working late newsletter 6

7/31/2019 Working Late Newsletter 6

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Working Late: strategies to enhance productive and healthy

environments for the older workforce

Project Update 6 Aug 2012

Working Lateis a four year collaborative research project addressing practice

and policy issues associated with later life working. The project is funded by

the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) Programme. Working Late is developingand evaluating interventions and design solutions to promote health and

quality of working life across the life course.

The project comprises interconnected work packages and this project

newsletter includes a summary of developments within those work packages

over the ast six months.

New dynamics of later life working

During May 2012 we held a series of four

expert panels involving a range of experts

from industry, employment law, occupational

health, transport and academia. These panels

provided an excellent opportunity to gather

feedback on our preliminary findings.

Discussions focused on the policy and

practice implications of the findings and

considered dissemination strategies to

maximise the impact of the research.

The data gathered from these panels will be

invaluable to the research team and we would

like to take this opportunity to thank the

experts who contributed to the reflective and

insightful discussions.

With help from our organisational partners,

we have now achieved our target interviewsample of 108. We have gathered detailed

experiences of job seekers over the age of

50, employees over the age of 50, recently

retired people and managers.

Analysis of the interview data is underway,

with some interesting findings that sparked

enthusiastic discussions in the expert panels

concerning the uncertainties of later life

working, changes in retirement, state pension

age, new identities of ageing and age

discrimination.

For more information see:

www.workinglate.org/may-expert-panels/.
http://www.workinglate.org/may-expert-panels/http://www.workinglate.org/may-expert-panels/


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The journey to work

Over the course of the project, difficulties

with the journey to work and strategies

used to overcome them have been

highlighted by employees and employers,

leading to the development of a range of

stimulus cards. These can be used by

employees, employers and Human

Resources personnel to explore different

ways of travelling to work if journeys are

found to be difficult, costly, tiring or

stressful. The Index card below shows the

structure of the resource according to

each issue, with cards 25-29 providingfurther information on the main strategies

that can support many types of difficulties.

On one side of each card, the issue is

described, along with a list of suggestions

for making the journey to work easier. The

other side provides quotes from

employees about their actualexperiences, along with some helpful links

to other sources of information or

schemes in place across the country.

Although some strategies could be

suggested straight away by our

workshop participants, the cards were

seen to prompt discussion and debate,

leading to a selection of suggestions to

overcome some of the barriers to the

journey to work, e.g. Park and Ride &

car share.

We asked the participants if they were

able to find the information they needed,

if there were any other strategies that

werent included that they would haveexpected, and if these cards would be

useful for employees in the workplace.

A range of additional strategies were

suggested, as well as ideas for

dissemination of the research results.

The project team are very grateful for

the enthusiastic response from the

panel, and these recommendations are

being taken on board.

Finally, we asked for suggestions for a

catchier name for the Journey to Workresource. But youll have to wait until

the next Newsletter to find out what the

name will be!


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Interventions to promote health and

workability

The Walking Works Wonders research

team have completed almost all of the

health screening visits for the 18 monthfollow up. Of the 1119 employees who

originally signed up to the research

programme, 430 returned to visit the team

6 months on, 262 at 12 months, and an

estimated 250 will have been retained 18

months on. Given the on-going turbulent

economic climate throughout the course

of the programme, the research team are

pleased with the rates of participant

retention. The vast bank of data is being

cleaned in preparation for data analysis.

In addition to the health screening data,

the research team also have also

collected over 60,000 step counts onto

the participant website

www.walkingworkswonders.com. This is

an impressive achievement and

demonstrates our participants continued

engagement and enthusiasm in theresearch programme.

The research team begin the final stage

of data collection in August 2012, at which

point returning participants will have been

on the programme for two years. We will

also be conducting interviews with

participants to explore individuals

experiences of their engagement with the

programme. This will enable us to gain

some case studies and real life examples

of how Working Late has directly

impacted on participants lives.

Ageing productively through design

OWL (Organiser for Working Late) is now

in the realisation stages of the project,

following the completion of the data

collection phases. Each collaboratorcompany has provided good access to

workers who have enthusiastically

participated during the data collection,

Half-a-day in the life of and the follow-

on focus groups. Interviews and

observations of work environments,

equipment and tasks were used to gather

the in-depth data on design and healthy

working. 7-8 people from each company

took part and 192 design ideas were

generated by these workers, 51% of

which were deemed as low or no cost.

Some of the design ideas are already

being used by workers, and some were

co-developed by encouraging workers to

think more about what would help them

improve their own health and well-being at

work through design.

The data collected identified key themesthat have been used to direct andpopulate the OWL design resource.

OWL will host participatory design tools,

personal stories and video and audio clipsbased around; understanding Your bodyat work and Workplace design andhealthy ageing.
http://www.walkingworkswonders.com/http://www.walkingworkswonders.com/


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The aim is to encourage thinking aboutthe role of design in workplace andhealthy ageing. Several different @ workcards have been designed to facilitatediscussion.

In addition, in order to help companieswhen planning how to respond to theirworker needs, a downloadable Actionplan has been included to help prioritiseaction ideas based on cost and time.

Other tools include a template for collatingthe ideas generated and information onhow to create word clouds usingWordletm. The next stage is to evaluatethe OWL resource with the collaborator

companies and additional industrialpartners.

In January 2012, Dr Elaine Gosling (neWilliams) presented two papers at theErgonomics and Human Factorsconference in Blackpool, one of whichwas with Esme Shanley who waspresented with a Major Practice inErgonomics Award (Dieter W. Jahns

Student Award 2011) at the conferencefor her undergraduate project related toWorking Late.

The OWL team also had a paperaccepted for the International Society forOccupational Ergonomics & Safety 2012at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA whichwas presented by Elaine in June.

Other News and Events

Our webpage has been fully revamped

(thank you Ricardo!) and contains up to

date information about our current news

and events as well as further informationabout each aspect of the project. You can

find the website atwww.workinglate.org

Professor Cheryl Haslam, Professor

Roger Haslam and Aadil Kazi

presented on the Interventions to

Promote Health and Workability and

Ageing productively through designpackages of the Working Late project at

theHealth and Wellbeing @ Work 2012

Conference at the NEC, Birmingham.

Dr Elaine Gosling and Lois Kerr presented

posters at theLoughborough University

Research Conferencewith Lois Kerr

winning a runner up prize.

Professor Ken Parsons presenting Loiswith a certificate.
http://www.workinglate.org/http://www.workinglate.org/http://www.workinglate.org/http://www.workinglate.org/research/interventions-to-promote-health-and-workability/http://www.workinglate.org/research/interventions-to-promote-health-and-workability/http://www.workinglate.org/research/ageing-productively-through-design/http://www.healthatwork2012.co.uk/http://www.healthatwork2012.co.uk/http://www.healthatwork2012.co.uk/http://www.lboro.ac.uk/researchstaffconference/http://www.lboro.ac.uk/researchstaffconference/http://www.lboro.ac.uk/researchstaffconference/http://www.lboro.ac.uk/researchstaffconference/http://www.lboro.ac.uk/researchstaffconference/http://www.lboro.ac.uk/researchstaffconference/http://www.healthatwork2012.co.uk/http://www.workinglate.org/research/ageing-productively-through-design/http://www.workinglate.org/research/interventions-to-promote-health-and-workability/http://www.workinglate.org/research/interventions-to-promote-health-and-workability/http://www.workinglate.org/

working late newsletter 6

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