Factors Influencing Retirement Decisions among Blue-Collar Workers in a Global Manufacturing Company—Implications for Age Management from A System Perspective

Ellen Jaldestad, Andrea Eriksson, Philip Blom and Britt Östlund
Additional contact information
Ellen Jaldestad: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Health Systems, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SE-141 57 Huddinge, Sweden
Andrea Eriksson: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Health Systems, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SE-141 57 Huddinge, Sweden
Philip Blom: Scania CV AB, Health & Work Environment, 8000 AP Zwolle, The Netherlands
Britt Östlund: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Health Systems, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SE-141 57 Huddinge, Sweden

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 20, 1-22

Abstract: The maintenance of older workers and determining the appropriate age for retirement are growing issues related to the fact that fewer people, still active in working life, have to provide for more non-working people due to increased life expectancy. As a result, retirement age has started to rise in many countries, and employers need to find ways to maintain an older and healthy work force, not least to avoid the loss of important experience. The aim of the current study was to increase the knowledge of factors influencing the retirement decisions among blue-collar workers in different national settings. A survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of 100 blue-collar workers in Sweden, the Netherlands, and France, aged 55 years and older, within a global manufacturing company. Based on the results, implications for companies’ age management strategies were discussed from a system perspective. Factors contributing to both retirement and to a prolonged work life were found on individual, organisational, and societal levels. This indicates the importance of a system perspective when planning for age management interventions.

Keywords: international study; job crafting; older workers; prolonged work life; sustainable work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/20/10945/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/20/10945/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:20:p:10945-:d:658931

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().