Successful ageing in the workplace

1
Successful ageing in the workplace

• Implications for workplace chaplaincy

2
Conclusions of talk

• Ageing society
• Ageing workforce
• Need to remain in work
• Work is good for you
• Successful ageing requires various component
  parts
• Part of successful ageing is to engage with our
  spiritual journey.
• Workplace can help provide these component parts
  and help us with our spiritual journey.
• Workplace chaplains can encourage conditions for
  successful ageing in workplace

3
Introductions

• Health care chaplaincy work
• Complex relationship between health and spiritual
  /religious needs
• Voice and witness to pain and suffering and
  recovery
• Facilitators/action researchers
• A process not an outcome
• A unique configuration of caring support

4
Workplace Chaplaincy

• Working with a complex relationship between
  health/work and spiritual /religious needs
• Acting as a voice and witness to pain, loss of
  purpose, suffering and recovery
• Facilitators/action researchers
• A process not an outcome
• A unique configuration of caring support

5
Ageing Society

• Ageing workforce

6
Age is the common denominator for us all all
other diversities are subsumed under age

• We are all ageing
• Anti ageing culture
• Objectification of ageing

7
experiences of ageing

• Ageism
• Discrimination
• Poorer service
• Invisibility
• Sandwich generation
• Job seeking difficulties
• Promotion and job change difficulties

• Freedoms
• Deference
• Life experience/perspective
• Valued wisdom
• Positive intergenerational exchange
• Use of time
• Developed resilience

8
GNER guards responses to whats positive about
ageing- 31st October, 2007

• Wiser
• Experience
• Wisdom
• Patience
• Enjoyment of care
• Contentment
• Maturity
• Debt free?
• Make less mistakes

• More careful
• More aware
• Knowledge through mistakes as one gets older
• Buying a waiting for God apartment or a
  retirment home as some builders call them!

9
Current Workforce Issues

• Ageing population
• Shrinking workforce
• Retention of skilled workforce
• Change in what we mean by skilled
• Attrition
• Stress leading to sickness
• Migrant workers
• Changing work patterns related to changing life
  course

• Individualism and secularisation
• Retirement ambivalence
• Extended working lives
• Training/continued learning
• organisational wisdom
• Diversity and equality agenda
• EU legislation

10
Work is good for you!
11
Work is good for you.

• G Waddell Is work good for your health and well
  being a review of the evidence 2006
• C Black Working for a healthier tomorrow May
  2007
• Healthy working lives Dr Ewan McGregor

12
Work is good for you.

• There is a complex link between health, well
  being and work.
• 2/3rd sickness absence is accounted for by mild
  to moderate mental health problems
• Worklessness exacerbates ill health
• Sicknotes are more dangerous than chemo therapy
• Workplace must take more pro active approach to
  well being
• Prof G Waddell and Dr Bill Gunnyeon

13
Work is good for you and business..

• Clear association between HWB and self reported
  work performance
• Well being intervention gives a financial return
  of 31 every 1.00 invested in programme
  returned 3.73 in higher productivity
• Engagement and resilience improved
• Sickness and turnover reduced
• Wealth from Healthbusiness in the community
  (2007)

14
Work isnt good for you when..

• Its exploitative
• Badly paid
• Poorly managed
• Offers no flexibility for life events
• Offers no sociability because of language,
  culture or class difficulties
• Reflects social inequalities and deprivations

15
Successful ageing and the work place
16
Definitions of successful ageing

• Empirical based theory, outcome measure or
  proscriptive instruction.
• Different domains physical, functional,
  psychological, social and spiritual

17
Successful Ageing?

• Longevity
• Financial security
• Health/possession of all faculties
• Ability to adapt/compensate/optimise
• Occupation
• Scope for selective disengagement
• Scope for continued engagement
• Confiding relationships
• Social networks
• Connectivity
• Life long learning
• Spiritual development/journey

18
The Universal Spiritual Journey
We are all on a spiritual journey

• Religion is the vehicle or mechanism some of us
  choose
• The spiritual journey involves the search for
  meaning and location of self within the world
• the spiritual journey is axiomatic to our
  humanity Spiritual journey is vital and essential
  to our wellbeing and onward movement.
• Our spiritual journey and search is mediated
  through our relationships

19
The Resilient Personality/Organisation

• Realism
• A sense of purpose/meaning
• Creativity and adaptability (Bricolage)

20
Successful ageing and societal gain

• Age diversity at work encourages inter
  generational harmony
• Work is good for you
• Preparation for well ageing

21
The workplace can provide the conditions by which
these successful ageing characteristics can
flourish
22
Implications for workplace chaplains

• Work is part of who we are and how we describe
  ourselves. It helps us on our spiritual journey.

23

• Workplace chaplains can encourage conditions for
  successful ageing in the workplace

24
Workplace chaplaincy can help people make
connections and relationships

• This is the vehicle through which we all
  understand ourselves and others and by which we
  travel on our spiritual journey.

25
Workplace chaplains can act as interpreters

• Turning the letter of the law into the spirit.
  Making sense of policy and enspiriting policy
  with sense and meaning
• Working between the law and the spirit

26
George Carlin

• When youre young, you dont know, but you dont
  know you dont know, so you take some chances.
• In your 20s and 30s you dont know, and you know
  you dont know and that tends to freeze you less
  risk taking
• In your 40s you know, but you dont know you
  know, so you may still be a little tentative.
• But then, as you pass 50, if youve been paying
  attention, you know and you know you know. Time
  for some fun!