Management, measures and maintenance: Success and setbacks in interventions promoting a healthy and sustainable employability and working life for all ages

Background: The labour force is ageing due to the demographic change and the postponement of old-age retirement in many countries.

Objective: In order to increase the possibility for employees to maintain their employability and to keep working in an extended working life this intervention project tested a distance education as a technique to integrate a theoretical model for a sustainable working life for all ages (the swAge-model) as a practical management tool in fourteen municipality managers’ ordinary work situation.

Results: Most of the participating managers had difficulty completing the entire training program in this intervention project due to external circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and re-organisations, and because no extra time during working hours had been allocated to the managers to participate in the intervention project. Despite this, all participating managers appreciated being given the opportunity to participate and take part in the content of the intervention. Everyone considered the theoretical model, the wage model, on which the intervention project was based, to be very useful and to have given them new insights into their managerial duties.

Conclusions: If society and organisations want a larger amount of employees to participate in working life until an older age, they also need to allocate working hours for managers to acquire new knowledge on how to create healthy and sustainable workplaces for all ages, as well as to implement these tools, measures and working methods permanently in the daily organisational work.