Older Workers' Continuous Working Beyond Retirement Age: The Impact of Organizational Support in Health Care and Social Assistance Organizations

Background and Purpose:

The health care sector is a vulnerable industry from the effects of an aging workforce. For the health care sector, potential shortages of health care workers will be exacerbated due to the aging of health care professionals and expanded recipients covered by the Affordable Care Act. As a result, health care employers are beginning to respond to this realization by reassessing their talent management system. However, it is not a simple process to change the workplace structure and policies. Thus, there is still an issue related to the gap between older workers’ demands and what their workplaces can support for older employees’ retention. The purpose of this study was to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between organizational support and actual workers’ retirement age.

Methods:

The data was used from the Talent Management Study: U.S. Workplaces in Today's Business Environment, which was conducted in 2009 by the Center on Aging and Work at Boston College. Using SPSS 23, this study conducted the logistic regression to examine the predictive value of organizational support such as flexible arrangement and career development on older workers’ retirement age. Health care and social assistance organizations (n = 122) were selected for the analysis. Among participated organizations, 47.9% of those were for-profit organizations and 43.0% of those were non-profit organizations. 

Results:

The several findings emerged from the models.  First, the Model-1 presented the proportion of the type and size of organization for the likelihood of workers’ retirement age. Only the size of organization factor was positively associated with workers’ retirement age. The employee who work in the medium and large size of organization (301 or more employees) were 8.5 times more likely to delay their age of retirement beyond 65 years old. When adding the mean flexible arrangement, mean career development, and organizational encouragement for remaining in Model-2, only a flexible arrangement variable was a significant predictor to workers’ retirement age. That is, workers who receive flexible arrangement support were approximately 2.4 times more likely to remain in their workplace beyond traditional retirement age (65 years old).

Conclusions and Implications:

This study indicated the importance of flexible arrangement to capture mature workers in health care setting. One in five workers near or at retirement age is placed in a health care industry. It could potentially lead to worker shortages in health care sector. Hence, health care employers should strive to foster a flexible work culture to retain older health care professionals. The overall increase in aging workforce in worksites is a preeminent phenomenon in developed societies today. Therefore, this study can be utilized by other sectors such as human service organizations. In addition, it can contribute to our understanding of the gap between individual and organizational perspectives efficient organizational support for older workers’ continuous working.