factors (such as work motivation) and unfair when the causes are uncontrollable (such as age). Second, the expectations of managers about the organization-wide consequences of introducing demotion as a human resource policy play a significant role in considering demotion. Most managers perceive negative organizational externalities (e.g. decrease in loyalty and motivation of staff) to arise when introducing demotion and are reluctant to apply demotion in practice. And a third contribution: positive (negative) beliefs of managers about the hard skills – e.g. creativity, willingness to learn, flexibility – of older workers make demotion less (respectively more) likely.     

Unemployment insurance and job turnover in Spain

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the potential relationships between the unemployment insurance system and labour market turnover. This study assumes the incentives embedded in the unemployment insurance system have a heterogeneous impact, depending on the type of labour market transition (quits versus layoffs and recalls versus new job entrances) and on a worker's attachment to the labour market (gender and type of contract). The layoff hazard rate increases as workers qualify for unemployment benefits, whilst the quit hazard rate remains stable. Similarly, employment inflow increases sharply after the exhaustion of unemployment benefits. The timing and importance of the exit differ between recalls and new job entry and depend on a worker's attachment to the labour market. The results show that unemployment benefits appear to favour job turnover and both firms' and workers' decisions seem to matter.     

Flexibility,labour subcontracting and HRM in the construction industry in Singapore: can the system be refined?

Labour subcontracting is an important labour-use strategy in the construction industry. In their search for labour-market flexibility, employers in the construction industry in Singapore rely extensively on the Kepala (labour subcontracting) system. The Kepala system offers a 'convenient' way of managing operative (skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled) construction workers. Essentially, this paper discusses the merits and demerits of the Kepala system. It is argued that, although employers in the construction industry derive some strategic benefits from the use of labour subcontracting, on the whole, the system has some adverse consequences for workers, companies, the industry and HRM functions. But, in the absence of any better system that the employers can turn to, it is necessary for the Kepala system to be refined. Thus, it is suggested that the Japanese model of labour subcontracting offers lessons, but will require modifications and adaptations before being applied in Singapore.     

Where did they go? Modelling transitions out of jobs

We study individual job separations and their associated destination states for all individuals in the private sector in Denmark for the period 1980 to 2000, and account for their magnitude and cyclical flows. One finding is that individual and workplace characteristics as well as business cycle effects determine the individual behaviour. In policy simulations the consequences for individual labour market transitions are analysed. We find that structural and growth policies have different consequences for the economy due to the way they change workers' incentives. Policy interventions targeting displaced workers coming from plant closures are argued to be inefficient.     

New or traditional careers? A study of UK graduates' preferences

Due to extensive changes to higher education in Britain, it is possible that graduates entering the labour market will have work experiences approximating to the ‘new’ career. We know little about whether this is a situation graduates are prepared for, or whether they welcome it. This article argues that a view about the changing nature of careers from the employee's perspective is needed. It describes some research investigating the career preferences and career self‐management of UK graduates in different organisational contexts, and provides evidence to suggest that graduates' endorsement of the ‘new’ career is limited. Employability is a key concern, but graduates expect to be able to develop that employability within the context of a traditional career. The article concludes by considering the implications for organisational career management, arguing that the traditional career still has considerable value for both employers and employees.     

Learning to stay ahead in an uncertain environment

As the work environment changes and careers become increasingly fragmented in contemporary society, workers need to ensure that they remain attractive hires to current and future employers. The advent of boundaryless careers, for example, in this era of turbulence has shifted the responsibility for career management and development from the organization to the employees. This research explores the careers of a cross-section of the Hong Kong (China) labour force and their attitudes and behaviours towards life-long learning, which is proposed here to be central to individuals maintaining their marketability and employability. The qualitative data collected in this study depicts these Chinese workers as being strongly self-motivated and possessing very positive attitudes towards learning. However, while most seemed to have a genuine commitment to enhancing themselves, stimulated by a consciousness of the growing and changing demands placed on them by employers in a dynamic knowledge-based society, the findings indicate that many interviewees were driven more by a fear of the consequences of not engaging in continuous learning, than by an intrinsic desire to learn.     

Labour market oligopsonistic competition: The effect of worker immobility on wages

We suggest that firms in a local labour market may be able to exploit worker mobility costs and offer immobile workers wages that are lower than their marginal product. If so, the ability of employers to exploit worker immobility in setting wages would decline in the competitiveness of the local labour market. We test this intuition using a measure of individual mobility costs and measures of local labour market competition. Our findings suggest that worker immobility causes substantial wage variation across workers in small, weakly competitive markets, and in occupations where wages are individually bargained.     

Labour market signalling and job turnover revisited

Turnover by both low and high productivity workers occurs in all jobs. However, the reasons for turnover by workers of different abilities differ. When the probability that better workers transmit accurate signals to the labour market increases, we show that incumbent employers are more likely to adopt a separating wage offer strategy. This reduces the likelihood of turnover by more productive workers. We also show that turnover depends on a firm's willingness to match outside wage offers. Hence, the personnel and wage policies adopted by employers are important for understanding the turnover of workers of all productivity types.