EMPLOYERS’ RESPONSES TO AN AGING WORKFORCE IN THE NETHERLANDS

摘要

The workforce is aging rapidly in developed countries across the globe. This has led to many policy changes to encourage and facilitate longer working lives, while also changing the retirement processes of older workers. But not only individual older workers are affected; employers also have to deal with an aging workforce looking to stay employed until higher ages than before. We study employers’ responses to an aging workforce in the Netherlands, a country at the forefront of transitioning from a culture of early labor market exit to increasingly longer working lives, with for example an increasing public pension age from 66 now to 71 in 2060. We study the attitudes, policies, and practices related to workforce aging and longer working lives of employers with data from a 2017 survey among 1358 Dutch employers, comparing it to data from a similar survey held in 2009. Results show that employers were more pessimistic about the effects of population aging on their organization in 2017 than in 2009. In particular, employers expect a decline in productivity due to workforce aging more often than in 2009, while also expecting an increase in labor costs. However, employers were also much more active in 2017 than in 2009 with regards to facilitating longer working lives through the application of age-based human resource policies and hiring practices aimed at older workers. Employers’ worries about the consequences of workforce aging have increased in recent years, but so have their actions in an attempt to circumvent these consequences.