Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University
Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University
Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University
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prevention does not play a role yet (as it increasingly does in German firms). Thus, it can be<br />
ascertained that a sustainable health management is not taking place in Polish companies,<br />
which poses a barrier for the preservation of workability.<br />
Another barrier is the lack of an integrative or holistic age management strategy<br />
encompassing all areas of personnel policy. If companies in my sample deal with age<br />
management, the focus is mostly on ´soft´, qualitative measures like workplace health<br />
promotion, ergonomic design of workplaces or know-how transfer. ´Hard´ areas of<br />
personnel policy which can be measured in quantitative terms – recruitment and employee<br />
exit – are not employed as a vehicle for the introduction of age management. Older<br />
workforce is recruited or retained past retirement age only in rare cases (e.g. for know-how<br />
transfer) and not as a part of an age management strategy. In those two personnel policy<br />
fields – recruitment and employee exit, even firms which employ ´good practice´ measures<br />
in other areas of personnel policy diverge in the direction of ´bad practice´, or at best, nonreaction<br />
and ´muddling through´.<br />
Another barrier to prolonged employment in most of the studied Polish and German<br />
firms is not taking account of the life course perspective. If age management policies are<br />
designed at all, they often have a palliative character and are designed for older workers as<br />
a group – e.g. sheltered workplaces, downgrading protection, extra holidays or exemption<br />
from certain work.<br />
Moreover, institutional changes (labour market and pension policy) have shown only<br />
limited impact on the personnel policy of Polish firms. Reasons were the dominant role of<br />
structural factors (the situation on the labour market, sectoral changes and restructuring of<br />
Polish economy), the delay in the termination of early retirement, and the long phasing-in<br />
period of pension reforms. A common pattern in both countries was the priority assigned to<br />
labour shedding in times of unstable economic development and to restructuring (in the<br />
meaning of internal reorganisations of the firm or corporation). Those tasks overshadowed<br />
all other goals of personnel policy and even led to a stagnation or reversal of hitherto wellprogressing<br />
age management policies.<br />
However, a positive development, and a chance for the prolongation of working life,<br />
was the influence of the raising of retirement ages and of pension deductions on the agency<br />
of some German firms in the field of employee exit.<br />
In the firm case studies, I however found also several opportunities (or rather:<br />
supportive conditions) for the prolongation of working life. A person committed to age<br />
management in the company, or the influence from abroad (e.g. in the case of German firms<br />
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