Norway: Small and Medium Businesses Open to Older Workers

According to a survey conducted by Bedriftsforbundet, a Norwegian interest group for small and medium businesses, shows that leaders of those businesses are slowly growing more positive about hiring staff over the age of 50, but plenty of skepticism towards older workers remains. As reported in the Aftenposten, the survey shows that as many as 30% admit that they would prefer to avoid hiring workers over 50, while around 55% said that they had no qualms about hiring senior staff--a slight increase over the past three years.

Bedriftforbundet's managing director Tom Bolstad suggests that the main reason many smaller companies hesitate to hire older staff is that they seek a younger profile and fear that older workers can mean lower working capacity. In addition, for companies with over 20 employees, their primary fear is that "seniors can mean expenses involved with earlier retirement pension."

Source: Aftenposten "Older workers more popular" (August 1, 2006)