Employers and occupational health therapists must play a key role in ensuring that the older working age population is empowered to work later by implementing workplace interventions and promoting work ability, new research says.
The findings came on the eve of a House of Lords report which revealed serious concerns about how employers were preparing to deal with the UK's increasingly aging population.
The results were presented as part of the Working Late project, a collaborative research project led by Loughborough Univerisity and funded under the New Dynamics of Ageing Programme, which explored the problems faced in later life working.
As a result, the project has developed a number of interventions which it hopes will maintain and improve health and workability in the workplace.
According to the research, the average worker sat for around 9.5 hours in total during a workday - most of which was spent at work. Yet in what was described as a "sitting epidemic" people were found to be sitting for almost as much time at 8.5 hours on a non-work day.
This was also directly correlated to body mass index, as those with a normal BMI sat for the least amount of time on a workday while those in the obese category sat for the longest at around 10 hours a day.
Psychological wellbeing was also significantly affected, with workers sitting for the longest periods of time scoring the lowest in terms of psychological health measures.
In addition, when participants in the project were asked about their engagement in physical activity, two thirds said that they regularly exercised. However, when the responses were broken down into the defined physical activity criteria - 30 minutes of moderate physical activity, five times a week - just a third of those interviewed had met the required levels.
However, the research found that those in the younger category were less likely to meet the required physical activity levels per week than the older workers in the 50+ age group.
To provide an intervention for this, the Working Late project developed the Working Walks Wonders initiative, to encourage more walking in around the workplace by offering employees tips and tools to increase their physical activity.
Over the 12 month period that the initiative was carried out, organisations reported a reduction in absence among their employees, which amounted to one day per person per year, while work performance increased by 10%.
Further findings found that healthy behaviours could also be encouraged through more thoughtful design at work, through equipment, layout and planning. By empowering worker involvement in designing decision processes, particularly among older workers, the project said that organisations could learn from older and experienced workers about good design, healthy working and therefore healthy ageing.
The project also explored ways that the journey to work could be simplified or made more enjoyable for individuals who wished to carry on working later on in life.
From anecdotal evidence, the project found that where a younger person was having trouble travelling to work they may be more likely to change jobs. However, when an older worker was experiencing problems they may be more likely to consider giving up work altogether.
Presented in the Improving the Journey to Work handbook, strategies included finding ways of avoiding busy public transport routes, lowering fuel costs and identifying issues in cycling and walking.
New Dynamics of Ageing Programme director Dr Alan Walker said: "This is a really critical issue that this project is focusing on because the ageing of the population means the ageing of the workforce. And unfortunately a lot of policymakers think that they can make people work longer by just raising the pension age and it's a deal more complicated than that.
"That's what this project is really about, how can we marshal that complexity by research with policy and practical implications for finding ways in which to enable people to work longer. And that's why this project is really at the heart of the current debate about the ageing of the population."
