Abstract
AbstractThe aim of this study was to explore older workers’ motivation for a full or extended working life. With particular focus on assistant nurses aged 55–64 years, working in the elderly care sector. Focus group interviews were conducted with five different groups of assistant nurses. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews and five main themes were developed from the data: ‘Organisational issues’, ‘Health-related problems’, ‘Private issues’, ‘Meaningfulness and appreciation’ and ‘Social support’. Several of the main themes concerned problems with too high work demands of the assistant nurses. These findings suggest that it is important to improve the working conditions of assistant nurses in order to create a more sustainable working life. Increasing the number of staff and improving recovery opportunities and work–life balance could be important steps to improving the working conditions for this group. Finally, upgrading the competency and professionalism of assistant nurses could help to increase the motivation for a full or extended working life.
Highlights
The workforce in Europe is getting older than ever before (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2007)
High demands Participants reported that they did their best to carry out the various work tasks, but that it was difficult to complete them all in the time available
The high demands resulted in a longing for retirement
Summary
The workforce in Europe is getting older than ever before (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2007). State pension ages (SPA) have been raised in many European countries (Round 2017) and the European Union supports retirement reforms that encourage and enable people to work longer (European Commission 2012). In the United Kingdom, for example, the SPA will rise to 66 by the year 2020 and further increases are planned (Lain and Vickerstaff 2014). This demographic shift poses both challenges and opportunities and calls for the implementation of policies that promote healthy ageing and a sustainable working life (Nilsson 2016a). One sector that will be greatly affected by these demographic changes is the elderly care sector.
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