Longer working lives and age diversity : a new challenge for HRM

An ageing workforce is one of the greatest challenges that organisations face today. Longer working lives result in greater age diversity that should be managed proactively by organisations in order to ensure that workers are able to stay active and productive until retirement age. We hypothesised that perceived work ability mediates the relationship between perceived age-diversity practices and preferred retirement age, and tested it in a sample of Portuguese workers (n= 290). The hypothesis was not supported. However, perceived age-diversity practices were identified as a predictor of perceived work ability, particularly for older workers (≥ 45 years old). Also, perceived work ability predicted preferred retirement age, but not for older workers. The impact of these results on Human Resource Management (HRM) is discussed.