Organizational Change Around an Older Workforce

Demographic, economic, political, and technological transformations-including an unprecedented older workforce-are challenging outdated human resource logics and practices. Rising numbers of retirement-eligible Boomers portend a loss of talent, skills, and local knowledge. We investigate organizational responses to this challenge-institutional work disrupting age-graded mindsets and policies.

We focus on innovative U.S. organizations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region in the state of Minnesota, a hub for businesses and nonprofits, conducting in-depth interviews with informants from a purposive sample of 23 for-profit, nonprofit, and government organizations.

Drawing on an organizational change theoretical approach, we find organizations are leading change by developing universal policies and practices, not ones intentionally geared to older workers. Both their narratives and strategies-opportunities for greater employee flexibility, training, and scaling back time commitments-suggest deliberate disrupting of established age-graded logics, replacing them with new logics valuing older workers and age-neutral approaches. Organizations in the different sectors studied are fashioning uniform policies regardless of age, exhibiting a parallel reluctance to delineate special policies for older workers.

Developing new organizational logics and practices valuing, investing in, and retaining older workers is key 21st century business challenges. The flexibility, training, and alternative pathways offered by the innovative organizations we studied point to fruitful possibilities for large-scale replacement of outdated age-biased templates of work, careers, and retirement.