SINGAPORE – Overcoming ageist attitudes in the workplace, rigid post-retirement job opportunities and health fatalism is key to ensuring that people can continue to celebrate extended longevity, said Paulin Straughan, director of the Centre for Research on Successful Ageing (ROSA) at the Singapore Management University.
This is because seniors in Singapore need to continue to work in order to age well, as well as focus on maintaining their health span, Straughan said at the sixth ROSA symposium on Oct 20.
Flexible, bite-size work opportunities that suit the seniors’ strengths will be useful. When individuals are past retirement age, they may not want to continue committing to regular work hours, particularly if the rigour does not honour their experience in terms of remuneration.
“To put it very crudely, they are now supplementary labour. When we need you, we extend (your work contract). When we don’t need you, you are the first to go,” she said. “Of course, they say, ‘Fine, I will wean myself off paid work.’… But that’s a loss to think about because we cannot afford to retire.”
Furthermore, ageism is fanned by the thinking that an older person can no longer contribute to the workplace when it extends to the actions taken many years before that happens, she said.
“From our research, people as young as in their 40s tell us the moment they hit their 40s, training opportunities escape them. (It’s because) employers feel that they have a longer runway with the investment in training if they train younger employees.”
Straughan, a sociologist who has been advocating against workplace ageism, said the mentality will backfire because as a super-aged society, Singapore is having fewer babies and, therefore, faces a smaller workforce.
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