It Is Never too Late to Learn: The Role of Organizational Support in Older Employees’ Learning

Abstract

For last decades, lifelong-learning has been receiving growing attention as playing a crucial role in active ageing social policies. Due to numerous controversial research findings regarding older employees’ continuous learning, our work focuses on comparing older vs. younger employees in terms of their motivation (willingness) to learn and outcomes that result from learning and training processes. Our results do not show statistically significant differences in learning results of both groups of employees, neither nor in general motivation for learning. However, the results show that older employees engage in learning less to fulfil their career goals and more to improve their work efficiency as well as facilitate knowledge transfer to the workplace. The crucial role of perceived organizational support for older employees’ continuous learning and training at workplace is further discussed. Key words: workforce aging, older employees, motivation for learning, age management.