Strategies and Challenges: Employing Older Workers in Various Sectors

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of employing older workers across various sectors, including hospitality, IT, and retail. It begins by outlining effective strategies such as offering higher positions, flexible working hours, and healthcare facilities. The report then delves into key challenges, including older workers' technology skills, health issues, and potential workplace rivalries. Finally, it offers practical recommendations, such as providing training programs, boosting morale, offering flexible schedules, and creating a supportive work environment. The report emphasizes the importance of adapting strategies to overcome challenges and capitalize on the experience and skills of older workers to enhance organizational success. The report also highlights the importance of providing health care facilities to older workers in retail sector as they are more prone to health issues and the organization should provide them this facility.

Employing Older Worker

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Strategies for employing older workers and the reason these strategies are appropriate............3
Key Challenges in employing older workers and their implications...........................................4
Recommendations........................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Employing older worker in the organization refers to utilizing the experience and skills of
the people by offering those titles and post. Employers hire old workers as they act as a great
mentor and can lead the organization in the right direction by their experience. Old workers
possess some qualities from which the organisation can benefit such as they have strong vision
and a good leadership skills. They work with ethical behaviour and also have strong networks. In
the further report strategies for employing older workers will be discussed and also why the
strategies are appropriate. Also challenges associated with hiring older workers and
recommendations on the ways in which the challenges can be overcomed.
MAIN BODY
Strategies for employing older workers and the reason these strategies are appropriate.
There are various strategies for employing older workers such as:
Providing the older workers with higher status and position in hospitality sector
Employing the old workers at higher positions and giving them adequate respect can be a
strategy by which the old workers will be motivated to work at the workplace. This strategy can
be adopted by hospitality sector as they can get the benefit of leadership and direction. Also the
old employees have greater knowledge about the industry and have good networks therefore it
can benefit the hospitality organization. Feeling them valued at the workplace can stimulate high
performance work culture at the organization. Giving them respect and status increase their
morale and they perform well and at their full capacity. This is the strategy which the hospitality
sector organization can use to employ older workers.
Providing older worker facility of flexible working hours in IT sector
Old workers and employees adds on more value to the organization therefore providing
them facility of flexible working hours can motivate them to work and the organization can get
the benefit of their skills and expertise. Due to their age the old workers may not be able to work
for more hours effectively therefore giving them facility of flexible working hours can balance

the situation. Flexible working hours motivates old age workers to perform the work and sit on
the computer system (Wheatley, 2017). Flexible working hours may be in the form of part-time
working, home working, job shares, variable hours, dual roles, compressed hours etc. Sitting
long hours at the computer and laptops is very tiring therefore proving the flexibility working
hours will enhance their productivity and motivates them to work more effectively and
efficiently.
Providing older worker with health care facility in Retail sector
The facility of health care must be provided by the retail sector organization to employ
older workers as these employees work as an asset for the organization and helps in the growth
of them therefore to keep them healthy and safe is the duty of organization. As due to the age
factor these old workers are more prone to health issues therefore the organization should
provide old workers with this facility. In the retail industry the workers have the following types
of risk such as slips, trips and falls, overexertion injuries, injuries through lifting and handling
material, risk of electricity shocks and risk of fire and many more. Other health issues due to age
includes heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer etc. For all these types of health
issues various facilities must be provided by the retail organization such as facilities at hospitals,
primary health care centres, isolation camps, burn patients units, feeding centres. The
organization can also provide extra facilities at the organization such as dialysis centres, blood
banks, hospice homes etc. Providing these facilities can benefit the retail organization in terms of
productivity of the organization, eliminate cost of hiring new employees, creates a positive work
environment, reduce chances of accidents at workplace etc.
Key Challenges in employing older workers and their implications.
The efficiency of old workers degrade with time but they are full of expertise and
experience. The organization faces various challenges in employing older workers such as:
Old workers are less technology driven
Employing old workers gives the benefit of experience and expertise but the organization faces
challenge while employing old workers as they are not technology driven but now-a-days
everything is technology based. Therefore this is a challenge which the organization faces while
employing old workers. Especially for IT sector this is the major challenge in employing old
workers. For older workers adopting to new and advanced technology acts as a challenge

(Krajnáková. and Vojtovic, 2017). The older workers are used to work manually therefore adjusting
into this technology driven workplace is a challenge for them. They do not feel confident enough
to use advanced technologies and find it difficult to operate.
Due to this challenge the organization has to spend lot of time and money on training the older
workers and this also hampers the productivity of the organization.
Health issues
Health issues might be a challenge as with the growing age workers feel tired and also exposed
to various health related issues. Older workers do provide organization with many benefit such
as they require less training, they waste less resources of the organization and also they have less
chances of committing mistake (Vanajan, Bültmann. and Henkens, 2020). These old workers are
more responsible and patient then the younger ones. But apart from all these benefits the
organisation gets from the older workers they also faces challenges while employing older
workers is that they faces health issues and due to this their performance gets low and the
organization has to suffer lower productivity and incurs great cost.
Rivalry between younger and older workers
The last challenge the organization faces while employing older workers is that rivalry between
the older and younger workers is encountered at the workplace. As younger workers have fresh
blood and are energetic to perform work and are more advanced in latest trends going on in the
market while on the other hand older employees have much more expertise and experience and
also very skilled. Therefore it a challenge for the organization whether to hire younger workers
or older worker and rivalry between them. Due to rivalry at the workplace the organization also
have to make a committee of conflict management which incurs them greater costs. And due to
this the main focus of the organization may become blur. The rivalry may also reduce the
productivity of the work and also affect the work culture.
Recommendations
There are various recommendations where the challenges of employing older people in
three sectors such as information technology, retail and hospitality can be addressed such as
it is recommended on the part of the companies to provide various training and
development program on various activities such as use of technology as it is being quite obvious
they might not be aware of how to use new high end technology which will helps them to get

there work done with efficiency. It is required on the end of company to provide detailed training
as it requires older people time to capture and learn things where company can account with
assisting older employees with younger generation with the use of technology, by which
company will ensure that they will work with the productivity and efficiency and helps in
achieving goals of the company and as a result leads to there adaptability of new things which
makes there work easy (Williams, 2016).
It is being recommended on the part of the company to constantly motivate older
employees and boost up there morale where the company can account to build various situation
where it can ask older people to enact and which might help them in boosting up there morale
and confidence and helps to get know about there strength and weaknesses. It is being
recommended of the part of companies from different sector to offer flexible working schedule
where the older age employees can come and work according to there level of comfort which as
a result leads to enhanced productivity and achievement of various organisational goals and
helps the companies to overcome the challenges which are being associated with employing
older age employees.
It is being recommended on the part of the company to allow older age employees to
work of part time basis where it is being required on there side to work for hours fewer than that
of employees working on full time employment as a result will help them to maintain with there
other commitments which as a result will lead to deriving of there high focus, commitments and
dedication towards their work and lead to high rate of there satisfaction with the job they are
doing and helps with their comfort and in turn helps the company with facing various challenges
which are being associated with the same (Brancale, Blomberg, ). It is being recommended on
the part of company to develop a culture which is being fun loving, entertaining and which helps
old age employee with less stress to the work they are being asked to do as a result helps in
serving task with dedication, focus and commitments as a result helps with building employer
and employees relationship more effective in nature and ensures fruitful association for long
term basis (Liau, 2020). It is being recommended that company should provide additional
benefits and convenience to do their work where companies can implement strategies of
providing extra time for their rest which can be in terms of stretching time for lunch hours as
compared to younger generation, various medical related facilities, areas where beds can be
provided for their rest as it is will boost up there energy to perform the required tasks. It is being

required to treat them with respect which helps in effective and smooth flow of business
operation as a result accounts to various challenges being faced in the same. It is also
recommended that they should be provided with the extra time to get there work done as it is
being understood that as there age goes up they became more lethargic and requires time to get
to understand things whereby if company hires older employees it gets and added advantage of
strong leadership and helps in getting with the right direction where the company can invest
upon its resources which are being highly beneficial as it is being supported with the years of
experience of older employees and helps to know what are the areas which needs to be improved
upon.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it is being understood that employing older people in the company
is not an easy task leads to provide valuable insight to the company in manner it can operate. The
report has made to the understanding of various good strategies and practices for employing
older people and discussed why they are being important in reference with above three sectors. It
also lead to the understanding of what are the challenges which can come up in the way with
their implication and lastly has accounted to various recommendation to overcome the same and
employs older people.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Williams, L., and et.al., 2016. Improving skills and care standards in the support workforce for
older people: a realist synthesis of workforce development interventions. BMJ
open. 6(8).
Liau, S.J., and et.al., 2020. Medication Management in Frail Older People: Consensus Principles
for Clinical Practice, Research, and Education. Journal of the American Medical
Directors Association.
Brancale, J. and Blomberg, T.G., 2019. Employing Mixed Methods: The Case of Elder Financial
Exploitation. In Methods of Criminology and Criminal Justice Research. Emerald
Publishing Limited.
Cook, S.L. and Rougette, V., 2017. Talent management and older workers: Later life career
development. In Ageing, organisations and management (pp. 113-140). Palgrave
Macmillan, Cham.
Krajnáková, E. and Vojtovic, S., 2017. Struggles of older workers at the labour
market. Economics & Sociology. 10(1). p.319.
Wheatley, D., 2017. Employee satisfaction and use of flexible working arrangements. Work,
employment and society. 31(4). pp.567-585.
Vanajan, A., Bültmann, U. and Henkens, K., 2020. Health-related work limitations among older
workers—the role of flexible work arrangements and organizational climate. The
Gerontologist. 60(3). pp.450-459.