3 brooke-ifa 2012 29.5 libby ppt
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Staying in the field:
Older workforce development policies
Assoc. Professor Elizabeth Brooke Business 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
0.286
0.241
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 policy
I 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.
Case study 2: Energy sector organisation
Alternative 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
Organisational
capacity
• 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
25
Matching Employees and Training to Employers
for Ongoing recruitment and Retention
Assoc. Professor Elizabeth Brooke
Email: [email protected]