Keeping your aging workforce active

​An increasing number of older adults are extending their labor force attachment beyond traditional retirement ages. On the other hand, recent data show that adults age 45-69 are three times more likely than adults age 18-44 to report unable to work due to health problems. Wellbeing programs are an excellent way to promote positive health-related behaviors and effectively keep your employees healthy.

​Investing in these initiatives will not only reduce health care expenses, minimize costs associated with injury and increase the health and resilience of your workforce, but will also help workers maintain their desired levels of work engagement and productivity as they age. 

Many wellbeing programs aim at keeping the older workers active. There’s evidence that older employees certainly benefit from physical activity, like worksite walking initiatives, even if they always used to be sedentary. (Van Dyck, 2016) You can stimulate them to become more physically active by following these three steps:

• Create a supportive physical environment: this includes easily accessible stairs, walking trails, open spaces for physical exercise and stretching,...
• Develop supportive organizational policies: written regulations such as allowing break time during the workday and promoting and incentivizing participation in leisure and physical activity. Offering walking lunch programs or membership of walking clubs are also a good examples.
• Encourage reasonable goal-setting and incremental progress: wearables for self-monitoring have been proven effective in increasing step counts for older adults. (pal, 2009) This enables you to provide continuous feedback and stimulate a gradual increase in step totals.

All of the above-mentioned are key to get older employees more active, but be aware of the pitfalls. Trackers and self-monitoring can be very effective, but your older workers might not be that familiar with electronics. So make sure that when you provide wearables, you also teach them how to use them properly. 

Some older workers who experience a walking impairment will not be able to take part in the walking. Provide alternatives for them: assisted stretching sessions or maybe even assisted physical therapy can be a good solution to enable everyone to be more active.