Page 772 - Week 02 - Thursday, 10 March 2011
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However, recent research shows that people over the age of 55 are not participating in the workforce as fully as they would like. Many older people want to remain employed or return to work but are discouraged by barriers such as negative attitudes, financial disincentives, the need to retrain or to develop new skills and a lack of recognition of existing skills and experience.
As we know, participation in the workforce has many benefits for both individuals and society as a whole. Higher economic growth is in part achieved through increases in labour force participation, with increases in hours worked generally leading to higher levels of gross domestic product per person. At an individual level, participating in the workforce can be beneficial to health, wealth and self-esteem as well as providing opportunities for social interaction.
This report on mature age employment identifies particular actions to support and increase mature age employment in the ACT. This includes actions that can provide employment opportunities for older people as well as assist in alleviating workforce shortages.
The report has proposed recommendations for the ACT government’s consideration, including developing a policy for the ACT public service which includes incentives to retain and encourage the re-entry of mature age employees. The ACT government already encourages seniors to continue to participate in the workforce and, to support this, it is developing an ACT public service mature age employment strategy under our new respect, equity and diversity framework.
The development of the strategy will involve a number of elements, including consultation with the ACT Ministerial Advisory Council on Ageing, an examination of existing conditions of employment that may be enhanced to assist mature age employees, the identification of employment information for needs of the older workers and consideration of options to enhance attraction and retention practices for mature age workers.
The ACT government has also introduced a number of initiatives to support mature age employment in the ACT public sector, including the introduction of grandparental leave, the introduction of a mature age allowance and a range of flexible working arrangements such as carers leave, working from home provisions, job-sharing arrangements, purchased leave, part-time work and temporary employment registers and health and wellbeing programs. Other relevant ACT government initiatives include ACT Health’s return-to-work nurse program and proposed adult apprenticeship arrangements.
The council has also recommended that the ACT government incorporate federal government program information on the Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services’ seniors information portal and provide a facility for employers to list job vacancies for mature age people and for individuals to register their employment interests. The Experience+ website and other relevant federal government sites have been incorporated in the new DHCS seniors information online portal. The portal links older people and those supporting them to a wealth of information about services through a single entry point. Experience+ is a suite of new
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