Robert M. Lindley

Active ageing in organisations: a case study approach

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to review good practice examples which promote recruitment and retention of older workers and/or the employability of workers as they age and to examine pathways of practice. Design/methodology/approach - Analysis of qualitative data, drawing on a cross-section selection of 83 good practice case studies in labour organisations in eight European countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the UK. Findings - The study presented good practice examples and pathways of practice for the four most frequently found dimensions in the sample (training, lifelong learning and knowledge transfer; flexible working; health protection and promotion and job design; career development and mobility management) as well as examples from small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (construction) and the public sector (transport) adopting strategies that fall within these dimensions. These examples show that innovative solutions to the challenge of an ageing workforce have been developed with good outcomes, often combining a number of measures, e.g. mobility management, health promotion and knowledge transfer. However, there is an uneven profile of age management debates and company strategies across Europe (with countries such as Germany and the Netherlands being more advanced). There is also some evidence of a standstill or roll-back of measures during an economic crisis. Originality/value - The paper reviews organisational measures facilitating the extension of working lives, of which many are longstanding and include sectors previously underrepresented in good practice databases (SMEs, public sector).

The use of RAS and related models in manpower forecasting

With the increasing availability of statistics describing the occupational structures of different industries manpower forecasters are beginning to develop more sophisticated models. The economic rationale of such models has tended to be obscured by the mathematics involved and an understandable eagerness to put the data to use in forecasting. In addition, the systematic testing of the explanatory power of these models has been neglected where it has not been hampered by the shortage of data series. The RAS model has featured prominently in manpower discussions and this paper attempts an evaluation of its predictive ability and economic interpretation subject to the limits imposed by the data available for the British engineering industry. It is argued that such a model plays a useful initial role in the development of models for sectoral manpower forecasting but must lead on to a more sensitive treatment of the labour market and the decision problem of investing in human capital.

The European social fund : a strategy for generic evaluation

This is a detailed, up-to-date guide to different national labour markets, and policies to combat unemployment and their outcomes. It provides a coherent, systematic framework for the rapidly growing field of labour market policy, focusing on issues such as cost-benefit analysis and school to work transition.

Projections and institutions : the state of play in Britain

This title offers a wide ranging overview of the state of labour market forecasting in selected OECD countries. Besides presenting forecasting models, the contributions provide an introduction to past experiences of forecasting, highlight the requirements for building appropriate data sets and present the most contemporary forecasts available. In most cases the forecasts project mismatches in the labour market as they are likely to occur in the coming years with respect to occupational groups, qualifications and employment in specific sectors. The authors demonstrate how these insights might be used to help reduce employment risks both for the individual worker and the national labour market as a whole. The country examples also show how information on labour market trends is disseminated and used by various actors, such as policy makers, firms and individuals.

Skilled Labour in Engineering and Construction

Prospects for the two major sectors discussed in this chapter provide something of a contrast. Employment in engineering is expected to fall substantially over the medium-term whereas in construction it is likely to rise. Both industries frequently claim that government attempts to regulate the economy impinge too much upon their activities, undermining product demand, making planning almost impossible and generally dissipating business confidence. Whether this exacerbates the cyclical fluctuations to which investment industries are in any case prone or simply slows down their average rates of growth or leads to both problems, the uncertainties about future demand in engineering and construction are usually considerable. These uncertainties and the relatively long lead-times required in training people for skilled trades combine to produce the classic situation with which ‘active manpower policy’ is intended to cope. Periodic labour shortages apparently occur, allegedly widespread and severely restricting the potential for higher output and employment.

Volunteering in older age: an organizational perspective

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to shed light on organizational perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of engaging older volunteers, and on how they might best capitalize on the availability of older volunteers in different countries and sectors. Design/methodology/approach - The paper draws from 74 case studies of voluntary organizations carried out in eight European countries, conducted mainly between spring 2009 and autumn 2010. On-site interviews adopting common guidelines were carried out with organizational representatives. Findings - From the organizational perspectives, some disadvantages of engaging older volunteers are: difficulties matching older volunteers to tasks; problems relating to health and declining capacities; the need for special training efforts. Examples of perceived advantages are: considerable knowledge, skills, experience, reliability and strong commitment of older volunteers. In spite of the very different contexts, objectives and notions of “performance”, cost-benefit assessments of older volunteers do not differ greatly from those generally held by employers about older employees. Countries differ considerably in the recognition of older volunteer potential. Practical implications - Organizational policies and initiatives to capitalize on the availability of older volunteers are examined in the paper. Country and sector-related reflections show how different and changing are the environments for volunteering. Policy makers need to recognise these when implementing active ageing policies. Voluntary organizations should raise their awareness of the need for innovation in volunteer management, especially relating to older people. Originality/value - There has been much research about the experiences of older volunteers and how they benefit from the operations of civil society organizations. The perceptions of the organizations have, however, been neglected and these are explored in this paper.

A Perspective on IER Forecasting Activities

This chapter provides a selective discussion of IER forecasting activities and future developments. Items have been chosen for inclusion not only because they raise questions of relevance to scientific research which is intended to lead to the preparation of projections but also because they raise issues relating to priorities in the use of resources in the process of producing and disseminating projections.

Education, Training, and the Labour Market in Britain.

Many of those leaving formal education in Britain now encounter a period of prolonged unemployment, alleviated by participation in a manpower programme, before securing a conventional job. This has led, both inside and outside the education system, to a questioning of the value of the existing educational process if such circumstances are likely to persist. Not only is the pressure to be cost effective now very strong, as education is expected to bear some share of the overall public expenditure cuts, but the system itself appears to be vulnerable to more fundamental examination. There are, however, several aspects of the present reaction in the United Kingdom which would assert themselves regardless of the economic climate. Of these, the first is that a period of considerable reform and expansion at several levels of the education system is bound, eventually, to provoke an appraisal of its performance. The second aspect is that the demographic trends imply falling numbers of pupils and students in the 15-19 year age group (the corresponding population cohort is expected to decline from 4.6 million in 1980 to about 3.4 million in 1996). This will occur to varying degrees in the different sectors but, presumably, the prospect is enough to warrant serious discussion of whether or not resources--or at least some growth in resources-should be sacrificed by education to the benefit of other public services, or as part of a general shift towards stimulating the private sector of the economy. Next, manpower policy, as developed by the Department of Employment and the Manpower Services Commission (MSC), has emerged as a force to be reckoned with, particularly in the area of post-compulsory education for the 16-19-year-olds. The precise form its evolution has taken has certainly been strongly influenced by the economic situation during the 1970s, but even in a better economic climate it is likely that manpower policy would have started to come of age. The treatment of young people under the Youth Opportunities Programme, for example, invites comparison with that pursued within the conventional full-time education system and raises major questions of policy about the content of education, the institutional framework within which it is offered, the method of financial support to those receiving it, the relevance of industrial experience to the educational process itself, and the most appropriate way of absorbing young people into the labour force. There are now concrete examples of alternative programmes which blur the divisions between education and training, student and employee, in a way which even further education had not managed to do. Fourthly, although manpower policy is overtly labour market orientated, both manpower and educational policies affect and are in turn affected by the labour market environment. This interaction between policy and environment in the long

Labour Market Flexibility in the European Union

Labour market flexibility attracted considerable attention in Europe during the 1980s, marked especially by the inevitable contribution to the debate produced by the OECD (1986) and efforts by certain governments, notably that of the UK, to put theory into practice. It was not, however, the case that injunctions to flexible behaviour were being uttered for the first time, nor that the evidence of inflexibility was particularly new. Periodically since the Second World War, industrialists and government ministers had turned to problems of ‘irrational’ wage bargaining and restrictive working practices, inadequate occupational mobility, and geographical inertia amongst the labour force. Undue trade union power, lack of investment in vocational education and training, and a distorted housing market were regularly identified, respectively, as key contributors to these three forms of market failure. Likewise, social scientists such as economic historians, labour economists and industrial relations researchers, were certainly not unfamiliar with the enormous divergences between theory and reality when it came to dealing with labour markets.

Employment Policy in Transition

On present policies it is most unlikely that registered unemployment will be below 2 million in the early 1980s and the projections described in previous chapters suggest that substantially higher levels could be reached in the middle of the decade if the Government sticks to its manifesto. Accustomed as some may have become to the situation in recent years, for most people unemployment does constitute a major problem requiring government action and the prospect of an additional half to one million becoming unemployed should be taken very seriously.