Perceived long-held stereotypes such as frailty, inflexibility and a fear of technology are pushing older workers towards premature retirement, research shows.
According to the National Seniors report, Stereotype Threat and Mature Age Workers, older employees who experience “stereotype threat” – a belief that they’re the target of demeaning stereotypes – lose enthusiasm for the job to the point of quitting.
This suggests that the experience of stereotype threat at work can counteract long-espoused policy efforts to keep older Australians in the workforce longer.
National Seniors chief executive Michael O’Neill said it was vital to incorporate the report’s findings in official moves to keep the over-50s gainfully employed.
“Whilst it’s great to see a growing commitment from business and government towards this group, the research shows that stereotype threat remains a significant psychological obstacle for mature age employees,’’ O’Neill said.
“Unfounded assumptions around the energy, potential or job suitability of older workers only serve to undermine their confidence, work performance and, ultimately, commitment.
“If businesses want to keep their mature-age talent and help them reach their full potential, they need to understand and combat these stereotype threats,” he said.
In the study, conducted by Queensland University for the National Seniors Productive Ageing Centre, 1428 employees aged 50 to 75 were asked to assess how they felt they had been treated on the basis of their age.
The majority experienced medium (44%) levels of stereotype threat. A minority (14%) experienced high levels of stereotype threat and 42% experienced low stereotype threat.
The experience of stereotype threat was linked with negative workplace attitudes and behaviours including: lower job satisfaction; lower emotional commitment to the organisation; lower job involvement; higher retirement intentions; and greater intentions to quit.
Personal responses included:
- “I have loved the job I’ve done for many years but now I feel there is no place for me or what I believe in or am passionate about.”
- “I sometimes feel that I am invisible because of my age. I have difficulty at times with getting people to include me and listen to me.”
- “My co-workers seem to think that because I’m over 50, I am inept with computers. This isn’t true. My job deals constantly with computers and their breakdowns….”
- “I’m constantly overlooked in favour of younger people, I’m starting to think I’m hopeless and useless.”
- “Retirement is often used as a rejection of the ‘mature’ by the new management style. Many older people retire out of despair, not out of desire.”
The paper calls on more positive older role models, stronger anti-discrimination policies, increased training opportunities and greater recognition of mature age staff.
Are you an older worker? Would you agree with this research? Does stereotyping happen in the nursing industry? Or are older workers well respected for their wealth of knowledge?
We’d be VERY interested to know your comments. Leave them below or email us at admin@nurseuncut.com.au
It may be the topic of a future blog!
Image credit: NSWNA, and ANF Because We Care
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I am passionate about my work. I fought for child care, maternity leave yet the greatest discrimination I am now facing, I am just over 50, is trying to get equal share of family friendly rosters. I am given an unreasonable amount of nights & late shifts because I don’t have child care. I am now getting a cranky older worker due to fatigue. I had my children young & I am now wanting to do those sports/crafts I couldn’t when a mother. I am ready to walk away and retire to another career.
I also do not have the university degree to say I have a brain and am intelligent. I am thought as I am older to be both dumb and inflexible.
Time for the older workers to all walk off and let the youth trust run the wards, to start doing the unsociable shifts but I know the managers are not going to listen yet alone the Union movement.
Absolutely ignored,denied, and overlooked – finally research catches up with whats been happening out there for some time.
Youth culture rules at our peril. Aging usually delivers a huge ammount of wisdom namely, the realisation of how pathetically little we knew when we were younger and the hope that this ignorance wrought minimal damage!
This is a serious problem especially as the forcast labour shortage unravels.
I urge Michael O’Neill to challenge Government and business to support their rhetoric with positive action.
I am 32yrs old and have been nursing now for 11 yrs. I have always respected all of my work colleagues, particularly the more experienced nurses ( I say more experienced as some nurses are older but are new to nursing). They are a wealth of knowledge, if ever I have a problem, need a second opinion or want to bounce an idea off, I seek them out. I have also come across the ‘newer generation’ nurses who don’t respect their seniors (yrs or experience), who appear ignorant, think that they know best because they have just graduated, and their way is the only way because the ‘text book says’ – unfortunately I have seen them come falling from grace with medication stuff ups, coping verbal abuse from families etc etc, because they didn’t seek advice or help from their seniors. Sad really that we just don’t support each other and respect each other as part of a team – everyone equally valued.
I am an “older” nurse and have found that in my workplace I feel very valued. I am the one who fixes the computer, the one who “plays ” with the new equipment after the initial instructions are over, I am the one who can work alone because I don’t panic, I am the one who can talk to relatives and tell them what they need to hear – not always the whole truth, but what they need to hear. I have had so many patients say they feel comfortable with me looking after them because nothing fazes me, equipment failure or breakdown, not enough staff. I mentor the Post Graduate and Student nurses and happily fill their heads with “useless trivia” they may get to use one day.
careers
Technology is an interesting, complex social construction..we are all shaped by it and it is shaped by human beings..often we are all supposed to ‘take it up’ at a fast pace, embrace it, use it and demonstrate its worth. In actual fact often we are caught up on a process that few of us have a choice about, it is imposed rather than evaluated by the actual ‘user’. ‘Users’ are often shunned as the cohort who have little appreciation of the use or understanding of technology…However, it is the ‘User’ who needs to be considered in the actual design and implementation process…and often they are not. Even the very term ‘user’ is not a pleasant humane one..especialy when spoken of by ICT …(Information and Computer Technology)..designers. ICT designers create systems that are based on a form of ‘logic’..a logic that is learned by them..so they too are socially shaped by technology. Often the ICT systems are generic and not specific in design or application within a particular workplace culture…so the inference here is that workplace cultures and practices have to change to embrace newer forms of ICT..so again…the very workplace is shaped by technology..and so are the ways in which people are required to work and live. If you think this may be a radical suggestion..try and live without access to a mobile telephone, a computer and ICT mediated banking and/or Government service providers. It is possible, l agree…BUT life is more difficult to live without having access and being able to use it. Stereotypes? Well quite a number of people acquire wisdom eventually..it may be 45, 55, 60 or 77 years of age but it comes to us all eventually. When one acquires wisdom one does not ‘blindly; accept all new things as good, worthy or even helpful. Wise people ask..how may this assist with me, my patients, family and friends to live a better life ? Then may come a level of resistance. Tis the latter term that is applied to older workers at times. It is not ‘resistance’ from a commonly understood perspective and use of this term…but a questioning of the validity of HOW a form of technology may shape lives for the better. For the better? Make work practices safer, more efficient, more valid, easier…are some terms that come to mind from the literature. The latter is also common sense. Common sense is also not so common. Cliche l know…a truism too..but accurate. Effective workplaces are ones that have people from a variety of age brackets working collaboratively within them…….eg.new, inexperienced young, more experienced and young, more mature and with much experience, people with specialised knowledge and skills, older persons with much experience and this is the one that is often left out…experientially based knowledge that can’t be acquired from text book or a Google search…it is unique tacit based knowledge…that which is being lost, that which is not valued, that which is being ‘pushed out the door’ due to age, wisdom and questioning…that which is being shaped by the sameness character of technology. What is meant by sameness…? Well technology works sells/ is being sold and driven by economies of scale…i.e have lots of it and have many people ‘take it up’ and it becomes cheap to produce, and profits are great..basic 101 economics. So people, systems, workplaces, lives are driven to ‘take it up’…in many cases sold a ruse by slick sales personnel who are very aware of the level of ICT ignorance – ( even by highly educated, credentialled people, let alone the general population) -in the wider world. Much is promised in terms of efficiency..but the balance of that equation which is often overlooked is EFFECTIVENESS….thats 101 Business Management…Post Graduate MBA programmes. Hence, we all tend to become the same..workplaces have systems derived from say the manufacturing sector and imposed upon say, the Health and Welfare sector…two entirely different workplace cultures…sets of values and belief systems. So our hospitals become more ‘factory like’ and shift away from a culture of practie that is hospital based and human centered…for our patients (or should a write clients?).. Does this feel/ sound about right ?This is HOW we got/embraced case mix funding and KPI’s as two examples. Thats The Social Studies Science of Technology and Science 101, first year undergraduate level. There is also the issue..well researched….. of a psychological issue known as Technological Facination…i.e. some people…many now..are so swept up by ICT that whole lives and organisations/workplaces are pervaded by tha ‘facination’ and implementation of systems/ICT..without due consideration to why it is there. Why IS IT THERE ? To..in our instance as nurses and health care practitioners… ..make health care for patients better…i.e improved levels of health care and greater efficiency and EFFECTIVENESS. I will leave the reader to make up their own minds about the acheivement of the latter in our ‘modern’ hospitals and Health care centers.
Finally, or should l write penultimately…people need to think beyond computers and gadgets when they experienece and think about/use technology..it is also paper based, they are also invisible systems…what needs to occur is to make the Invisible… very Visable and then make a decion about the worth of technology. It also been written that this is THE first time in history that machines shape the behavious of human kind ..by that l mean we change our lives to suit machines/systems…up till now…’machines’ were designed to serve human kind., we controlled them…now its the reverse.
However, what would l know..l am an older worker who is selective about what forms of technology l ‘take up’..BUT..there is much over which l have no choice..l am shaped by it…by the significant others who have embraced ICT without much depth of analysis but with the sales personnel’s promise of efficiency, increases in productivity and cost savings. The latter is all sort term decision making…it is not sustainable in the longer term…i.e 10 to 20 years. This is the age of the economics of everything…and the world is just beginning to discover that economics is not an EXACT SCIENCE…econometrics does not work..because it is not a science. Mr Alan Greenspan THE GOD of Economics..stated and l quote…” l got it wrong”….Unquote…three years ago. Continuous spending – (in our instance on the infusion of technology/systems/ICT into our hospitals as one context) – does not equal positive prosperity for the majority, high levels of employment, greater efficiency…we are being led to/ shaped by concerns abouty high levels of efficiency and ever more expectations about higher levels of productivity. Again the latter is not sustainable..there are limits when one is working with people in a humane context and the ‘product; is people..i.e. patients who are ill and NOT THE SAME BUT UNIQUE..just the same as the good personnel who serve them..i.e The nurses, the Dr’s and all health and welfare personnel…there are limits and the limits are being breached. Eventually, in the longer term..productivity will decrease and greater levels of error will occur. Again, the latter is well researched. 70% of organisations who have retrenched and retrenched personnel = a decrease in productivity.. 3/4′s of that 70% who have retrenched and retrenched personnel are no longer operating as a business…European and Amercian data…1980′s.
Last question…what is left in the orgnisation when all the people go home?..Not much…the knowledge and talent has just gone through your doors…organisations MUST work hard to retain knowledge and talent..tacit knowledge in invaluable…..that which resides in people. (Knowledge Management 101 Masters Degree University level studies).
Ideas / responses generated from:
Having Studied and taught Social Science, History and Philosophy of Science and, the Social Studies of Science and Technology at Undergradute and Post Graduate university levels.
Paul Hanrahan RN (Grad Year to commence in 2012…an older Nurse)
Well here I sit on boxing day in the D.E and the drs ignore me because I do not have big tits and a cleavage and the younger nurses ignore me because I do not have balls. Each of the above talk across me to who ever else is in the room althought I am althought I am the on duty mental health clinician in E.D. I have two degrees beside my ‘nursing certificates’ and am a good clinician with reasonable computer skills as I study on line. .When I am on duty patients move thought the dept with relative ease and there is little turmoil. However it is plain to see that my co workers dismiss me because of my age . I would walk out the door now if it were not for the penalties.
Recently as an “agency found” Midwife I went on assignment to a rural Public hospital stated to be desperate for staff to continue their Maternal Care program. I was denied a roster before arrival and on presenting for duty was given a nine day stretch with the faint promise of a day off 7 days after starting. This promise soon evaporated. Despite being in my sixties and ingesting new documentation , policies etc on top of increasingly sore feet I managed to complete this bracket. Added to this was a requirement to be multi-skilled and attent to Postnatal,Med-Surg. and A&E clients all in the one shift on different levels of the facility. On my second Day off (Day 11) I was suspected of having a fractured foot, later xray confirmed. As I result I have had to claim Workcover and am now at home for ? 6weeks. I noticed that later in the prospective roster they had me working another bracket of nine days. Of course I know that this contravenes the Public Hospitals award but initially felt obliged and was strongly encouraged to complete it by their nursing administration, both younger than me.
OK you may say, off the topic? Well its an illustration of how a well qualified & experienced older professional can be chewed up and spat out by a system that does not respect or value the older workers’ ongoing contribution to the health services of our state & country. Since going on “Workcover” I have been literally ignored and have had to initiate all follow up myself including chasing up my overdue pay. So from where I sit now with my immobile foot the answer to does the System demean us? my answer is YES. I have many other examples but it takes a Book to tell!
One other point I’d like to make is that, regardless of age there is very little recognition by rural staff of the inherent disruption to life that is part of “temporary fulltime assignments” like this.It seems that If we are “agency” they believe we are filthy rich?