A woman used a tablet in Espoo in June 2019. YLE in October reported that age discrimination continues to push employees prematurely out of working life in Finland. (Emmi Korhonen – Lehtikuva)
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AGE DISCRIMINATION is continuing to push people out of working life in Finland, reports YLE.
“Age discrimination is making it more difficult for experienced employees to get work and continue their career. About 10 per cent of over 55-year-olds say they have experienced age discrimination at work,” Mervi Ruokolainen, a special researcher at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, stated to YLE in October.
Older employees, she said, continue to be associated with unfounded myths and prejudices that have a negative impact on recruitment, their status at the workplace and their self-perceptions.
“People think that older people miss more work due to sickness, or that they have a higher risk of ending up on disability pension. People think that they can’t learn new things as well or oppose changes in working life,” she elaborated. “These myths aren’t accurate according to studies.”
Older employees may additionally feel that they are not afforded the same opportunities as their younger colleagues to improve their pay, enhance their occupational skills or advance their career.
“Their expertise may have been downplayed, and they may have been pushed to the sidelines of the work community because they’re-about-to-retire-soon-anyway thinking. Their employer doesn’t necessarily have these sort of designs, but the employee may start to feel like they’re no longer needed,” said Ruokolainen.
Such experiences, in turn, may encourage employees to take the first opportunity to retire from working life.
Extending careers is a long-standing objective of employment and pension policy in Finland. Ruokolainen reminded the public broadcasting company that keeping people of all ages in working life is important not only at the individual but also at the societal level, as it would alleviate the labour shortage and boost tax revenue.
Noora Järnefelt, a senior researcher at the Finnish Centre for Pensions (ETK), told YLE that in Sweden and Norway the employment rate for 60–64-year-olds is slightly under 70 per cent, about 10 percentage points higher than in Finland.
Many Finns also retire before the official retirement age.
“Currently around 60 per cent of people stay in working life until the minimum retirement age. Quite a few leave working life before that. Disability pension is the biggest contributing factor, accounting for 20–25 per cent [of the premature retirements]. The second major factor is unemployment, which causes about 15 per cent of careers to end prematurely,” she revealed.
One reason for the regional differences stems from history, believes Ruokolainen. In Sweden lay-offs made for economic or operational reasons are principally targeted at the newest recruits. In Finland, though, companies have taken advantage of the so-called unemployment path to retirement, which will be phased out starting with the age group born in 1965.
ETK in 2022 conducted a study that suggests the situation may be improving.
Employers, the study found, have not only a largely positive impression of the expertise of over 55-year-olds but also the willingness to recruit over 55-year-olds. Over 80 per cent of employers also reported that they place emphasis on developing the occupational skills of employees and offering challenging and interesting responsibilities to experienced employees.
Equally many employers stated that they are ready to be flexible about working time and other arrangements due to the age or health of employees.
Ruokolainen is not convinced.
“Employer attitudes toward older employees seem to have improved, but if we look at the measures that are used to support the ability to work and career continuation of older employees, they haven’t increased notably in the past 20 years,” she said to YLE.
One of the problems she identified is lack of discussion with older employees about their career plans.
“Do workplaces know what kind of hopes or goals experienced employees have for their role and career continuation in their last years [in working life]? And do employers think how they could utilise the expertise of older employees in new ways?”
“In surveys of newly retired people 30–50 per cent stated that they could’ve continued to work at least to some extent in retirement. There’s definitely massive potential in the older age group that employers could utilise better by bringing these things up in time,” she argued.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
