Blended Work and Employment Participation of Older Workers: A Further Discussion

Retaining an ageing workforce: The effects of high‐performance work systems and flexible work programmes

“…This could also attenuate the potential generational bias toward nontraditional work programmes. Furthermore, as recently argued by Damman (), employers may need to evaluate the convenience of FWPs for older employees based on the latter's current psychological and physical health, as well as on their need for autonomy, structure and engagement. Diversity among older employees may indeed make FWPs significant for some, but not for all.…”

“…Furthermore, it should be explored whether our findings vary across industries (e.g., low‐ vs. high‐human capital intensity) and whether they are affected by employment relationship quality (e.g., in terms of employee–supervisor trust level; Van Yperen and Wörtler, 2017). Finally, because there may be heterogeneity among older workers (Damman, ), an intriguing field for future research would be to explore the role that older workers' specificities in terms of psychological and social traits play in the relationships addressed here.…”

“…2 | THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND HYPOTHESES 2.1 | Age-related work attitudes and behaviours Effective retention strategies require understanding the idiosyncrasies of older employees. Although these employees are heterogeneous in terms of personal traits (e.g., their social, psychological and health conditions) and work situations (Damman, 2016), research on lifespan development suggests that several common changes occur with age in both individual preferences and needs. These changes may have an impact on the effectiveness of HR practices, so attention needs to be paid to them (Armstrong-Stassen & Ursel, 2009;Bal & De Lange, 2015;Kooij et al, 2008;Yeung & Fung, 2009).…”

Gender Differences in Perceived Workplace Flexibility Among Older Workers in the Netherlands: A Brief Report

“…Recent studies on flexibility interventions ( Cahill, James, & Pitt-Catsouphes, 2015 ; Moen, Kojola, Kelly, & Karakaya, 2016 ; Morelock, McNamara, & James, 2017 ) and personalized flexibility agreements ( Bal, De Jong, Jansen, & Bakker, 2012 ) suggest that workplace flexibility is beneficial for prolonging working lives, although there are also studies—using broader flexibility concepts—that do not observe the hypothesized effects (e.g., Van Solinge & Henkens, 2014 ). Little is known, however, about antecedents of workplace flexibility among older workers ( Damman, 2016 ). Studies carried out among prime-age workers suggest that women have less flexibility in the time they begin and end work than men ( Golden, 2001 , 2008 , 2009 ; Lyness, Gornick, Stone, & Grotto, 2012 ), and have less schedule control ( Chung, 2019 ).…”

Blended Working and the Employability of Older Workers, Retirement Timing, and Bridge Employment

“…We were pleased to see that three articles on blended working appeared in the October 2016 issue of Work, Aging and Retirement (i.e., Damman, 2016;Dropkin, Moline, Kim, & Gold, 2016;Zhan, 2016) and are happy to comment on these three important contributions. Blended working, a term we recently introduced (Van Yperen, Rietzschel, & De Jonge, 2014), combines on-site and off-site working, enabled by the utilization of information and communications technologies (ICTs) that provides workers with almost constant access to job-relevant information and coworkers.…”