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COVID-19 and the ageing workforce: global perspectives on needs and solutions across 15 countries

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 has a direct impact on the employment of older people. This adds to the challenge of ageism. The World Health Organization has started a worldwide campaign to combat ageism and has called for more research and evidence-based strategies that have the potential to be scaled up. Th...

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Autores principales: Pit, Sabrina, Fisk, Malcolm, Freihaut, Winona, Akintunde, Fashola, Aloko, Bamidele, Berge, Britta, Burmeister, Anne, Ciacâru, Adriana, Deller, Jürgen, Dulmage, Rae, Han, Tae Hwa, Hao, Qiang, Honeyman, Peter, Huber, Peter C., Linner, Thomas, Lundberg, Stefan, Nwamara, Mofoluwaso, Punpuing, Kamolpun, Schramm, Jennifer, Yamada, Hajime, Yap, Jason C. H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8496887/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34620164
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-021-01552-w
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author Pit, Sabrina
Fisk, Malcolm
Freihaut, Winona
Akintunde, Fashola
Aloko, Bamidele
Berge, Britta
Burmeister, Anne
Ciacâru, Adriana
Deller, Jürgen
Dulmage, Rae
Han, Tae Hwa
Hao, Qiang
Honeyman, Peter
Huber, Peter C.
Linner, Thomas
Lundberg, Stefan
Nwamara, Mofoluwaso
Punpuing, Kamolpun
Schramm, Jennifer
Yamada, Hajime
Yap, Jason C. H.
author_facet Pit, Sabrina
Fisk, Malcolm
Freihaut, Winona
Akintunde, Fashola
Aloko, Bamidele
Berge, Britta
Burmeister, Anne
Ciacâru, Adriana
Deller, Jürgen
Dulmage, Rae
Han, Tae Hwa
Hao, Qiang
Honeyman, Peter
Huber, Peter C.
Linner, Thomas
Lundberg, Stefan
Nwamara, Mofoluwaso
Punpuing, Kamolpun
Schramm, Jennifer
Yamada, Hajime
Yap, Jason C. H.
author_sort Pit, Sabrina
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: COVID-19 has a direct impact on the employment of older people. This adds to the challenge of ageism. The World Health Organization has started a worldwide campaign to combat ageism and has called for more research and evidence-based strategies that have the potential to be scaled up. This study specifically aims to identify solutions to combat the adverse effects of COVID-19 on the global ageing workforce. METHODS: We present 15 case studies from different countries and report on what those countries are doing or not doing to address the impact of COVID-19 on ageing workers. RESULTS: We provide examples of how COVID-19 influences older people’s ability to work and stay healthy, and offer case studies of what governments, organizations or individuals can do to help ensure older people can obtain, maintain and, potentially, expand their current work. Case studies come from Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Romania, Singapore, Sweden, South Korea, Thailand, United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US). Across the countries, the impact of COVID-19 on older workers is shown as widening inequalities. A particular challenge has arisen because of a large proportion of older people, often with limited education and working in the informal sector within rural areas, e.g. in Nigeria, Thailand and China. Remedies to the particular disadvantage experienced by older workers in the context of COVID are presented. These range from funding support to encouraging business continuity, innovative product and service developments, community action, new business models and localized, national and international actions. The case studies can be seen as frequently fitting within strategies that have been proven to work in reducing ageism within the workplace. They include policy and laws that have increased benefits to workers during lockdowns (most countries); educational activities such as coaching seniorpreneurship (e,g, Australia); intergenerational contact interventions such as younger Thai people who moved back to rural areas and sharing their digital knowledge with older people and where older people reciprocate by teaching the younger people farming knowledge. CONCLUSION: Global sharing of this knowledge among international, national and local governments and organizations, businesses, policy makers and health and human resources experts will further understanding of the issues that are faced by older workers. This will facilitate the replication or scalability of solutions as called for in the WHO call to combat ageism in 2021. We suggest that policy makers, business owners, researchers and international organisations build on the case studies by investing in evidence-based strategies to create inclusive workplaces. Such action will thus help to challenge ageism, reduce inequity, improve business continuity and add to the quality of life of older workers.
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spelling pubmed-84968872021-10-08 COVID-19 and the ageing workforce: global perspectives on needs and solutions across 15 countries Pit, Sabrina Fisk, Malcolm Freihaut, Winona Akintunde, Fashola Aloko, Bamidele Berge, Britta Burmeister, Anne Ciacâru, Adriana Deller, Jürgen Dulmage, Rae Han, Tae Hwa Hao, Qiang Honeyman, Peter Huber, Peter C. Linner, Thomas Lundberg, Stefan Nwamara, Mofoluwaso Punpuing, Kamolpun Schramm, Jennifer Yamada, Hajime Yap, Jason C. H. Int J Equity Health Commentary BACKGROUND: COVID-19 has a direct impact on the employment of older people. This adds to the challenge of ageism. The World Health Organization has started a worldwide campaign to combat ageism and has called for more research and evidence-based strategies that have the potential to be scaled up. This study specifically aims to identify solutions to combat the adverse effects of COVID-19 on the global ageing workforce. METHODS: We present 15 case studies from different countries and report on what those countries are doing or not doing to address the impact of COVID-19 on ageing workers. RESULTS: We provide examples of how COVID-19 influences older people’s ability to work and stay healthy, and offer case studies of what governments, organizations or individuals can do to help ensure older people can obtain, maintain and, potentially, expand their current work. Case studies come from Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Romania, Singapore, Sweden, South Korea, Thailand, United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US). Across the countries, the impact of COVID-19 on older workers is shown as widening inequalities. A particular challenge has arisen because of a large proportion of older people, often with limited education and working in the informal sector within rural areas, e.g. in Nigeria, Thailand and China. Remedies to the particular disadvantage experienced by older workers in the context of COVID are presented. These range from funding support to encouraging business continuity, innovative product and service developments, community action, new business models and localized, national and international actions. The case studies can be seen as frequently fitting within strategies that have been proven to work in reducing ageism within the workplace. They include policy and laws that have increased benefits to workers during lockdowns (most countries); educational activities such as coaching seniorpreneurship (e,g, Australia); intergenerational contact interventions such as younger Thai people who moved back to rural areas and sharing their digital knowledge with older people and where older people reciprocate by teaching the younger people farming knowledge. CONCLUSION: Global sharing of this knowledge among international, national and local governments and organizations, businesses, policy makers and health and human resources experts will further understanding of the issues that are faced by older workers. This will facilitate the replication or scalability of solutions as called for in the WHO call to combat ageism in 2021. We suggest that policy makers, business owners, researchers and international organisations build on the case studies by investing in evidence-based strategies to create inclusive workplaces. Such action will thus help to challenge ageism, reduce inequity, improve business continuity and add to the quality of life of older workers. BioMed Central 2021-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8496887/ /pubmed/34620164 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-021-01552-w Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Commentary
Pit, Sabrina
Fisk, Malcolm
Freihaut, Winona
Akintunde, Fashola
Aloko, Bamidele
Berge, Britta
Burmeister, Anne
Ciacâru, Adriana
Deller, Jürgen
Dulmage, Rae
Han, Tae Hwa
Hao, Qiang
Honeyman, Peter
Huber, Peter C.
Linner, Thomas
Lundberg, Stefan
Nwamara, Mofoluwaso
Punpuing, Kamolpun
Schramm, Jennifer
Yamada, Hajime
Yap, Jason C. H.
COVID-19 and the ageing workforce: global perspectives on needs and solutions across 15 countries
title COVID-19 and the ageing workforce: global perspectives on needs and solutions across 15 countries
title_full COVID-19 and the ageing workforce: global perspectives on needs and solutions across 15 countries
title_fullStr COVID-19 and the ageing workforce: global perspectives on needs and solutions across 15 countries
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 and the ageing workforce: global perspectives on needs and solutions across 15 countries
title_short COVID-19 and the ageing workforce: global perspectives on needs and solutions across 15 countries
title_sort covid-19 and the ageing workforce: global perspectives on needs and solutions across 15 countries
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8496887/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34620164
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-021-01552-w
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