Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

Objective barriers for the recruitment of older unemployed are their low qualifications –
in Poland, the requirements for many jobs have risen, like computer literacy and knowledge
of foreign languages, which are seldom fulfilled by older applicants (Perek-Białas/Ruzik
2004a: 22).
4.1.3. Further Vocational Training
The basic components of workability, understood as the capacity of workers to perform
their given job tasks, are health and qualifications (Ilmarinen/Tempel 2003: 92). Analyses of
the causes of early exit account for the importance of working conditions, work organisation
and opportunities for further training at the workplace (Molinié 2005; Szubert/Sobala 2006;
Morschhäuser 2003: 61-62), as do subjective ratings of the ability to continue work until
retirement (Ebert/Fuchs/Kistler 2006: 497; European Foundation 2007: 33, 2008: 46-47;
Zgierska 2007: 8). Investment in training is important against the background of
development to a knowledge-based economy, which offers employment chances to older
workers (EC 2007: 35). This is even more important in Poland with its upheavals in the
course of transformation to a market economy.
Qualificatory deficits and inability to learn new things, given by Polish managers as
reasons for the rejection of older applicants are often the result of routine tasks and deficient
job design which do not support the usage of existing qualifications and creation of new
ones (“disuse effect”; Koller/Plath 2000: 118). Older workers run the risk of deskilling after
the introduction of new technologies and new organisational concepts and the risk of a too
narrow, establishment-specific specialisation (Clemens et al. 2003: 58-60). Lifelong
learning and the diversification of work tasks are basic prerequisites for the preservation of
innovation ability (Dworschak 2006: 219-220).
However, only one fourth till one third of German, resp. Polish employees of all ages
received training paid by their employer in 2005, the most disadvantaged being workers
who perform monotonous tasks with narrow decision latitude (European Foundation 2007:
49) – although those groups of workers need more training in order to preserve their
learning and adaptation ability and their productivity potential. Over half of German firms
do not include older workers in further vocational qualification (Bellmann et al. 2007: 4), a
higher share than in Poland (Ipsos 2007: 42). The main form of age-related personnel
measures in the field of training in German firms is the know-how transfer onto younger
successors; customised training programmes or adaptation of the speed or organisation of
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