I read with much interest the recent articles about older workers.
With a shrinking workforce, we must take quick and serious action to enable older adults to work longer if they wish. To this end, I offer three suggestions.
First, we must move away from age, and focus on ability.
It does not make sense to keep the age limit at 75 for vocational drivers if an older person can demonstrate sufficient ability (No rise in age limit for taxi and private-hire drivers as those older are accident-prone, Oct 4).
Gerontologists have noted that ability levels vary more widely among older adults compared with younger adults.
Age can thus be a poor marker of an older adult's abilities.
We need better ways to assess ability and competence for jobs, and rely on those assessments instead. Some may say ability-based tests are much harder to design and implement, but it would signal our commitment to including older workers.
Second, we must create opportunities for older and younger workers to interact beyond the work setting.
MP Jessica Tan noted that younger workers recognise value in older workers but find it a challenge to work with them (Law to protect senior workers from dismissal due to age could be double-edged sword: Jessica Tan, Oct 5). This is to be expected if the workplace is the first and only time that younger and older workers have contact with one another.
A start to better inter-generational relations may be to give older workers more opportunities to learn together with students in tertiary institutions. This may mean that instead of enrolling in night or weekend classes, older workers can take the course in the day alongside tertiary students and work at other times instead.
Finally, we must train the rest of society to accommodate older adults.
It is often assumed that older adults are the ones who need to be trained for a changing world. But what is perhaps more pertinent is: How many mobile application designers have been trained to design products and services that consider the needs of older adults? How about architects and urban planners? Educators? Chefs?
In an ageing Singapore, we cannot just expect older adults to play catch-up. Government programmes should provide the rest of society with a proportionate amount of resources to accommodate older adults' needs.
Shannon Ang (Dr)
