With a little help from my friends: adopting a P-E fit perspective in understanding the value of organizational learning climate for sustainable employability

Purpose

The objective of our study was to investigate how organizational learning climate (measured as developmental opportunities and team support for learning), career commitment, and age are related to employees' self-perceived employability, vitality and work ability (e.g., their sustainable employability). Our study adopted a P-E fit perspective building upon the notion that sustainable employability is a function of both the person (P) and the environment (E) and tests a three-way interaction between organizational learning climate, career commitment, and age.

Design

In total, 211 members of the support staff of a Dutch university completed a survey. Hierarchical stepwise regression analysis was used to analyze the data.

Findings

Only one of the two dimensions of organizational learning climate that we measured, namely the developmental opportunities, appeared to be associated with all indicators of sustainable employability. Career commitment only had a direct positive relationship with vitality. Age was negatively related to self-perceived employability and to work ability, but not to vitality. The relationship between developmental opportunities and vitality was negatively influenced by career commitment (a negative two-way interaction effect), while a positive three-way interaction effect was found between career commitment, age, and development opportunities, and with self-perceived employability as the outcome.

Theoretical and practical implications

Our findings confirmed the relevance of adopting a P-E fit perspective on sustainable employability, and of considering the possible role of age in this. It requires more detailed analyses in future research to unravel the role of age in the shared responsibility for sustainable employability. In practice, the results of our study imply that organizations should provide all employees with a working context that facilitates learning, however, with a special focus on older employees, for whom it is a particular challenge to protect their sustainable employability, possibly due to age-related stereotyping.

Originality

Our study adopted a P-E fit perspective on sustainable employability and examined the association between organizational learning climate and all three components of sustainable employability: self-perceived employability, vitality and work ability. Moreover, it investigated whether and how the employee's career commitment and age influence this relationship.

The Second Act: Seeking Best Practices for Encore Worker Management

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

The Baby Boomers are the largest generation in history, and as they reach the traditional retirement age of 65, many leave the workforce and seek encore jobs. This exodus of Boomers creates a knowledge gap that the Gen X and Millennial generations lack the numbers and often the experience to fill. As the knowledge gap increases, managers can recruit and hire encore workers to fill the gap and retain human capital. This article answers the question: What processes can managers implement to close knowledge gaps by hiring or retaining Boomers seeking encore jobs?

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

This article examined the factors for filling knowledge gaps with encore workers and the necessary processes for hiring or retaining encore workers to attain organizational goals. A systematic review of 32 published articles and four dissertations was conducted using Super's amended career development theory. A thematic analysis approach was used to examine the evidence.

RESULTS

The findings led to the development of best practices to guide managers who want to hire encore workers to close the knowledge gap, and increase organizational knowledge capital.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Baby Boomers are responsible for finding and sustaining encore worker positions, but managers can support Boomers through best practices including skills assessments, revised HR policies, reverse-mentoring programs, and training opportunities for managers and encore workers.

Cultural and generational predictors of learning goal orientation: A multilevel analysis of managers across 20 countries

Drawing on learning and generational theory, we investigate the effect of socio-economic and contextual conditions on managerial learning and organizational development. Using data from 3657 managers across 20 countries, we untangle the interactive effect of national culture and generational cohort on learning goal orientation (LGO). Managers from younger generations (e.g. generation X) had a stronger LGO than those in older generations (e.g. Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1959). Performance orientation (PO) moderated the relationships so that the gap was stronger in high PO cultures. A validation of a model using hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) supports a cross-level moderation model of PO on LGO. Our study provides important first evidence of the value of the multilevel analysis to understanding LGO in different groups of managers, improving scholarly capacity to understand the multilevel and cross-level effects that govern the workplace. It also supports cross-level studies for the development of global managers from different generational groups. We extend LGO research by identifying the contextual influence and how this impacts on the behaviour of managers across different societal ‘structures’ (e.g. generations) and societies (e.g. cultures). The results provide practical suggestions that make a difference in the workplace.

Understanding Older Workers’ Decisions to Participate in Voluntary Training Opportunities

Abstract. Age-related changes in training decisions were examined using a within-subject experimental design presenting training framing cues of topic (generativity vs. non-generativity), goal (direction: approach vs. avoidance; referent: mastery vs. performance), and structure (self-paced vs. instructor-paced). As age increased, age-related cues were hypothesized to be more strongly and positively related to the training decision. One hundred and twenty-nine participants completed a policy-capturing study and self-report survey. Age moderated the relationship between the training topic and the training decision. Contrary to the hypothesis, as age increased, the non-generativity topic (rather than the generativity topic) was more strongly and positively related to the training decision. Age did not moderate the relationship between the other training features and the training decision.

Buffers or Boosters? The Role of HRM Practices in Older Workers' Experience of Stereotype Threat

Building on the social identity approach and the HRM literature, this two-wave cross-sectional study examined the effects of negative age-based metastereotypes on the age-based stereotype threat experience of older workers and on organizational disidentification. The moderator role of HRM practices in the relationship between negative age-based metastereotypes and age-based stereotype threat was also investigated. Older workers survey results (n = 469) from 14 manufacturing companies indicated that negative age-based metastereotypes correlate positively with stereotype threat. Moderation results showed that age-awareness HRM practices (training for older workers) reinforced age-based stereotype threat, whereas general HRM practices (recognition and respect) impaired it. The article suggests that the combination of age-based metastereotypes with a stereotype threat framework contributes to further understand older workers' beliefs and attitudes. It also indicates that to be effective, HRM practices should emphasize positive social identities older workers share with their colleagues, rather than giving older workers special treatment that may, after all, reinforce stigmatization.

Job Crafting: Older Workers' Mechanism for Maintaining Person-Job Fit

Aging at work is a dynamic process. As individuals age, their motives, abilities and values change as suggested by life-span development theories (Lang and Carstensen, 2002; Kanfer and Ackerman, 2004). Their growth and extrinsic motives weaken while intrinsic motives increase (Kooij et al., 2011), which may result in workers investing their resources in different areas accordingly. However, there is significant individual variability in aging trajectories (Hedge et al., 2006). In addition, the changing nature of work, the evolving job demands, as well as the available opportunities at work may no longer be suitable for older workers, increasing the likelihood of person-job misfit. The potential misfit may, in turn, impact how older workers perceive themselves on the job, which leads to conflicting work identities. With the traditional job redesign approach being a top-down process, it is often difficult for organizations to take individual needs and skills into consideration and tailor jobs for every employee (Berg et al., 2010). Therefore, job crafting, being an individualized process initiated by employees themselves, can be a particularly valuable mechanism for older workers to realign and enhance their demands-abilities and needs-supplies fit. Through job crafting, employees can exert personal agency and make changes to the task, social and cognitive aspects of their jobs with the goal of improving their work experience (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001). Building on the Life Span Theory of Control (Heckhausen and Schulz, 1995), we posit that job crafting, particularly cognitive crafting, will be of increasing value as employees age. Through reframing how they think of their job and choosing to emphasize job features that are personally meaningful, older workers can optimize their resources to proactively redesign their jobs and maintain congruent, positive work identities.

Current Trends in Retirement: Implications for Career Counseling and Vocational Psychology

This paper provides an overview of emerging trends in retirement, examines demographic trends in the labor force, and provides practical recommendations for working with older workers across cultures (e.g., women and racial/ethnic minorities, among others). Increasingly, older workers in the United States remain in the workforce for reasons related to financial security, healthcare, and personal fulfillment. Although retirement trends have become more complex, there is limited empirical literature addressing this issue and the research available does not attend to the needs of a diverse workforce. Therefore, implications for training, practice, advocacy, and research with regards to working with older workers across cultures (e.g., women and racial/ethnic minorities, among others) are provided.