Working Life > Employee > Senior Employees

Generation 50 plus: Potential or Burden?

Older employees have a difficult life: the advances in productivity that have been reached through automation and the effects of globalisation have, especially in Germany, lead to employees aged 50 or more were prompted to terminate the contract of employment by means of a financial settlement, such as severance payment. In doing so, they were sent into unemployment or early retirement.

The effects are disastrous. In the meantime, every fourth person registered as unemployed is over 50 years old. According to research by the Institute for Market Research, more than 60 percent of German companies dispense with employees over 50. In spite of years of experience, usually good education and further training, professional competence and social skills as well as knowledge of the industry, it is difficult for these unemployed persons to find a new permanent job.

The reasons for this are multifarious: they are supposedly too old, to sickness-prone, too inflexible, too expensive, not able to withstand stress and not creative enough. Another not so often mentioned reason may be that those interviewing and employing, the management and the personnel officer themselves are younger. And who likes to employ someone who is possibly superior to them in experience and competence?

In the meantime, the government has recognized that older employees can hardly be placed anymore and decided to take affirmative action. Competence is coming back to the foreground and a healthy mixture between younger and older employees is being aimed at. In addition, there is an increasingly lack of skilled employees in certain fields and the pensionable age has been increased to 67 years of age.

• Apply for jobs and elaborate your professional experience as well as your social skills
• Cultivate your networks and broaden them constantly
• Improve yourself. It does not always have to be expensive seminars. You can find a range of possibilities in libraries and on the internet that are often free-of-charge or affordable

• How to find a job after 50 by Betsy Cummings
• Fifty plus: give meaning and joy to the best time of your life by Bill Novelli, Steve Case and Boe Workman