Video: AARP Inside E-Street Looks at Graying Workforce

AARP's video arm has published a three-part series on Inside E-Street about the graying workforce, including an examination of the silver tsunami, workplace design, and how to recruit and retain older workers.

In "The Silver Tsunami," Inside E-Street looks at the changing U.S. workforce and what it means for employers.

In "Changing the Workplace Environment," Josh Kerst, vice president of Humantech and a certified professional ergonomist, speaks with Inside E-Street about the many physical changes that companies can make to their environment to keep employees not only healthy but also more productive.

In "Recruit, Retain, and Integrate Older Workers," Inside E-Street speaks with Samantha Greenfield, a member of Boston College’s Sloan Center on Aging & Work about the cultural transformation that many workplaces must go through.

Source: AARP Inside E-Street: The Graying Workforce (April 9, 2012)

"Bouncy Floors" and Other Innovations: Making Workplace Safer for Older Workers

In one of series of articles on older workers, Misty Harris writes that "[f]rom offices with flex-floors to injectable heart monitors and mobile medication alerts, experts predict our job sites could one day come to offer a standard of safety approaching that of a care facility." Among other developments in the offing that could come to the workplace, Harris points to:

• biometric sensors no bigger than Band-Aids that will improve doctors’ capacity to remotely monitor workers’ overall health;
  
• smart canes that provide real-time feedback on proper gait and potentially alert a person’s colleagues by text if a fall occurs in the workplace;
  
• belts with built-in airbags that deploy when sensors detect that a fall is imminent; and
  
• a "bouncy" floor that's compliant enough to absorb a fall, but hard enough not to inhibit regular activity.

As Harris points out, it’s "all part of a vision of the future in which employees and employers alike assume greater responsibility for workers’ well-being."

"If you’ve got people living longer, and they’re reasonably healthy, they need to be able to work," says Gloria Gutman, director emerita of the Simon Fraser University Gerontology Research Centre. "You could think of gerontechnology as the idea of, 'what can we (make) that will allow people to do that for as long as possible?'"

Source: Postmedia News "New tech helps aging workers bounce back from health issues, falls--literally" (March 19, 2012)

Additional Source: See also AARP Blog "Reading This On A Computer? The Glasses You May Need" (March 19, 2012)

Focus on Ergonomics for Aging Workforce Can Be Good for Bottom Line

The blog of the National Association for Environmental Management (NAEM) published an interview with Blake McGowan, Ergonomic Engineer with Humantech Inc., who advocates that businesses apply the principles of ergonomics in a systematic and invest in ergonomics for the aging workforce in particular in order to cut costs and enhance performance. According to McGowan:

A lot of companies are also beginning to realize that they need to have experienced workers in their organization in order to be successful. These are the experienced people in the workplace; who have been with the company for many years, who understand the unwritten worlds, how to solve complex problems, so we definitely need to figure out ways to keep them.

Applying ergonomics can be as simple as providing people with correct working heights or changing the way workstations are lit. However, it can also be as complex as reducing strength requirements for job tasks, which could be a big deal, especially in heavy manufacturing.

NAEM also presented a webinar--"Ergonomics of an Aging Workforce"--on May 24, 2011, which continues to be available for purchase online, which explores the dynamics of an aging workforce and the role safety/ergonomics can play in maximizing the potential of a company’s experienced employees.

Source: National Association for Environmental Management The Green Tie Blog posting (May 23, 2011)

Ford Designs Ergonomic Workstation To Ease Work for Older Workers

An aging population in Europe and increases in retirement ages in some countries led Ford to put together a team of occupational physicians, production specialists, labor groups and representatives for disabled employees to improve the ergonomics, safety and productivity on the assembly line. A result of this effort has been the creation of an advanced ergonomic work station--the "Happy Seat"--that reduces chronic injuries and lower health costs.

According to Martin Chapman, operations plant manager in Cologne factory, where Ford produces the Fiesta:

Employees just push themselves back and forth and the chair swings in and out of the cabin--very simply and not requiring much physical effort. And the back feels fine, allowing employees to remain in employment longer to the benefit of Ford--ideally until they reach the age of retirement, the age of which many European governments have raised only recently.

Other measures employed by Ford to ensure production line workers’ health include movable platforms to raise vehicle chassis to different heights at various workstations, preventing excessive stretching and bending by employees; virtual software programs to design the most ergonomic production processes possible; and Santos, a computerised avatar that performs actions in the virtual world to help Ford improve quality, safety and ergonomics for its assembly line employees.

Source: Press Release Ford Motor Co. (April 26, 2011)

Case Study: BMW and Equipping the Factory for Older Workers

In "The Globe: How BMW Is Defusing the Demographic Time Bomb" from the March 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review, the authors looked at how BMW responded to what looked like an inevitable decline in the productivity of an aging workforce in the years ahead with an innovative, bottom-up approach for improving productivity. Subsequently, BMW has garnered more publicity for their efforts.

Rather than forcing its aging workers to retire, or even fire them, BMW management tinkered with one assembly line in one division of a huge auto plant, and turned it older overnight, staffing it so that the average age of workers would be 47 (what it's projected to be seven years from now). Then, in responses to asking the workers how to make things better, the company says it made 70 small changes in the workplace, to cut the chance of errors and reduce physical strain.

When workers said their feet hurt, the company made them special shoes, and put in wooden floors. Some got a place to sit: a hairdresser's chair, modified for the assembly line.

Rudolph Mohr, 56, has been working here for 35 years. He finally got a chance to stretch - right on the factory floor. "When I go home, I have more energy," Mohr said.

Some tools were improved, and new computer screens were introduced, with bigger type.

The direct investment in the 2017 line project was almost negligible, approximately €20,000. But the 70 changes increased productivity by 7% in one year, bringing the line on a par with lines in which workers were, on average, younger.

Source: CBS News "How BMW Deals With an Aging Workforce" (September 5, 2010)

Additional sources: BBC "A Factory Fit for an Aging Workforce"

United Kingdom: Study Released on Workplace Design and the Older Worker

The Strategic Promotion of Ageing Research Capacity (SPARC) has released a study of older workers that finds that their motivation to continue to work could be greatly improved if more attention was paid to both the way they are managed and their physical working environments. According to "Workplace Design for the Older Worker", led by Professor Peter Buckle of the University of Surrey, this could include small steps to reduce the physical consequences of manual work, such as redesigning equipment and training workers in its use. The research also suggests that scheduling work in a way which respects the capabilities of the older worker may become more important as the workforce ages. According to Buckle:

Our research has enabled us to create a new model which identifies factors important to the ageing workforce. By mapping existing practices to the new model, and by identifying and resolving areas of difference, organisations and managers will be able to maintain and motivate their older workforce.

In addition, the impact of shift work is identified as a cause of some health concerns, as is the working environment (dust, heat and noise), to which older workers are more sensitive, and manual tasks such as lifting and manipulating heavy objects.

See also, a presentation on "Understanding the Design of the Workplace for the Older Worker" at a workshop jointly organized by SPARC and TAEN discussing showcasing the research.

Source: Strategic Promotion of Ageing Research Capacity News Release (January 22, 2008)