Prolonging Working Life among Senior Workers

About this course

Due to demographic changes across Europe, there are strong political interests in maintaining the labour force by prolonging working life.

This NIVA course provides participants with theoretical knowledge on push and stay factors for labour market participation among senior workers and discusses how this knowledge can be used for practical purposes.

Please note!

This is an online course consisting of two parts.

Part I: Prior to the course

All participants are required to read an assigned article for each lecture prior to the course and answer a few questions related to the article. This amounts to 8-10 articles in total.

Part II: During the course

To facilitate active learning, knowledge-sharing and networking, all participants will take part in discussions (30 min) after each lecture (30 min). The discussions are based on the article and the lecture.

The total amount of work is approximately 25 hours, which is usually converted into 1 ECTS point for university studies.

Course objectives

• Provide participants with theoretical knowledge on push and stay factors for labour market participation among senior workers
• Discuss how this knowledge can be used to prolong working life in different target groups (different sectors, long vs short education, seated vs physically demanding work)

The course will cover push and stay factors for labour market participation across the following topics:

• Psychosocial working environment
• Physical working environment
• Age-discrimination at workplaces
• Gradual retirement (possibility for reduce working time or responsibility)
• Competencies and continuing education/training of skills
• New technologies at the workplace
• Lifestyle and health
• Senior policies at the workplace
• Working life expectancy

Push factors can be understood as negative factors, e.g. poor working environment, poor health, that pushes people out of the labour market, and stay factors as the opposite, positive factors that can motivate people to stay at work e.g. a good social climate, interesting work etc

Target groups

• PhD students
• Researchers
• Occupational health professionals

General course fee and cancellation information

The course fee is invoiced after the registration deadline.

Cancellation policy

Cancellations received by 14th of December 2020: full refund
Cancellations received by 15th of December 2020 or later: no refund

The total price of the course will be invoiced after the registration deadline.

The price is subject to minor changes.

Subject background

Due to demographic changes across Europe, there are strong political interests in maintaining the labour force by prolonging working life, i.e. increasing retirement age. In 2018 we have initiated a new PEROSH project ‘Prolonging Working Life’ as a collaboration across 8 European countries.

To better guide initiatives for maintaining older workers at the labour market across Europe, this PEROSH project aims to determine push and stay factors for labour market participation of older workers across different European countries with different regulations and cultures. Participants at the course will benefit from the knowledge gathered in this project.

Contact person

Course leader

Lars L. Andersen, Professor
National Research Centre for the Working Environment, Denmark
email: lla@nfa.dk

In practical matters, please contact:

Project Manager

Morten Jakobsen
NIVA
mobile: +358 40 126 3336
email: morten.jakobsen@niva.org