Staying in the field: Older workforce development policies

Assoc. Professor Elizabeth BrookeBusiness Work and Ageing Centre for Research

Swinburne University of Technology

Symposium on ‘Working Later’, 29 May 2012

IFA Conference, Prague

> The Australian recent government response to the Final Report of the Advisory Panel on the Economic Potential of Senior Australians provides 3-month wage supplements of $1000 to employers ($10 million.). This policy measure, part of a suite of ‘passive’ labour market measures.

A further government policy initiative is extending funding for ‘Corporate Champions’, ($15.6 million) - organisational case studies of ‘successful’ mature age worker policies.

Despite government policies advocating protracting working lives and institutional measures deferring pensions, policymakers tend to look to employers to generate organisational initiatives.

Policy background

The paper is based on organisational case studies applying the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health ‘workability’ framework undertaken with nurses in rural aged care facilities (n=141), energy sector workers (n= 209), and aged care personal care workers (n=68).

Workability is the balance between an individual’s resources, including health, skills and experience and organisational demands.

Concept: Multidimensional house, health and lifestyle, competence, values and attitudes and work structures and operational environment,

Case studies of workability

Workability Index

Subjective measures of current workability compared to lifetime best, own prognosis of work ability two years from now, mental and phsycial demands, impairment, objective and subjective health indicators and depression (7 Items)

Scores-Low,7-27, Mod, 27-36, Good,37-43, Excellent -44-49.

Workability Survey

Work organisation: work demands, working time, work pace psychosocial factors: emotional demands, trust, support and recognition, control, influence, training, work-family balance (Validated European surveys)

Qualitative interviews

Mental and physical work demands, organisation of work, leadership, meaning, factors supporting continuing working lives, intention to retire

.

Methods

• A total of 141 participants, 19 males (13.5%) and 122 females (86.5%) aged 19 and 71 years, mean age of 49 years.

• Most participants are permanent part time contract (62%) while 23%, full time permanent basis, 15% casual.

• Sixty-eight percent of staff are regularly performing repetitive hand or arm movements, 27% lifting heavy loads

• Meaning of work is high (90%)• Training, one third need more training to cope• Half of the respondents disclosed that they currently have an illness, injury

or disability (50%). Of these respondents, only 22% indicated that their ailment did not interfere with completion of their work duties

• Work demands (working beyond mental and physical capacity) was the strongest predictor of Workability (Item 1)

Case study 1. Older nursing staff in aged care facilities

0.141

0.405

0.172

0.223

0.263

0.160

0.2860.241

0.163

0.310

0.429

Nurses’ Retention, job satisfaction and Workability

Imbalance between staff ratios in relation to care demands

“ …it's some days are just a nightmare. ..Some days I come on and I think how am I going to get this all done today? You're almost anxious before you even start, because you know what's ahead of you on a shift, particularly a morning shift and evenings. They're getting just as bad. ..it's sometimes scary at how much you've got to get done and the pace at which you have to work at”. (Nurse in her 50s)

“Being able to have enough staff and just to be able to keep the morale of the staff up. If everyone's happy, everything goes a lot better. I think acknowledgement of the hard work, being able to get enough staff for the shifts, and just making the type of work not quite so hard like with the overhead tracking and pushing and the pulling”. (Nurse in her 40s).

 

Qualitative data

.. I've just actually - I've had another lady that's just actually resigned, she was only doing it for money - but I'll be putting that back into place. That helped. You know, there's no telephone. I am the telephone reception person. I do all the discharge planning, all the admissions - so supporting staff through that. (Nurse manager 40s)

I'm always in trouble because I carry one area over into another. I'm told but no, you're supposed to be training today, you shouldn't be looking at wounds. I'm always in trouble for that. But I do try to do what I have to do in every role. But it is hard to stop taking on one role and do the other. (Nurse manager in 50s)

 

Multitasking and job stress

Retirement pathways not embedded in policyI find - because I'm actually working with these women at the moment that are in their late 50s and 60s. You know, these women are still physically fit and still able to do that. But, you know, it's that emotional stuff - and they still want the work and those sorts of things. But, you know, they're sort of not at that retirement - but making those discussions actually happen about retirement .. .when to actually sort of plant that seed. (Nurse manager in her 40s)

Organisational factors including dysfunctional management leading to work/life shift.I don't want to work too long ... My goal is to have this job that I'm acting in now for four or five years and then retire. Nothing will make me want to work longer I don't think. (Charge nurse in her 60s)

Extending careers?

Aged care system under stress

Compression of working time in relation to task demands

Rationalisation of resources in the operational environment

Multitasking and pressured configuration of professional roles

Misaligned workforce capabilities and work demands, physical and mental stress exacerbated by high meaning.

Lack of retirement pathways can lead to shifts in work balance to exit

Summary

Case study 2: Energy sector organisation 209 participants, 166 males (79.4%), 36 females (17.2%) , age

range - 17-73 years, average age of 41 years

Most participants, permanent full time contract (90%), while the remaining 10%, permanent part-time, casual, apprentice trainees

Power distribution and linesmen physical demands high 73% repetitive movements, 31% lift heavy loads

High meaning of work (87%)

Training and skills (44%) believed that they have the skills to adequately perform their jobs, 27 % needed further training

Despondency over job security (49%),worried unemployed.

> (GHQ

Case study 2: Energy sector organisationAlternative competency-based hierarchies displaced old ‘craft’ based practice in safety and occupational health. Older linesmen replaced with younger credentialed apprentices.

> I don’t know, ..but I believe it should be blokes who are either late fifties or early sixties who have been in the field who want to go up to that level. (Electrical technician in his 50s)

Yeah they've put everything in place and if we're to do everything by their thousands of policies and procedures that they have we would - probably wouldn't get the job at hand done. You know where I'm coming from? (Manager in 50s)

My biggest fear is this is how someone is seriously going to get hurt because they haven’t got the knowledge. (Worker in 40s)

> )

Shift to centralised network control system versus work community

That was taken over by a centralised network control system where it all .. the work we were doing locally is no longer done by us. …One of the things that I don't like seeing is what I'm seeing at the moment, in the fragmentation of the workforce. ..an individual person that can speak to people as a work coordinator. ..but where they get people to function inter-connectedly rather than separately. (Electrician in his 50s)

For my own experience there's a lot of demands from all different areas of business, different departments. A lot of people want answers or action pretty much straight away. A lot of deadlines, a lot of stuff that we need to prioritise. (Apprentice in his 30s).

Extending working lives?n

Packages- 55+ the ‘incentive’ potentially instilled insecurity and encouraged age-segmented older and younger workers careers

They're restructuring the regions. there was a HR list - that all people over 55 had been offered redundancies, but there was no pressure on me at all…It has nothing to do with my performance. Purely on age. I got told it was purely on age. Anyone over 55, you're on the list a couple of people who are over - have been offered the same, which to be quite frank, I don't really agree with.

I don't necessarily mean I have all the same necessary mental acuity as I might have had 20 years ago. So in that you become a bit reflective. If I had to do the same task today would I perform it to the same level? (Electrical technician over 55)

Occupational safety technical compliance systems supersede previous tacit knowledge

Shift in nature of work from manual technical work to embedded IT competencies.

Issues of legitimate knowledge in age relations Restructuring of workforce and work community Competence problems for older workers and

technological displacement to retirement

Summary

Case study 3: Residential aged care facility

Residential personal care staff 68, 80% female, 80% CALD (South Asia, Africa), median age-49

Physical aspects residential care, showering, moving/supporting, lifting heavy loads (44%) standing in residential care (88%), repetitive (66 %)

‘Being stressed’ (53.6%), ‘work affect health-stress (46.9%), high pace of work all day (60%), have to work very fast (71%) (Always, often).

Meaning of work high (93%) (very large extent, large extent) Organisation respects you -87%, feel part of community at work- 87.5%

How organisations deal with stress or not provide support for job stress, 37.9% (v lg extent, lg ext).

High pace of work, stress, high meaning

Factors in retention and workability

•Work is important to you p =.026•Optimistic about future p =.039 Personal

capacity

•Management trusts employees•p =.026

Organisationalcapacity

•Working beyond physical capacity p =.047•Being stressed p =.033•Working beyond mental capacity p =.012

Personal capacity

High Work

Ability<36

Low Work Ability>36

The work is getting heavier . Sometimes you don’t finish your work.. Its getting more stress. Its the quality of life you can give to the residents (PCA in 40s)

The regularity of the high pace of work:...you don't stop; it's just constant going all the time. You just go from one job to the next constantly. (PCA in 50s)

Funding is the big one. If there was a bottomless pit of money, then we could employ staff with different skills and have more Div II staff. It's a problem through nursing in general and in aged care there is no ratio. So places can basically - there isn't a ratio and the government can come in and have a look and they just decide whether or not, what you're doing is safe. (RN in 40s)

Increasing dependency and staff ratios in care work

Organisational care context Inter-professional relationships and complementarity in care work

> Q: What’s most important for you here?: Numbers of carers. If

only you’re short of staff it’s very hard to manage, you’re rushing...You know you have to do it quickly and you get stressed. You need a machine, you’re behind and you’re waiting and you need to hurry about, it’s better you have partners’ (PCA in 50s).

> We need more hours on rosters, a staff member working on her own, the charge nurse, organising the shift, preparing drugs, she can’t stop (RN in 40s).

> Most of the PCAs pull together as a team, support each other, and try and build that sense of belonging to a team (PCA 40s)

Extending careers?

Individualised responses towards extending careers

> Handover should overlap the day shift, day and night staff so there is the same amount of staff on the floor...it’s taking the workload away from me... not that I mind being called. My physical condition improved by having a few days off. Work is keeping me going...I thought they were taking me off the floor to put somebody else in when it first happened, I know I was very upset. there was a bit of a chat about it then I came in and the roster had been changed. PCA in her 60s

> Retention 2 years? recognition employee contributions, supportive management (100%), good physical health (97%), flexible work hours (94%) influence decision to continue working.

Summary

Tension between managing increasing dependency in aged care work and existing staff ratios

Inter-professional relationships and complementarity in management of care work

Responses to maintaining older workers’ physical capacities is individualised and ad hoc vs collective

Lack of career planning for older workforce

All case studies illustrate forms of rationalisation of workforces by the operational environment

Aged care work, stressful work practices and compression of professional care roles increasingly misaligned with older workers’ mental and physical capacity.

In the energy sector, industry in transformation from ‘craft’ and manual work to apprenticeships as credentialed career pathways. Older workers required to bridge skills of earlier age cohorts (eg industrial, new economy skills)

Redundancy packages 55 +, firm controlled retirement pathways suggesting shortened career trajectories

Operational environment, work organisation and older workers

Interventions at multiple levels to retain ageing workforces. Aged care interventions: application of working time

structures and flexibilities, a team-based approach to the provision of aged care and retirement pathways.

Case studies -Corporate Champions (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations),Victorian Department of Health, nurse policy value-added projects).

Incipient example is Health Workforce Australia commencement of workforce reconfiguration and recognition of the ageing care workforce.

The energy sector organisation - multidimensional workability floors; manual handling, programs- national health priorities, apprenticeship support, life planning, Corp’te Champions,OFA

Interventions

Ageing workforce initiatives should be embedded in industry workforce development policies

Initiatives require systemisation in workforce development reform policies.

Age-segregated policies can marginalise older workers without skills aligned with changing industry policy.

Case studies can result in disconnected initiatives.A neoliberal solution may dissipate rather than embed

policies to extend older workers working lives.

Conclusions

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Matching Employees and Training to Employers for Ongoing recruitment and Retention

Assoc. Professor Elizabeth Brooke Email: lbrooke@swin.edu.au