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SINGAPORE \u2013 Overcoming ageist attitudes in the workplace<\/span><\/a>, rigid post-retirement job opportunities and health fatalism is key to ensuring that people can continue to celebrate extended longevity, said Paulin\u00a0 Straughan, director of the Centre for Research on Successful Ageing (ROSA) at the Singapore Management University.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Flexible, bite-size work opportunities that suit the seniors\u2019 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.<\/p>\n \u201cTo put it very crudely, they are now supplementary labour. When we need you, we extend (your work contract). When we don\u2019t need you, you are the first to go,\u201d she said. \u201cOf course, they say, \u2018Fine, I will wean myself off paid work.\u2019… But that\u2019s a loss to think about because we cannot afford to retire.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom our research, people as young as in their 40s tell us the moment they hit their 40s, training opportunities escape them. (It\u2019s because) employers feel that they have a longer runway with the investment in training if they train younger employees.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Importing foreign labour will not be enough to plug the gap because many other nations are ageing and looking at doing the same.<\/p>\n In Japan, for instance, where those aged 65 and above now make up more than 29% of the population<\/span><\/a>, there is a severe shortage of care workers. While they are facing challenges in hiring foreign labour, they are looking to do so, said Nagoya University Graduate School of International Development vice-dean Satoshi Shimizutani.<\/p>\n He was speaking at a panel discussion with Straughan; Indranee Rajah, who is Minister in the Prime Minister\u2019s Office and Second Minister for Finance and National Development; and Technische Universitat Dresden rector Ursula Staudinger.<\/p>\n Staudinger said work environments play a major role in the ageing process. While monotonous routines act as \u201cpoison\u201d for the brain, engaging in varied cognitive demands, switching tasks and taking on ongoing challenges protect against cognitive decline.<\/p>\n Straughan, who shared the latest findings from ROSA based on a study of more than 7,000 participants aged 50 to 79, also stressed the importance of social connections and friendships in encouraging seniors to attend health screenings.<\/p>\n The study found that enrolment in Healthier SG<\/span><\/a> was associated with more regular cancer screening.<\/p>\n \u201cIn our study, we looked at fatalism, the perspective that if you\u2019re going to get cancer, there\u2019s nothing you can do about it… There\u2019s no need to go for health screening because I\u2019m going to die.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the assumption is that family members are the ones who can motivate seniors to sign up for the screenings, that is not always the case.<\/p>\n Friendship networks were found to be directly associated with regular screening for breast, cervical and colorectal cancer in most of the groups examined, while family influence appeared to operate more through knowledge and attitudes towards screening, the study found.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re going through age-related health crises or health challenges, I think discussions and advisories from your peers, who are now more or less in that same age group, are likely to be more impactful because this is somebody who is journeying the same pathway that you are, compared with somebody who\u2019s younger or older than you,\u201d Straughan said.<\/p>\n Because people tend to befriend those who are like themselves, curating informal third spaces for seniors can help to bridge social and class divides, which can help to drive preventive health efforts like screening.<\/p>\n For instance, hawker centres can be turned into neighbourhood kitchens, where someone can teach seniors how to make age-friendly meals that contain sufficient nutrients, she pointed out, but this will require a scheme to kick-start the training.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 Overcoming ageist attitudes in the workplace, rigid post-retirement job opportunities and health fatalism is key to ensuring that people can continue to celebrate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/94658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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