Towards a national strategy to guide how employment participation is enhanced for older workers
In this original post, Jack Noone ((@DrJackNoone), Gemma Carey (@GemCarey) both of the Centre for Social Impact, UNSW (@SWIsocialimpact) and Tinh Doan from The Australian National University) (@scienceANU) discuss the need for a national strategy to guide how employment participation is enhanced for older workers. Researchers, governments, social enterprises, community groups, employers, advocacy organisations and other stakeholder groups are all working to remove the barriers to employment. However, without a national strategy to guide these activities, there is a risk of duplication and inefficiency. A national strategy, in contrast, would allow stakeholder to connect, coordinate, collaborate and use resources wisely.
Why we need a national strategy for aging workers
As baby boomers move towards retirement, we have seen growing interest in Australia’s ageing workforce. Government interest in older workers has centred on the cost of meeting the needs of an aging population and concern over a diminishing taxation base to fund aged care. It has therefore been a critical concern of government to generate policy responses to promote the extension of working lives.
Although advisory boards, employer incentive schemes, and a collaborative initiative have been established, there is no unified national action plan or strategy to guide how employment could be enhanced for older workers, and to protect their wellbeing. This is of concern to governments, employers, researchers, and other groups, who are the stakeholders in any activity designed to help older workers stay in paid employment.
As there is no national strategy, activity to date has been uncoordinated. We have not been able to pull together the insights of research, program delivery and advocacy to develop a unified approach to mature aged workforce issues (labour market participation, under/unemployment, and their drivers such as poor health and age discrimination). We need a national strategy so that we can connect, coordinate, collaborate and use resources wisely.
So, what would a national strategy look like? How would it help? To answer these questions, it is useful to recap what we do know and don’t know about older workers.
What we know
According to Australian Bureau of Statistics data, employment participation rates for older workers (50 years +) have increased markedly since 1995, particularly for women. However, since 2010 employment rates have started to slow for both sexes, especially for men.
We know the primary barriers to employment participation are age discrimination, poor health, caregiving commitments and skill deficits. However, recent research suggests that improving older workers’ skills will be far less effective in prolonging employment compared to the provision of flexible work conditions. Our own preliminary research on reducing these barriers showed factors such flexibility, respect and trust helped older workers who were caregivers or in poor health to stay in their job rather than “retiring early”. However, age discrimination in hiring and retrenchment polices has been identified as the most entrenched and “insidious” barrier (Noone et al., 2017), intersecting with both gender and social class.
We know employers are increasingly seeing value in older workers. User guides and tool kits have been produced to assist employers hire and retain older workers. However, these tools have been criticised for stereotyping older workers as “all the same”.
New social enterprises are emerging and more and more community groups, not-for-profits, standing committees, research institutes and alliances are working to help disadvantaged older workers. We also have advocacy organisations such as National Seniors Australia and Council of the Ageing who have the promotion of older workers’ employment in their remit.
At the national level, the Morrison Federal Government re-invested in some old measures (e.g. an incentive scheme that provides employers with $10,000 if they employ an older worker where certain conditions are met) and one important new one, the Collaborative Partnership on Mature Aged Employment (more on that below). The government also supports the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research, a large-scale multi-site research project, which includes a focus on older workers.
We also know that the Federal Government has decided not to increase the eligibility age for the Pension to 70. Many, including the authors, see this as a good move as increasing the pension eligibility age is likely to create further disadvantage. However, this does shift more of the responsibility onto employers (and agencies) to improve participation rates and extend working lives. But we know that employers don’t always have the resources to do this; they need more than guides and cash incentives.
Most states and territories have overarching strategies for addressing the issues associated with population ageing. For example, the New South Wales Ageing Strategy supports more than 50 programs and initiatives, six of which are related to older workers. The strategy focuses on a set of shared outcomes that these programs/initiatives can work towards. However, state and territory strategies differ in their priorities and approaches, which is a challenge for any stakeholder working at the national level.
In summary: there are many jurisdictions, organisations and individuals doing different things with good intention, but without a uniting strategy to guide and coordinate their activity.
What we don’t know
The big problem is we don’t know what others are doing or whether efforts are working. There is no easy way to determine which researchers are working in which areas, which employers/social enterprises are trialling particular initiatives (and whether there is evidence of their effectiveness), or where community members and advocacy groups can go for information to assist their cause. This is in contrast with to the Australian Securities Investment Commission’s (ASIC) National Financial Capability Strategy, which is in the process of creating a research roadmap towards improving financial capability and a network of stakeholders, as well as a shared outcomes framework and agreed target group.
With respect to evidence, exceptions include the known effect of increasing the pension age on employment rates and the work that the Centre for Transformative Work Design and Macquarie University are doing to improve workplaces for older workers. This is important because researchers can help employers and social entrepreneurs to evaluate their initiatives and disseminate the findings. But this is difficult without the structure to identify who is working where and on what.
Finally, we don’t have multi-partisan agreements on how help older workers stay employed. This makes it difficult for all parties to commit to actions that create change. This is important because change will take longer than one, two or even five terms of government. Long-term policymaking is essential.
What would a strategy look like? How would it help?
Firstly, we don’t have to start from scratch. An overarching “ageing strategy” was published in 2001. The Australian Association of Gerontology called for an update in 2015 and other researchers have called for a national strategy or road map. The Collaborative Partnership on Mature Aged Employment is already developing strategies at the firm and organisational level. So, we have the foundation.
A strategy would:
1. Guide the activity of a diverse sector towards a shared goal. We are currently seeing the Australian Securities and Investment Commission doing this as part of its National Financial Capability Strategy. This would include an evidence-based action plan or road map to address each of the barriers identified above, and others. A plan would help coordinate our activities based on the latest evidence generated from program, initiative and policy evaluation.
2. Provide a cross-sector network structure that showed which people and organisations were working to address specific barriers. This would identify our areas of strength and gaps where barriers were not being addressed. It would also provide the foundation for cross-sector collaboration.
3. Provide the platform for evaluating programs, initiatives and policies. This would include an overarching evaluation framework, reducing the burden of the sector to develop their own evaluation plans. Moreover, programs and initiative could draw on the network to assist with and/or perform evaluation.
4. Provide a framework for communicating evaluation findings, scaling up programs to inform policy. This would help ensure that our efforts are translated into effective policy that does not create further disadvantage.
5. Commit current and future governments over the long-term. Multi-partisan support would promote the longevity of the strategy allowing all sectors to commit to actions that create employment opportunities for older workers.
First steps
We need to gauge appetite for a strategy across the sector, conduct a needs analysis, and develop a set of principles for developing the strategy. Among these principles should be a recognition that older workers are not a homogenous group and have different needs. From there, we can start to develop the network by cataloguing all the known barriers to employment and matching them to the individuals, organisations and sectors that are addressing them. This will provide the critical mass for forming working groups, advisors, champions and change makers. At a broader level, we also need to decide whether the strategy best sits as a standalone or as part of broader reform of employment services that considers a life course approach to promoting employment. Either way, there is an opportunity for us, the “we”, to discuss, dissect and decide on a way forward in a unified and co-ordinated fashion.
Posted by @DrJackNoone @CSISocialImpact