The Conceptual Model of Managing Older Employees to Achieve Their Work Engagement

Introduction

The European Union is witnessing significant demographic changes due to a reduction in birth rates and an increase in life expectancy that has led to a consequent increase in the older population (Magnavita, 2017). Given the demographic shifts in today’s workplace, worker age would appear to be an important individual difference. It is important for at least three reasons. First, with the aging population, it is important to see how jobs might be redesigned to enable people to continue to work successfully. This is especially important as the cessation of work at mid-career is becoming less of an option for many workers. Second, it is important to determine which specific job characteristics are most helpful for different age groups. Third, given the cost of job redesign efforts, it is important to begin to see for which employee populations such efforts may be the most valuable (Zaniboni et al., 2014).

Diversity and inclusion in the workplace are increasingly accepted as fundamental business tools in today’s organizations. This is because businesses are gradually beginning to recognize that their potential to achieve better results is increased when people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives are included at different levels of the organization, including in the decision-making process. However, many organizations still struggle with how to effectively implement a robust diversity and inclusion agenda and embed it into their business plan (Sanyal, 2015). In companies should provide that aging at work involves the processes, mechanisms, and conditions that enable employees to achieve favorable subjective and objective work outcomes across the working life span, and particularly at higher ages (Potocan et al., 2018; Nedelko and Potocan, 2019). Extant research on successful aging at work has focused primarily on personal resources (e.g., abilities, motives, etc.) and largely neglected contextual factors that may enhance favorable work outcomes among older employees (Zacher and Yang, 2016).

With regard to job attitudes, job satisfaction and work engagement are two important positive dimensions of work-related well-being (Rothmann, 2008). Indeed, it is becoming critical to understand how to design jobs to keep workers of different ages satisfied and engaged in their work (Truxillo et al., 2012b). Zaniboni et al. (2014) found out that relationship between certain job characteristics and job attitudes may differ across the life span. The creation of a unified approach to diversity and inclusion, which is embedded in the business ethics of the organization, can have a sustainable positive impact on the health and well-being of individuals, business and society (Sanyal, 2015).

Zaniboni et al. (2014) summarized that different job characteristics will differentially affect job outcomes of older and younger employees. According to Kooij (2015) successful aging is closely related to sustainability at work; individual employees age successfully when they are able to preserve and regenerate resources to achieve their personal goals and maintain health, motivation, and work ability, now and in the future. To effectively manage their resources, aging workers should strive for current and future person–job fit (e.g., optimally utilizing current strengths and abilities, without overtaxing and thus exhausting abilities, and also developing skills and abilities needed for future work requirements). Hence, an important question is how to increase current and future person–job fit, and thus achieve sustainable and successful aging at work.