ATTITUDES OF PERSONNEL PRACTITIONERS TOWARDS OLDER EMPLOYEES

Abstract

Today's management recognises that an increasing proportion of their workers are older workers. This is the result of an aging population that Singapore is experiencing. This is in large part due to falling birth rates and increasing life expectancy. It has been estimated that the 60 and above age group will constitute a quarter of the Singapore population by year 2020. In this academic exercise, the attitudes of personnel practitioners towards older employees are investigated. The results show that generally personnel practitioners show a positive attitude towards them on the dimension of reliability and only marginally positive for performance and interpersonal skills. However, they are significantly unfavourable towards the older workers on the dimensions of cost and potential for development. Correlation analysis reveals that there is a consistency between attitudes and behaviour (with r = 0.51). That is, those with a more favourable attitude towards older workers tend to favour them when making managerial decisions, and vice versa. Further multiple regression analysis suggests that age, years of experience and company's retirement age policy are the most important variables in explaining the variation in attitude. In other words, older respondents with more years of experience in personnel management and working in a company with no mandatory retirement age or a higher retirement age, tend to have a more favourable attitude towards older workers. The amount of variation explained by these three most important variables is 38.31 %. Finally, the report ends by making a set of recommendations for the effective management of older workers. These include changing managers' negative views towards older employees, providing training opportunities, part-time options and so forth. Part-time work appears to be a feasible alternative in view of is acceptability by personal practitioners as well as the older workers themselves. The role of the government is also discussed.