Research - VicHealth Project

Managing Employment Pathways to Reintegrate Older Workers

BWA has been successful in achieving substantial funding ($525,000) under the VicHealth Public Health Research Fellowship for this project which will be carried out between 2007 and 2011. It is led by Associate Professor Libby Brooke.

The project extends an innovative internationally recognised best practice framework, the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH) ‘work ability’ approach previously applied within organisations to pathways back into employment for older workers currently outside the workforce. The overarching aim is to assist older workers vulnerable to unemployment and older workers who are voluntarily outside the workforce to be reintegrated into the workforce.

The target groups of the project are: firstly, older workers aged 45 and over who have become involuntarily unemployed; secondly, injured older workers who will be selected from occupations and industries in which they are at higher risk of work injuries; thirdly, retirees who have exited the workforce experiencing negative consequences including social isolation, and who are making efforts to return to work; and fourthly, older volunteers working informally in organisations who may wish to reconnect with formal employment.

The project will develop employment pathways by engaging key stakeholders in employment, rehabilitation and health services in the development of interventions as well as employers, unions and older workers. It will apply work ability concepts and interventions to recruitment and retention of older workers engaged in community services employment to develop a programme of interventions most suited to the four sub-groups. Currently there is no employment services model, which takes an holistic integrated approach across healthy lifestyle promotion, motivational factors, including self-perceptions of capacity, skills and age awareness.

An initial accessible area for employment is health and community care services. The project targets public sector pathways in home care services, labour supply shortages and connects labour supply of older workers to areas of deficient labour supply, that of health and community care services for older people.

In the first two years, the project will develop a demographic profile of the target groups, design an employability instrument, develop and implement pre-employment interventions at the external system level (employment services and rehabilitation systems) and measure pre-employment interventions to increase employability. In the third and fourth year the project will develop and apply interventions with employees after entry to employment which support retention based on interventions within workplaces. The final two years of the project will measure changes in ‘work ability’ through applying the ‘work ability’ tool following interventions. In the fifth and final year of the project, the pathways programme involving government departments at different levels with responsibilities in employment, occupational health and safety, rehabilitation and health and ageing will be consolidated in a cross-portfolio programme and practice framework.

Ultimately this will build capacity across public policy and practice in employment, health and rehabilitation systems as well as creating and sustaining employment pathways for older workers. This is the workforce demographic challenge: to create and manage employment pathways to reintegrate older workers in areas of skills shortages which meets labour supply needs of an ageing population.