Age Management: A New Paradigm In HRM Within Slovenian Enterprises

Abstract

In the recent years a demographic situation in European countries has been mostly characterized by a growing proportion of the older population – a trend that is expected to continue in the future. The implications of this trend are not only present on the macroeconomic level (pensions, later retirement, health problems, etc.) but are more and more approached by the companies due to the aging workforce. Companies are thus introducing new approaches, policies and instruments which are synthetically called age management to accommodate to the situation of the ageing workforce. Age management is thus primarily the companies’ orientation and is proved by the previous research that the essential drivers for the older workers staying active are found within the companies.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the development of age management within Slovenian companies where the practice of age management is still in its early stage. However, we expect that due to the ageing population and the shortages on the labor market one can expect that those practices will receive more and more attention in the future. Therefore, we reveal through the research of the 200 Slovenian companies the existing age management practices such as recruitment practices, training, remuneration, flexible work options, internal culture, and even a companies’ external image.

We analyze the major problems and obstacles that seem to appear in developmental process of the age management implementation in Slovenian companies, and conclude with some recommendations for the future development of the age management.