Maintaining and engaging older workers at work: the trigger role of personal and psychosocial resources

Abstract

Because the working population age is increasing, organizations are struggling to find ways to maintain employees’ desire and interest in staying on at work. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to enhance knowledge concerning the role played by personal resources (i.e. work ability) and psychosocial aspects (i.e. older workers stereotypes) in influencing desired retirement age and work engagement in older workers. Data was collected twice, using questionnaires on a sample of 565 older workers working in a public organization in Italy. Specifically, work ability, age stereotypes on older workers and desired retirement age were measured at T1, while work engagement was measured at T2 (eight months later). Using the Preacher and Hayes approach, a moderated mediation analysis was performed controlling for age, self-rated health, expected retirement age, tenure and job position. Results showed that older workers with higher levels of work ability and lower perceptions that in their environment there are age stereotypes, desire to work longer, and in turn stay engaged at work.

Keywords:

• Desired retirement age
• older workers’ work ability
• older workers stereotypes
• older workers’ motivation
• work engagement

Notes

1 In Italy, the number of people aged over 65 years has doubled since 1950, is steadily growing, and is expected to reach 33% of the population by 2050 (United-Nations, 2009). From 2007 to 2016 the percentage of workers over 65 has progressively increased from 3.3% to 4.0% of the workforce (OECD, 2018). The participation rate in the labour force of people aged 50–64 is around 59% in 2017, compared to 60.9% of people aged 25–34, and 73.1% of people aged 35–49 (ISTAT, 2017). In addition, in 2015 (when the data were collected), the average retirement age in Italy was 65 (source ISTAT, http://www.istat.it/it/).

The Pension System Reform called “Fornero” refers to art. 24 of Law Decree no. 201 and was published on 6 December 2011. The current Italian pension system includes three pillars. The first pillar is a public, compulsory and unfunded pay-as-you-go system; the second and the third pillar are private, voluntary and funded. In 2014, the age at which employees could draw a seniority pension was 66 for both men and women working in the public sector, if they had paid social security contributions for a minimum of 20 years. Basically, this reform raised the minimum age for workers to retire. Nowadays, workers can choose different moments for retirement, but the earlier they retire (this threshold was raised by the Fornero pension system reform), the less money they receive.

2 As suggested by a reviewer, we performed the analyses using expected retirement age as a mediator and desired retirement age as a control variable. The results showed that the moderated-mediation hypothesis was not confirmed, and no interaction effect was found between work ability and older worker stereotypes on expected retirement age.