Dataset Information

Work stress among older employees in Germany: Effects on health and retirement age.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Policy makers in aging societies aim for the extension of work lives by increasing the official retirement age. Despite these efforts, many people stop working before reaching this retirement age. The main reason for early retirement is poor health. Health in turn is influenced by exposure to the work environment. Furthermore, health and work stress are influenced by education, which may lead to different effects for the lowly and the highly educated. OBJECTIVE:This study examines the relationship between work stress and retirement age. It investigates whether this relationship is mediated by health and moderated by education. Three dimensions of health are taken into account: self-rated health (SRH), depressive symptoms, and high cardiovascular risk diseases (HCVR). METHODS:A German subsample of the longitudinal Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) was linked with register data of the German Public Pension Scheme (SHARE-RV). The sample followed 302 individuals aged 50 to 65 years at baseline from 2004 to 2014. The data contains information on work stress, measured by job control and effort-reward-imbalance (ERI), health, and age of retirement. Multi-group structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the direct and indirect effects of work stress on retirement age via health. Work stress was lagged so that it temporally preceded health and retirement age. RESULTS:Lower job control and poorer SRH lead to a lower retirement age. Health does not operate as a mediator in the relationship between work stress and retirement age. Education moderates the relationship between work stress and health: high ERI leads to better SRH and better physical health of higher educated persons. Low job control increases the risk of depressive symptoms for persons with less education. CONCLUSIONS:Improving stressful working conditions, particularly improving job control, can prolong the working lives of employees and postpone retirement.

SUBMITTER: Macken J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6361437 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Work stress among older employees in Germany: Effects on health and retirement age.

Mäcken Jana J

PloS one 20190204 2

<h4>Background</h4>Policy makers in aging societies aim for the extension of work lives by increasing the official retirement age. Despite these efforts, many people stop working before reaching this retirement age. The main reason for early retirement is poor health. Health in turn is influenced by exposure to the work environment. Furthermore, health and work stress are influenced by education, which may lead to different effects for the lowly and the highly educated.<h4>Objective</h4>This stu ...[more]

PMID: 30716089

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Project description:BackgroundThe rapid increase of the aging population is pushing many national governments to reshape retirement legislation in order to extend older adults' working life. Once retired, older adults can be invaluable resources for the community as family carers, as volunteers, or by returning to work. Healthy aging is one of the main conditions for being able to work longer and being active after retirement. The latter, indeed, represents a very sensitive life transition, which can entail psychological and social difficulties. Interventions for promoting older workers' health and well-being and supporting the transition to retirement are on the top of the policy agenda of most European countries. Recently, computer-based and digital health interventions have been seen as promising means to reach this purpose.ObjectiveThis systematic literature review aimed to explore studies on digital health coaching programs for older workers that followed a user-centered design approach and evaluated their effectiveness in providing older adults with guidance for adopting a healthy lifestyle and being active in the community.MethodsThe search identified 1931 papers, and 2 relevant articles were selected by applying specific eligibility criteria.ResultsTo our knowledge, only few digital health coaching programs have targeted the population of older workers to date; there is an insufficient number of studies on the efficacy of such programs. The results show the difficulties of assessing the efficacy of digital coaching itself and with respect to older employees. The 2 studies suggest that digital health programs for workplaces can improve various aspects of older employees' well-being; however, they considered health mainly from a physical perspective and neglected contextual, social, psychological, and cultural factors that can influence older workers' health and general well-being. Future digital health coaching programs should adopt the healthy aging paradigm as a multidimensional lens for interpreting the impact of eHealth technology on aging and retirement. The literature around this issue remains at an embryonic state, and this gap needs to be filled by further investigations that apply a user-centered approach for designing the technology, test innovative research methodologies, and adopt new technical solutions for high-quality interaction design.ConclusionsFurther digital health coaching programs aimed at supporting healthy and active living for older workers and retirees are necessary. The user-centered design approach is recommended in order to fully address the users' health needs and the technological requirements throughout development. Moreover, the healthy aging perspective allows inclusion of physical, social, and psychological factors influencing the transition from work to retirement, as well as the experiences and interactions of individuals with the technology.

Project description:BackgroundOrganisational-level workplace interventions are thought to produce more sustainable effects on the health of employees than interventions targeting individual behaviours. However, scientific evidence from intervention studies does not fully support this notion. It is therefore important to explore conditions of positive health effects by systematically reviewing available studies. We set out to evaluate the effectiveness of 39 health-related intervention studies targeting a variety of working conditions.MethodsSystematic review. Organisational-level workplace interventions aiming at improving employees' health were identified in electronic databases and manual searches. The appraisal of studies was adapted from the Cochrane Back Review Group guidelines. To improve comparability of the widely varying studies we classified the interventions according to the main approaches towards modifying working conditions. Based on this classification we applied a logistic regression model to estimate significant intervention effects.Results39 intervention studies published between 1993 and 2012 were included. In terms of methodology the majority of interventions were of medium quality, and four studies only had a high level of evidence. About half of the studies (19) reported significant effects. There was a marginally significant probability of reporting effects among interventions targeting several organisational-level modifications simultaneously (Odds ratio (OR) 2.71; 95% CI 0.94-11.12), compared to those targeting one dimension only.ConclusionsDespite the heterogeneity of the 39 organisational-level workplace interventions underlying this review, we were able to compare their effects by applying broad classification categories. Success rates were higher among more comprehensive interventions tackling material, organisational and work-time related conditions simultaneously. To increase the number of successful organisational-level interventions in the future, commonly reported obstacles against the implementation process should be addressed in developing these studies.

Dataset Information

Work stress among older employees in Germany: Effects on health and retirement age.

Publications

Work stress among older employees in Germany: Effects on health and retirement age.

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