Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- List of abbreviations
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- one Work, health and wellbeing: an introduction
- two Musculoskeletal disorders: challenges and opportunities
- three Common mental health problems and work
- four Comparing health and employment in England and the United States
- five Re-evaluating trends in the employment of disabled people in Britain
- six The current state of vocational rehabilitation services
- seven The changing profile of incapacity claimants
- eight Reconstructing the self and social identity: new interventions for returning long-term Incapacity Benefit recipients to work
- nine The fall of work stress and the rise of wellbeing
- ten ‘Work Ability’ : a practical model for improving the quality of work, health and wellbeing across the life-course?
- eleven Working for longer: self‑management of chronic health problems in the workplace
- twelve Case study: organisational change and employee health and wellbeing in the NHS
- thirteen Education and training in the workplace
- fourteen Conclusion: setting the agenda for future research
- Index
thirteen - Education and training in the workplace
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- List of abbreviations
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- one Work, health and wellbeing: an introduction
- two Musculoskeletal disorders: challenges and opportunities
- three Common mental health problems and work
- four Comparing health and employment in England and the United States
- five Re-evaluating trends in the employment of disabled people in Britain
- six The current state of vocational rehabilitation services
- seven The changing profile of incapacity claimants
- eight Reconstructing the self and social identity: new interventions for returning long-term Incapacity Benefit recipients to work
- nine The fall of work stress and the rise of wellbeing
- ten ‘Work Ability’ : a practical model for improving the quality of work, health and wellbeing across the life-course?
- eleven Working for longer: self‑management of chronic health problems in the workplace
- twelve Case study: organisational change and employee health and wellbeing in the NHS
- thirteen Education and training in the workplace
- fourteen Conclusion: setting the agenda for future research
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Addressing new challenges for training and education in the workplace has become a significant area of attention. Extending working life is now a major theme of public policy across Western Europe and the United States (Vickerstaff, 2010). The over-50s are being targeted as ‘the new work generation’ (OECD, 2006; EHRC, 2010) in response to demographic and economic pressures – labour force projections indicating that by 2021 around 32% of the working-age population will be aged 50 and over. The forces driving this attention to older workers are relatively easy to sketch; more complex will be developing satisfactory responses to supporting training and learning across the different types of employment emerging in post-industrial economies.
This focus on older workers is the result of a number of recent measures aimed at addressing the challenges posed by societies with ageing populations. First, and almost certainly foremost, is the expected raising of state pension age (SPA) to 66 for men and women by 2020, this posing the challenge of improving the supply of suitable jobs while ensuring effective career development for all grades of workers (TAEN, 2011). Second, is the phasing out of the Default Retirement Age, which will remove the right of employers to retire people on grounds of reaching a particular age (currently 65). Third, is the move from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) pensions, which has put pressure on some older workers to delayed retirement (Phillipson, 2009). In addition, the desirability of early retirement is being increasingly challenged, with the social and personal costs of leaving work ahead of SPA emphasised in documents such as Winning the generation game (PIU, 2000) and Opportunity age (DWP, 2005).
The policy of extending working lives has been a significant outcome of the debate concerning the economic sustainability of ageing populations, and reflects in large measure these concerns. In essence, the discussion has shifted from focusing on early retirement/early exit to identifying pathways into work or maintaining older people in employment, with particular encouragement given to work beyond SPA. The aim is to reverse the trend – characteristic of the 1980s and 1990s – whereby large numbers of older workers left work ahead of SPA, and where early retirement came to be accepted as a normal event in the life-course (Marshall et al, 2001).
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- Work, Health and WellbeingThe Challenges of Managing Health at Work, pp. 255 - 272Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2011