Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

Table 16: Focus of personnel policy with regard to older workers
Firm
health
management
personnel
deployment
know-how
transfer
further
training
change
management
age-adequate
workplaces
reti-
early
rement
protective
measures
DE-1 X X
DE-2 X X
DE-3 X X X X
DE-4 X X
DE-5 X X
DE-6 X X
DE-7 X X X X X
DE-8 X X X X X
DE-9 X X
DE-10 X X X X X
DE-11 X X
DE-12 X X X X
DE-13 X X X X X
DE-14 X X X
Source: own data; accounts of personnel managers or relations of WCM, also about planned changes in coll.
or works council agreements. Flexibilisation of working hours and rules of promotion were not taken into
consideration in the analysis.
I noticed two factors which were conducive to taking age management on the agenda – a
committed person in power and perception of risks (or chances) stemming from
demographic or workforce ageing (e.g. in Firm DE-13 and Firm DE-14).
Respondents in ten firms perceive demographic ageing as a factor affecting the firm´s
market position or recruitment chances. Nevertheless, only few of them have already
conceptualised a HRM strategy for dealing with those challenges (as was shown above).
That evidence holds Germany-wide – firms insufficiently take into account demographic
effects in their actual policy (Brussig 2005: 13). As risks related to workforce ageing, most
frequently looming personnel shortages and know-how losses after the retirement of
experienced workers were named.
The perception of demographic or workforce ageing shapes age management in the
studied German firms, although not always in the direction of prolonged working life – the
orientation on early retirement still prevails as one of the goals. Managers either were not
aware that demographic changes affected their firm (opinion of WCM at Firm DE-8), or
rejected dealing with demographic change for fear of ageism:
“[O]ur staff mirrors the social reality. We have not had any programmes to rejuvenate the
workforce or, the other way round, to secure more experienced older persons – nothing of that kind!
We work with people who are there. And, at the moment (…), we do not perceive the need to fiddle
with it. Anyway, we cannot change anything about it! Demography is a given.” (2_Firm DE-
11_HRM)
DE-5.
But not only managers were of that opinion, the view was shared by the WCM in Firm
118