Training

For the tendency of the aging workforce and updating technological skills in western manufacture industry, older workers training is essential and inevitable. As Armstrong-Sassen and Schlosser (2008) illustrate, organizations should make sure that older workers can learn the new skills and knowledge. They use a model which is called work centrality to prove the importance of the older workers training. This model is linked to five components consisting of development orientation, job development climate, affective commitment and intention to remain. Provided that managers should motivate older staff’s development orientation and offer more learning and training opportunities for the older (Armstrong-Sassen and Schlosser, 2008), the mature workers training is important.

The trend to becoming an aging workforce in western manufacturing industry also propels managers paying more attention to older workers training. According to the research on Smith, Smith and Smith (2010), the labor market in Australia was in a dilemma. The working opportunities decreased so the unemployment was in deep water. On the other hand, employers could not offer enough jobs which do not require certificates or qualifications. As a result, the turnover of older workers should be avoided and measures would be taken to tap into the older workers’ talent. For these reasons, the importance of aging workers training could be shown and it is unavoidable.

After realized the inevitability and importance of older workers training, employers deal with training in aging workforce following intelligent strategies. Koc-Menard (2009, p. 335) provides four empirical strategies, which are “adopting a targeted approach, renewing critical skills, offering new challenges and integrating learning into recruitment”. Smith, Smith and Smith (2010) argued that mature-aged workers generally has lower education and have not formal certificates. Therefore, through adopting a targeted approach employers could select targeted older worker groups which need to training. In this way, employers should identify the groups that should be trained. One group is older employees who have the skills and knowledge which companies require. The other group includes older workers who would like to continuing working. And also, the training should be required to cater for learning styles and preferences of older employees. Such as older workers liking train in the workplace and with younger workers (Koc-Menard, 2009; Smith, Smith and Smith, 2010). “Renewing critical skills” means training should achieve the goal which is updating the skills and knowledge of mature-aged workers. “Offering new challenges” implies that employers should develop the diversity of learning programs which could expand the knowledge horizon of older workers. In addition, employers might integrate training into recruitment so that could attract experienced older job-seekers and improve their learning initiatives.

Retention

Generally, the main reason of organization making older workers involve in training is to remain valued older workers. For the apparent western labor shortage phenomena (reference), it is essential to the retention of older workers. Before taking measures to retention of mature-aged workers, organizations should make a clear that what can make older workers continue to work.

The theoretical framework, the meaning of working (MOW), used to investigate the older workers’ perceptions of continuing working. This model is consisted on three levels in terms of macro-societal level, micro-personal level and organizational level. There are some overlaps among these three levels. The organizational level includes work role identification, societal norms, valued work outcomes, importance of wok goals and work centrality, which macro-societal level and micro-personal level also contain. In addition, macro-societal level and micro-personal level include socio-cultural and personal