Occupational Health & Safety Management in the context of an ageing workforce

Abstract

Our well-being depends in a way on how well we perform or how well we adapt in our changing personal lives and in our changing work environment. Both factors are important and need to be examined since they are dealing with physiological and psychosocial factors that affecting workers. Nowadays emerging risks such as ageing, feminization, migration, globalization, technical innovation with their multiple dimension, bring changes to the workplace. Thus, in the context of Occupational Health & Safety (OHS), employers are enforced to search for new kinds of preventive measures to protect their workers and business. This PhD thesis is examining one of these emerging risks; ageing. The ageing of the population caused the ageing of the workforce. Ageing is a process rather than a state and individuals might experience it in a different way. Chronological age is not a determinant factor for an individual to understand his/ her health status. Therefore, this heterogenous process is examined, presenting the changes that might occur in psychosocial and physiological way and in regard to OHS. A nationwide study was conducted in Cyprus as a case study of this thesis, aiming to identify factors that affect the performance of the worker, finding that health status is the most important factor and age by itself cannot determine the performance of the worker. Furthermore, the use of Work Individual Performance (WIP) tool and Occupational Health, Safety & Ageing Management System (OHSAMS) are suggested to be used by organisations in order to manage OHS in the context of ageing, aiming to give recommendation measures to employers and work-life balance to employees.