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Study Finds Older Workers Facing More Stress Than Young Colleagues

Posted on: Sunday, 21 November 2004, 18:00 CST

VANCOUVER (CP) - Older workers are facing higher levels of stress at home and on the job, says a new study by a major Canadian employee-assistance provider.

The study by WarrenShepell Research Group should be a warning sign to employers because almost half of Canada's workforce will be over age 45 within a decade, says chief executive Rod Phillips.

"Today it would be about 35-36 per cent and that's still a lot of people," he says.

Toronto-based WarrenShepell, which provides counselling and other mental-health services to about 2,500 Canadian corporate clients, commissioned its research arm to do the study after spotting trends in calls to its help centres.

While a lot of research has been done on the aging of the North American workforce, Phillips says there was little factual data on how older workers cope with stress.

He says the study, using data from the last three years, overturns previous assumptions that older, experienced workers are better at dealing with stress than their youthful counterparts.

Conventional wisdom and academic research created an image of the serene, graying older worker who understands what's going on and is unaffected by change.

"We found that actually the older category of workers that we were looking at - 50 years and older - actually were experiencing about 60 per cent more workplace stress in the last year of the study, which is 2003. . . and almost twice the level of workplace conflict," says Phillips.

"That's at odds with people's common perception and also at odds with some of the research that's been done."

The study also found older workers used employee-assistance programs less often - an average 9.45 per cent be between 2001 and 2003, compared with 40.83 per cent for 30-to-39-year-olds and 30.16 per cent in the 40-to-49 age group.

The figure could relate to a smaller number of older workers in most organizations but the study said it's widely known older people are less likely to seek help for psychological problems.

The study speculates the higher stress levels could mean older workers wait until their troubles are severe before seeking help, suggesting the problem may be even larger than the figures indicate.

Another factor could be the increasing diagnosis of psycho-social problems, says Dr. William Koch, a researcher at the University of British Columbia.

Koch, a psychologist specializing in stress-related conditions, says a Finnish study a few years ago found stress-linked disabilities now far outstrip those tied to physical ailments.

"What's happened is we're probably identifying more of those so-called psycho-social difficulties at this time," he says.

Older workers who did seek counselling reported slightly more personal stress and more grief. They were also more likely to report work-relationship conflicts and workplace stress, and at a rate that's growing faster than their younger colleagues.

Some factors are directly related to the arc of a person's life, Phillips suggests.

Added grief is understandable as aging workers begin to lose friends and relatives to death.

And while many have stable relationships at home, the trend towards later marriage and child-rearing pushes some kinds of domestic relationship stress into a later stage of life.

Koch says baby boomers also tend to have older living parents than the previous generations and are also more likely to have kids living at home.

"That describes my life perfectly," says the University of British Columbia researcher.

The workplace itself has also changed, says Phillips. Seniority and experience have become less valued in many globalized, "agist" organizations and retraining is highly stressful for those over age 45.

"That security that came with tenure isn't recognized and doesn't seem to be a reality any more," says Phillips.

The study's findings are of more than academic interest because there's no flood of young workers ready to replace baby boomers.

Immigration is one source of replacement workers, says Phillips, and the other is older workers who opt not to retire early or chose second and third careers.

"It's another reality that companies are dealing with: they can have 53-year-old people who are starting a brand new career with them but have already been working 20-30 years," he says.

The issue isn't relevant to every employer, says Phillips, for instance a video-game design company staffed by caffinated twentysomethings.

But other employers need to tailor their organizations and benefit programs to account for their aging workforce, says Phillips. Training is one example.

"We know from a lot of research that older people tend to require a longer period to train but they also tend to retain much more of what they're taught," he says.

It can be as easy as retooling web-based training programs to make the information on the screen easier to see for bifocaled workers.

Employers can also adapt the workplace to exploit the advantages older workers bring - experience, wisdom and degrees of independence.

It also suggests flexible work schedules, flexible retirement and encouraging their desire often to mentor a new generation and give something back to their community.

When it comes to helping with physical or mental health problems, employee-assistance programs should make it easier for reluctant older workers to seek help if they need it. One suggestion, says Phillips, is a 24-hour hotline to get medical advice.

"That becomes more relevant at a certain age," he says.

Koch says many employers have already made changes but "it's always a bit of a hard sell job because it involves money."

Source: Canadian Press

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