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RESPECT Objectives
The structure of Europe's Population is changing. Changes in birth rates have led to a decrease in the number of younger people in society and a corresponding increase in the number over 50. With these changes, the political and economic power of older people will increase, as they demand better employment, health, social care and other services.
The demographic challenges will lead to greater age diversity in the workforce,
with widespread implications for employers and employees alike.
Nevertheless, the employment rate of ageing workers decreased in almost
every country of the EU in the last decades. The existing work organization
is in general not adjusted to the needs of elderly workers and many elderly
workers are not adequately trained to cope with new technologies. Therefore
one can easily understand the importance of discovering alternative employment
modules and propose new work models or just simple changes to working
environments, their structure and content.
EU funded research project RESPECT (QLK6-2000-00038)
intends to become a major pan-European action to embattle age-related
stereotypes through the development and wide dissemination of scientific
evidence of aged workers physical, social and mental work capacity by
developing, testing and recommending optimum and flexible (to the level
of individually adapted) work models and schemes, appropriate for elderly
(over 45) workers of all types of jobs (manual, mental and mixed).
So, the overall RESPECT aim is the promotion of health, working ability and well-being of ageing employees by a series of cost-effective methods, work models and work policies.
This aim is approached by the following objectives:
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Development of reliable assessment criteria, strategies and tools to evaluate existing and emerging work-method impacts to the worklife, health and efficiency of elderly workers.
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Development of new work-models, to improve the productivity, safety and work satisfaction of elderly workers and to promote their integration into the labour market.
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Proposal of policies for improving the elderly workers' position in the labour market, based upon fully validated cost-effective interventions at the workplace or the relevant legislative framework.
The RESPECT consortium consists of 12 partners, 6 research
institutes and 6 companies from Finland, Germany, France, Switzerland
and Greece. The project has begun in 2001 and the duration of the project
is three years up to March 2004.
For information about the web-site contact Niki Boutsikaki