Project Background — The Norwegian pension reform
The Norwegian pension reform has made it far more rewarding for older employees to remain in employment for longer, but, paradoxically, less beneficial for employers to retain them. This is because the pre-reform early retirement scheme AFP made employers partly financially responsible for employees’ early retirement, while the new AFP scheme contains no such mechanisms.
Project Aim — Employers and employees maneuver
This is the starting point for GREYSHADES. We wish to study how employers and employees manoeuvre under these new circumstances. We assume that adaptations vary both by gender and education, and aim to capture such variation in our analyses.
Project Approach
The project is organised in three work packages (WPs).
WP1 — Qualitative study of work organisations and enterprises
We will interview HR-managers, line managers and senior employees in 4–6 enterprises with different gender and education profiles. The aim is to develop a broad overview of how these issues are perceived in the workplaces and by the seniors themselves.
WP2 — Analyse quantitative data from the NorLAG study
...and ask:
- How do senior workersperceive their psychosocial work environment?
- How have senior employees’ retirement plans changed over time?
- What is the relationship between perceptions of psychosocial work environment and actual exit behaviour from the workforce?
WP3 — Managers’ attitudes
We will look into managers’ attitudes, as expressed in the survey Seniorbarometeret. We will analyse two questions:
- In what ways have managers’ attitudes to senior workers changed over time?
- How do managers’ attitudes vary by individual factors and workplace context?
GREYSHADES is a cooperation between the Institute for Social Research and Norwegian Social Research – NOVA at Oslo Metropolitan University, with contributions from the Centre for Senior Policy, the University of Canterbury and the University of Lausanne.
Publications
Kitterød, Ragni Hege & Grødem, Anne Skevik (2024) A more age-friendly working life with older managers? Associations between manager’s age and attitudes towards older employees. Institute for Social Research. Report 2024:2. Full text in Research Archive