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Abstract
Little is known about the relative influence of age-differentiated leadership on healthy aging at work. Likewise, the age-conditional influence of age-differentiated leadership is understudied, and especially so in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a three-wave longitudinal study, we examined the role that age-differentiated leadership plays in the prediction of work ability, as measured three times over six months (n = 1130) during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany (i.e., December 2019, March 2020, and June 2020). The results suggest that although there were no systematic changes in work ability on average, there was notable within-person variability in work ability over time. Additionally, we find that a balanced approach to age-differentiated leadership that considers the needs of both older and younger employees matters most and complements the positive influence of leader–member exchange for predicting within-person variability in work ability. We also find that older employees’ work ability benefits from an approach to age-differentiated leadership that considers older employee’s needs, whereas younger employees’ work ability especially benefits from leader–member exchange and a balanced approach to age-differentiated leadership. Overall, these results provide initial support for the idea that an age-differentiated approach to leadership is important when considering healthy aging at work.
Highlights
The implications of the aging of the global workforce are well-documented [1]
With respect to Hypothesis 3, which suggested that older workers benefit more than younger workers from age-differentiated leadership focused on older workers, we considered a model with work ability regressed onto ageby-leadership interactions
The results suggest that the slope of the relationship defining between-person levels of age-differentiated leadership focused on older workers and work ability is significant and positive for older workers
Summary
The implications of the aging of the global workforce are well-documented [1]. Along with an on-average older workforce, organizations are experiencing an increase in the age diversity of their workers [2]. One approach that has been proposed to address the challenges of an increasingly age-diverse workforce and to support healthy aging at work is the adoption of agedifferentiated approaches to the design of work systems [8,9], including age-differentiated leadership [10,11] To this end, researchers have defined three subdimensions of agedifferentiated leadership [12]: leadership focused on younger employees (e.g., giving younger employees the support that they need), leadership focused on older employees (e.g., involving older employees in the discussion of upcoming changes at work), and an approach to leadership that balances the needs of both younger and older employees (e.g., promoting a positive “togetherness” between younger and older employees).
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