Correlates of Work Design and the Intention to Continue Work in Retirement

Activity: Talk or presentationConference PresentationsResearch

Anne Marit Wöhrmann - Speaker

Purpose:
Many countries are facing challenges due to demographic change. Decreasing old-age support ratios and skills shortages are just two of them. Continued employment after the entry to retirement could serve as one supporting factor in this situation.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation of work design on the intention to continue working for one’s employer in retirement.

Design/Methodology:
1128 employees of a logistics company in Germany aged 45 to 65 participated in the study. White-collar workers completed a web-survey and blue-collar employees completed paper-and-pencil questionnaires.

Results:
Results of hierarchical regression analyses show significant positive relations between indicators of work organization, physical work environment, social work environment, and work demands, and the intention to continue working with one’s employer in retirement.

Limitations:
However, a major limitation of this study is the cross-sectional design, which does not allow for causal inferences. Also, not the actual behavior of work in retirement but only intentions could be measured.

Research/Practical Implications:
The study’s results extent the literature on determining factors of post-retirement work. Furthermore, practical implications for companies which could benefit from continued employment in retirement can be drawn. The results provide suggestions for human resource management and managers regarding work design to motivate employees to stay in the workforce longer.

Originality/Value:
To our knowledge, the study is the first to investigate the relation between different aspects of work design in a German sample of blue-collar and white-collar employees and the intention to continue working for one’s employer in retirement.

22.05.201325.05.2013

Event

16th congress of the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology - EAWOP 2013

22.05.1325.05.13

Münster, Germany

Event: Conference