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The challenges for older workers and employment services in the labour market of the 21st century

Presentation to

Job Futures National Conference

Hobart, November 22, 2002

by

Veronica Sheen
Council on the Ageing (Australia)
November 2002

 

What is Council on the Ageing?

The Council on the Ageing (COTA) is the main seniors' organization in Australia dedicated to protecting and promoting the well-being of older people. It has a number of functions including:

COTA's membership is open to people over 50 years of age. Our concerns cover issues including access to aged and community care services, health services, housing, employment and income for Australians over 50.

Further information about COTA - including its extensive work on mature age employment - is available on the website.

Introduction

Thank you for inviting me here today. I have recently returned from 10 weeks in the USA, England and northern Europe for a Churchill Fellowship studying older workers programs and ageing workforce issues. I will offer you both my impressions from what I have seen in my visits to a wide range of organizations overseas as well as an overview of a recent project that I completed in July 2002.

The basic theme of this paper is that older workers are at a cross-road. Many have had long experience in one occupation or one company. However, the economic structures of developed countries are changing and this has profound effects on labour force structures as well. All workers are affected by these changes but older workers in particular, I argue, face greater challenges because they have had most exposure to earlier workforce arrangements.

Many older workers are ill-equipped for the new conditions in the contemporary labour market both in looking for work and in adapting to the new conditions that they face in the world of work.

This has been a strong experience in Australia over recent years. Many older workers have lost their jobs due to economic and company restructuring. I was assured that this was also a phenomenon in the United States and England. When a company wants to downsize or merge, it is often easiest for them to target the older workers.

In the United States, the age discrimination attorneys at AARP told me of cases of large multi-national companies that set in place performance appraisal systems which discriminated against mature age workers. The appraisals then are used to fire the older workers.

However, there is another important theme in this that I must mention before going on. The lives of people in midlife, around 50-65 has changed and is changing at a very rapid rate. Their expectations of later life are dramatically different and their attitudes to retirement have changed.

These changes are profound and multi-layered and include:

The central questions are

In May to June 2002, I directed a project on these themes for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. The aim of the project was to educate older workers about the new conditions they face in the contemporary labour market and to provide them with some tools as to how to manage these challenges. The project also considered what governments, employers, service providers and seniors organisations need to do to assist older workers.

This presentation today reports on the project and what we found in the follow up evaluation supplemented by the observations I have made in my Churchill Fellowship.

The pace of change in Australia

It is worth recalling that in the post war era we were heavily protected by import tariffs, we had one of the highest per capita incomes in the developed world as a result of our commodity exports and a very strong public sector (government) involvement in the economy. We also had a heavily regulated labour market and a strongly unionized workforce.

Over the last 10-20 years these conditions have been transformed in line with the determination of successive national governments to ensure our international competitiveness.

In the last 20 years we have undergone a series of massive transformations including:

These policy reforms have created the conditions for Australia becoming a very open and globalized economy particularly in the last 10 years.

Many of our industries have been merged or taken over by international companies. Many of our public sector activities have been corporatised and are now in private sector hands.

The overall effect has been profound in terms of the labour market – and most particularly on older workers – people aged 45 and over.

Both public and private sector companies have targeted older workers to achieve their objectives of smaller and more flexible workforces – and often younger workforces. Older workers have either been voluntarily or involuntarily retrenched.

The effect however has been very strong in reducing workforce participation amongst mature age people. According to Australian Government statistics:

Older workers issues have emerged as a very high priority public policy issue over the past few years as a result of these factors.

There are two elements to the issues:

There is both a demand issue and a supply issue with regard to the issue of mature workers.

In Australia, we have an official unemployment rate of around 7 per cent and a considerably higher hidden unemployment rate.

Employers have been able to sustain discriminatory employment practices due to the excess of labour supply.

However, this situation is likely to change in the future with the ageing of the population and the dramatic reduction in new entrants to the labour market.

At the present time we have around 175,000 new entrants to the labour market each year.

For the entire decade of 2020 to 2030 we will have a mere 125,000 new entrants. (Access Economics 2001)

At the present time Australia is only just coming to grips with these issues.

The Government is slowly implementing some responses to the challenges.

There is an emerging but still very slow employer interest in the issues.

As a seniors organization, our role has been to consider what mature age people themselves say they need in terms of managing the new conditions in the labour market. We used the opportunity afforded by a contract with the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations to undertake an information campaign for mature age people about the changing nature of the labour market to tap into their situation.

Description of the project

In June 2002, four pilot workshops were conducted in the 3 state capital cities of Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne and one regional center in Queensland as part of an information campaign for mature age people about the changing nature of the labour market. Around 300 people between the ages of 50 and 65 attended the workshops.

The workshops:

This project was funded by the Federal Government in response to a House of Representatives Committee Inquiry into older workers issues conducted over 1999-2000. (House of Representative Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Workplace Relations, 2000)

The Committee recommended:

the Government fund an education campaign targeting mature age people, especially men, concerning the changing nature of the labour market and the issues associated with portfolio employment, including its possible benefits (p156).

As a seniors organization, we at Council on the Ageing (COTA) had also come to the conclusion that there is a role for better education of mature workers about the changing nature of the labour market on the basis of our own research.

We observed that many mature age people are retrenched from jobs or occupations that they had held for many years. Following retrenchment, many expect that they will readily gain another job of the type they had left because of their years of experience, loyalty and good performance. They approach job search on the basis of these expectations.

Sadly, many are bitterly disappointed by their failure to secure the job they desire. A large number of people have told us over the years that they had applied for hundreds of jobs without success. This of course was detrimental to both financial and psychological well being. Similar stories also came to the attention of the Parliamentary Committee. The Council on the Ageing report Working for the Future (COTA 1999) discusses these issues in depth as does the House of Representatives report, Age Counts (House of Representatives Standing Committee, 2000, pages 55-64).

Many mature age people do not realise that the type of jobs they have held in the past – permanent, full-time with highly protected industrial conditions - is a declining portion of total employment opportunities.

Many mature age people also do not realise that experience and loyalty may not be the most valued commodities in the new labour market. While some mature age people do understand these changes, they do not always see a connection with their own personal situation or understand the pathway to gaining employment in the new labour market.

In fact, while there has been strong job growth in the past ten years, much of the growth has been in part-time, casual and contract work- and increasingly amongst mature age people. In addition, there have been fundamental shifts across industry sector, occupational categories and geographical location.

There are both positive and negative attributes of part-time, casual and contract work for mature workers based on the evidence taken in the Parliamentary Inquiry on older workers

Positives included creating an income stream, cushioning against job loss, boosting morale, and creating a pathway to a full time, permanent job.

Negatives included the problem of employers wanting casual staff to be on-call, exploitation, low wages, long hours, much time lost travelling from one workplace to another, and difficulty in securing payment on completion of projects.

Part-time, casual and contract work could be a way forward in either making up a package of such jobs - a "portfolio" of jobs – or in forming a stepping stone to full-time employment. And for some mature age people it is the preferred model for employment.

The information campaign was developed with a view to help understand the challenges and opportunities in the contemporary labour market in order to minimise the risks of unemployment.

An education campaign through workshops

The concept of an education campaign as a series of national workshops was developed by COTA and the Department of Employment. There was agreement that an effective education campaign about the changing nature of the labour market should embody:

These criteria ruled out other possible options such as distribution of generic information leaflets to employment service providers or advertising in newspapers.

Overview of the workshops

A workshop program was developed which involved a range of speakers and an opportunity for discussion in focus groups.

Targetting participants

Participants aged 50-65 were targetted through the memberships of seniors' organizations. Additional participants were found through employment service providers.

Demand and supply for participation in workshops was a carefully managed aspect of the project so that all those interested were able to obtain a place. For people who may have had multiple rejections in job search and suffer from low morale and confidence, it is critical that such programs are able to offer a service if it is offered.

Workshop structure

All four workshops followed a similar format:

Each workshop allowed time for networking between participants, informal discussion with presenters and other people, such as government officials who were present in an appropriate and professional venue.

Evaluation objectives

The project was evaluated in three areas:

  1. the need and desirability of an information campaign for mature age people in relation to the "changing nature of the labour market and portfolio employment;
  2. the effectiveness of the workshop format in terms of an information campaign for mature age people about the "changing nature of the labour market and portfolio employment",
  3. the relationship of the information campaign to other needs for employment assistance amongst mature age people.

It was not possible to measure success of the project in terms of labour market outcomes for participants according to conventional measurement methods as it was not a longitudinal study.

Methodology

The evaluation is primarily based on the information collected from participants who were asked to fill in an evaluation form.

A large amount of information was collected, including information about the participants, which has been collated separately.

In addition, the professional officers involved in running the workshop met with speakers and facilitators following each workshop to discuss the event and the outcomes of the focus groups.

Overview of key findings

Evaluation objective 1: the need and demand for an education campaign targeting mature age people about the changing nature of the labour market and portfolio employment especially for men

Mature age people attending the workshop were pleased to attend and on the whole found the information presented worthwhile and interesting. In particular they valued:

Regional effects

We noted that the workshop held in Bundaberg was more "problematic" than in the capital cities, because of the high rate of unemployment in that area. While participants were receptive to the concepts being introduced to them, it was clear that the long term decline in the local economy did not provide an economic environment in which people could readily build a "portfolio" of jobs or in which a change in job seeking strategies would make much difference to their overall prospects.

It is evident that the project works best in local economies where there is employment growth and real opportunities that mature age people could take advantage of. This is not to say that the workshops are not worth doing in regional areas, however they do need to be carefully managed in those environments in close consultation with local service providers.

Gender differences

The evaluation was unable to determine whether there was any specific or greater need for an education program on the contemporary labour market for males as opposed to females however this may be a research question for further study.

Roughly equal numbers of men and women attended the workshops and their situations did not seem greatly different. All reported age discrimination in the labour market, inadequate supports and lack of appropriate employment services.

Portfolio employment

A number of people did comment that it was hard enough to get one part time job let alone several, and that the difficulties in developing a "portfolio" were perhaps underestimated. Nevertheless participants were open to new ideas about alternative strategies in the job market.

Fifty-four per cent of participants stated that "possible benefits of portfolio employment" was new information of which they were not aware of previously.

A number of people commented that they already knew much of the information that was presented. Nevertheless, they appreciated the workshop and the reinforcement of important ideas. They also appreciated other aspects of the workshops such as the motivational elements, the chance to network and have a say.

Evaluation objective 2: The effectiveness of the workshop format

The workshop format was effective as a delivery mechanism in relation to an "education campaign about the changing nature of the labour market and portfolio employment". The successful elements included:

Some fine tuning of the workshops including more interaction and more question time is recommended for future workshops.

An overarching principle in the workshops was to avoid being patronising or didactic. Any educational program runs this risk so must always be carefully balanced and managed especially when targetted to mature age people with broad and deep life experience.

Evaluation objective 3: The relationship of the information campaign about the changing nature of the labour market in relation to other needs for employment and social assistance.

While the education campaign on the changing nature of the labour market was a valued event in and of itself, the evaluation tapped into considerable need for more extensive labour market and social services for mature age people covering:

I feel encouraged and motivated to make some changes. (A1)

Overall, I found it well presented and it exceeded my expectation (preconceived!) of (just) another seminar. I'm very pleased to have attended. (A1)

I found the workshop very good, especially the discussion group and the DOME work finding cases. It would be good to have a follow up. (A1)

Workshops are great to get ideas about local problems. (B2)

Knew most of the information presented but liked the presentation anyway & appreciated the support shown. (A1)

Reinforced what I already knew & believed but positive outcome. Group discussions very useful in terms of information sharing. (A1)

I feel encouraged to try harder with creating my own portfolio of work creating an income stream. (M4)

Made me more optimistic. Sharing ideas and experiences with "like-minded" people gave me a boost. (M4)

Sometimes it is very helpful and reassuring to hear and see up to date statistics. (A1)

A great way to motivate. Need more workshops. Noisy. (A1)

I did find that the speaker extolling the virtues of part-time work a bit irritating. This is just what I want to find but can't. I don't need someone to convince me of the virtue of part-time work. That was a bit insulting. (A1)

Will change only from the perspective of resurging (in a small way) optimism. (B2)

Discussion group was productive provided it will filter back to and be effective to government initiatives. (B3)

Appreciate the opportunity to learn from presenters & to exchange experiences with other participants. (B3)

It has helped me see new ways of looking at my situation and the way forward. Very helpful. (M4)

Made very aware that employment will not be easily gained without being flexible and undertaking training. (M4)

Many mature age people have lost confidence and self-esteem because of persistent age discrimination in the Australian job market. While personal counselling and support is important, COTA believes that people in these circumstances can be helped by this project to see their experiences in the broader context of labour market, social and economic change.

Education and training

In responding to a question as to what participants need most, the largest number specified that they needed specialised training for the new labour market. Affordability and linkages to real job opportunities were the issues for many people. Typically people commented that they wanted:

Training with guarantee of work at end of it (A1)

Training with affordable opportunities to learn more skills (A1)

To be able to get training (A1)

Need more info about CV and development of interview skills, and more info on training programs which are subsidised. (M4)

Much more development needs to occur in Australia in developing lifelong learning strategies and appropriate methodologies for the training of mature age people. This will require investment but is vital to meet the labour force needs of the 21st century. Accordingly,

Improved employment services for mature age people

Many participants wanted to deal with other mature age people in employment services In regard to the sort of services they want:

Support, understanding from services. (B2)

Positive attitude - mature age people attending mature age applicants (B3)

Please connect into job services about their "attitude" and handling of mature aged redundancies. (M4)

Positive assistance and support - recognition of existing skills. (M4)

More personal support to assess my particular skills. (B2)

1. Being able to discuss possibilities with someone who understands both what an employer is seeking and what the senior age employee is looking for. 2. Having employers who are prepared to employ "seniors" listing jobs on a website or specific area in the press.

Do it again and expand the scope. (B3)

A mentor to help. (M4)

More advertising of job opportunities that are accessible. (M4)

One of the most enduring themes in the mature age employment area has been the appropriate employment of staff to work with them in employment service providers. It makes sense to employ people in the target group who can empathise with others in a similar situation as well as to expand opportunities for that group. It is also a cost effective and relatively simple thing for the Government to achieve. However, staff in employment services need to be well equipped and trained to deal with the particular issues and needs of older workers. In the UK the Third Age Employment Network and in the USA the National Association of Older Workers Employment Services – have an important role in training, advocacy and development of best practice amongst providers. These sort of organisations need to be developed in Australia.

Centralised information provision

The workshops represented the first opportunity that many mature age people had to participate in any Government labour market programs. Many participants indicated that they did not know how to get assistance in the labour market and indicated that centralised information provision was a high priority. This could be via websites or specialised services.

It was clear from the responses that Centrelink is not serving mature age people well in providing the information and services that they need.

Being able to get the information I need. Knowing where to find it. (M4)

Need for central information for unemployment support & what services are available. (B2)

More internet-based information on networks and job opportunities. (M4)

Knowing who to contact, where I can seek work that I have skills in. (B3)

Individual work on attitude/self-esteem. Co-ordination of information to overcome fragmentation. Case management. Financial support to train for areas of work identified as needing employees. (A1)

More agencies like DOME, for a greater coverage for mature age adult jobs and vacancies.

It may be useful to have future workshops in more specific areas. (A1)

More awareness of job finding services. (B3)

The need for centralised information provision came through very strongly as a theme in the workshops and in what participants said. This is not necessarily an expensive measure but would have much benefit to mature age people. As such,

Employer attitude and involvement

There was much comment by participants about the role that employers play in determining their labour market outcomes. A number of people thought that the workshops would have benefited from employer involvement and participation and that a similar industry seminar/training forums should be conducted for employers to "market the skills and experience of mature aged job seekers as an asset rather than a liability".

Priorities for participants included:

Finding employers who are seeking mature age people. (B3)

Lobby government to change the attitude of employers through incentives. (B3)

Is work needing to be done with employment agencies to convince employers of the need for a broader mix of employees – young and older? Means of ensuring skill and knowledge is not dumped when employers reach 50 plus.

Employer attitude and behaviour are very difficult to change at least in the short term. I was greatly encouraged by England's Employers Forum on Age (see www.efa.org.uk) is making great strides in working with employers and human resource managers in obtaining age diversity in the workplace.

Australian employers are starting to understand the issues but I feel in this area we are somewhat behind other countries – possibly because skill shortages have not quite caught up with us yet. Nevertheless I have found in both England and the United States that age discrimination is a pervasive problem. (see www.aarp.org/litigation)

In Australia we have state age discrimination legislation which is not very effective and at the moment we are developing some Federal Age Discrimination Legislation.

However, an opportunity will arise with the introduction of a new Federal Age Discrimination Act, currently being drafted, to step up employer responsibility to have age balance in the workforce.

Regional issues need special measures

Equity in provision of services suggests that it is important that all parts of Australia are equally served by all Federal Government projects. However, there are serious questions about the usefulness of projects that assume a basic level of economic activity for their effectiveness such as an education campaign about the changing nature of the labour market and portfolio employment.

The workshop held in Bundaberg was particularly welcomed as an activity and had significant motivational and confidence boosting aspects. It is less clear though that was the most helpful activity that could have been held in that centre given the high rates of unemployment and underemployment.

It is imperative that local advice is sought and local expertise is brought into play in employment assistance programs for mature age people. This was an important element of success of the workshops.

In the Wide Bay region there is a poor job market. There just isn't any work! (B2)

Speakers were well-informed & helpful, but the reality is (as experienced by audience) there is little chance of work in this region. (B2)

Each region has unique local employment - need career counselling & training in these employments to get a job in our area. (B2)

Clearly mature age employment issues are very complex in regional areas. Mature age people often have limited mobility and may be unable to afford a move to a high employment area. At the same time, innovative approaches can be used to both strengthen the local economy and provide opportunities for mature age people to use their skills. Some of these were proposed a report on Welfare Reform but have not been taken up or funded in Government policy to date (Reference Group on Welfare Reform, Participation Support for a More Equitable Society, 2000, pages 45-52).

Open access to labour market assistance for mature age people

In Australia, labour market assistance is only available to people on social welfare payments. It is critical that all mature age people have access to programs that will help them maximise their employment opportunities. The workshops showed that many mature age people are falling into long term unemployment due to lack of assistance because they do not receive an social welfare payments. They then deplete retirement savings and are more likely to have long term reliance on income support payments

Social assistance

As a seniors organization, the project sharpened our awareness of the poor levels of social assistance for people in mid life. In Australia, our social welfare system is still strongly linked to models of social protection that were relevant in the post-war era but are increasingly irrelevant in the new social, economic and labour market environment of the 21st century.

We need to think through new ways of assisting people through mid life transitions including:

I was impressed with the work of the Pre Retirement Association in the United Kingdom which specializes in mid-life and mid-career planning and change.

Conclusion

I found a lot of interest across the United States and the United Kingdom in this project. There was no doubt that people in the 50-65 age group are facing many of the same issues in those countries as they face in Australia.

I also found a very strong interest in an academic research project in which we are involved at Council on the Ageing.

The project is entitled Negotiating Transitions to Retirement. It is part of a larger project with a very large number of players entitled Towards a New Social Settlement (see

The project is based on the idea that our social support systems were established in the post war period based on a model of a social contract and economic relationships which have largely vanished for many people especially people between the ages of 50 and 65.

The project aims to document the new and emerging issues for people in that age group and develop a policy framework of social assistance which will provide better protections in terms of the new kinds of risk that many people face such as retrenchment, divorce, responsibilities for children or grandchildren.

The commonality of the themes of this project with issues faced by people 50-65 in other countries has suggested that this is a project of potential international significance. We are encouraged by the range of partners in England and the USA who wish to be involved.

References

Access Economics (2001) Population ageing and the economy, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra

Council on the Ageing (1999) Working for the Future, Council on the Ageing (Australia)

House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Workplace Relations (2000) Age Counts: and inquiry specific to mature age workers, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra

Lim-Applegate H (2002) Outcomes for mature aged people who left employment in the decade to 2000, Paper for the Sixth Global Conference on Ageing Perth 27-30 October 2002, Department of Family and Community Services, Canberra, Australia

Reference Group on Welfare Reform (2000) Participation Support for a More Equitable Society, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra

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Copyright © 2002 Council on the Ageing. All rights reserved.
Date: 15 January 2003
Revised:

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