Adapting work to an ageing workforce

Protecting older workers
Retaining elderly employees

Description

Adapting work to an ageing workforce involves redesigning jobs, workplaces, and employment policies to accommodate older employees’ physical, cognitive, and social needs. This strategy aims to extend productive working lives, reduce age-related barriers, and address skill shortages. Practical actions include flexible work arrangements, ergonomic adjustments, targeted training, and age-inclusive recruitment. These measures help maintain workforce participation, improve health and safety, and ensure organizations benefit from the experience and expertise of older workers.

Context

Older workers have valuable experience and capacities to offer, and often wish to continue in employment if appropriate opportunities are provided. Demographic changes are encouraging many enterprises, particularly in the industrialized countries, to adopt policies and programmes aimed at retaining older workers, and especially those with high skill levels.

Implementation

ILO has provided recommendations to: modify the forms of work organization, and working time which lead to stress in elderly workers; adapt the job and its content through improve technologies and ergonomic principles, so as to preserve health, prevent accidents and maintain working capacity.