In this forum we post all the documents on active ageing (e.g. scientific articles, reports etc.)
Hi
I have written a blog piece for Boston College's Center for Aging and Work. Could you all have a look at the draft and let me know what you think. It's for a primarily American audience, but I like Paolo's idea of also including it on the Adapt platform
Dear Matt,
the piece is interesting and well written: we can publish it in our international bulletin (which is read also by American scholars and social partners).
I edited in the form of the bulletin: can you check please if you like it? Matt, can you remind me your twitter account? We have to mention it behind your sign.
Best,
Paolo
Hi Paolo-
The twitter account is @agediversity. With the blog piece, it's going into Center for Aging and Work, so when they launch it, it would be great if we could also put it in your international bulletin.
Thanks!
Matt
I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post covering the same ground as Matt's.
I will attach it.
Chris
Hi Chris,
Good piece indeed! Thanks! Is ADAPT based in Milan as you say in the footnote? I thought it was in Modena instead.
Mariano
Thanks Mariano, Sorry about the mistaken location. Yes Modena indeed. I will have to change it anyway as they are being very fussy about my word count so I will not be able to include all these details. They are keeping me down to 800 words.
Great piece, Matt. I have enjoyed reading it. Thank you! While reading through your piece I have thought whether we might put together a similar short piece to be translated into our languages (as much as we have time to do it) and submitted to national blogs in the sector of ageing and work. Just an idea!
Mariano
Good idea Mariano,
How long would we want such a piece to be? Would Matt's piece serve the purpose as it stands or would you need it to be edited a bit? It may be helpful to know whether it should have a stronger union or employer angle or a combination of both. I guess each country will want to emphasise a particular national point or two
Chris
For the sake of being practical, let's do as follows:
- each partner, as much as it is possible, takes Matt's piece and tweak it as appropriate to make it relevant to own audience.
- the question remaining is about authorship. Since Matt's piece might go through substantial editing, how should we approach authorship so that it acknowledges both Matt's initial work and additional rewriting by national partners involved?
Mariano
Much better to give yourself as author since you're the relevant person and my name would not mean anything to your stakeholders
Hi I've mapped out the questions I put on the first protocol into the five research questions. Perhaps we could discuss this tomorrow.
Matt
Hi Matt,
we have executive summary here.
Did you mentioned executive summary or protocol?
Best
Iza
The attachment is not the workshop protocol but the short version of the summary of the reports. Is there another document to circulate? (Covered in Skype call yesterday)
Chris
Greetings all-
15th seems to be the best day to have another call. Could you put it in your respective diaries.
I'm attaching the slimmed down version of the workshop protocol. The feedback from the Lodz meeting was that the protocol needs to be less prescriptive and more flexible in order to fit within the four country contexts. With that in mind, please pay less attention to the timing and structures and more to the questions themselves. I have tried to map them to our five overarching research questions to make sure we have everything covered.
The ideal workshop from my perspective would be one in which we have a mix of union reps and employers in which we can split them into two groups, talk to them about active ageing and then bring them together to discuss common themes, areas of potential conflict/agreement, and opportunities for collaboration. However, I recognise that this may not always be possible (e.g. you may only be able to organise workplace discussions with union reps and managers separately), so you can take the union or employer part and apply it to a workshop depending on how it's organised.
I also recognise that the questions are contextualised to a UK focus and everyone wants to ensure that the questions are relevant to their country contexts. With that in mind, there are two suggestions: 1) If you could add to the protocol based on your own national contexts and bring that to the Wednesday 15th meeting, we can see how each of us can use examples of innovative practices from the other countries to prompt discussions. For example, Paolo may want ask about how bilateral funds could be used for supporting active ageing. The UK doesn't have such mechanisms, but his question could prompt Chris and me to ask our respondents how well/poorly a demographic fund could work. 2) We treat the questions as PROMPTS rather than verbatim interview schedules. The aim is to ask our five research questions in ways which are relevant to the people we're talking with (which was Mariano's point) and the protocol is meant to provide different ways to ask the questions. The questions are meant to find out what is done now; what is preventing good practice; what facilitates good practice and how could improvements be made. We should also get some feedback from them in terms of what our training modules could provide which can help.
Matt
Hi,
I attache first example our cover page. Let's see.
We can discuss layout tomorrow during our Skype meeting
Have a nice day
Iza
Dear partners,
I attache second option our layout for cover page. Vote on first or second version. After our choice my graphic will develop 4 cover pages addressed to reports and 4 cover pages addressed to summaries.
Let's vote in four days.
Thanks
Iza
Hi Iza,
In our case, the former version seems better. Thanks!
Mariano
Dear colleagues,
on our forum you have two options for cover page layout. Let's choose one - better version. I am waiting till 28th of November (Tuesday).
Thanks!
Best Regards
Iza
Not sure what Matt's view is but I prefer version 1 - thanks Iza.
Chris
Resources in Spanish for web
Paolo, find attached a document in which you'll find our selection of documents to be uploaded to the ASPIRE website as RESOURCES. All of them except one (for it is a book) include the download link.
I hope that it is what we were supposed to submit.
Mariano & Pilar
Beautiful covers but unfortunately I have no Spanish so I can't read them.
Chris
Thanks!
I will upload them on the website in the next few days.
I kindly ask Iza to do the same with 3-4 Polish documents.
Best,
Paolo
Active ageing concepts - draft blog piece
Hello,
As committed, we have completed a 1,000 thousand words blog piece for you review. Find it attached. We'd like to invite Iza to add a few words so that the Polish case may be mentioned. Feel free to make as many edits as you consider appropriate.
Mariano & Pilar
Many thanks for this too!
As soon as Iza integrates the part on Poland, I'll edit the piece to publish it on ADAPT International Bulletin, if you are happy with this idea.
Best,
Paolo
Hi Paolo,
In attache you can find some reports in Polish. Next week I will send you also materials in English.
Best
Iza
Hi Mariano and Pilar-
Thanks for the blog piece. I really like it. The one thing i might suggest is to make the piece a bit more provocative by titling it something like "Active ageing- what does paid work have to do with it". The point I think you're driving home is that the difference between WHO's and EU's definition of Active Ageing, as well as the spectrum of definitions within the four countries is the emphasis on economic productivity. WHat you could say is that economic activity is not a fundamental goal of active ageing but instrumental to the core goals of independence and security. For the UK (unlike the other 3 countries), if you take extended working out of the equation, it's impossible to achieve security and independence for the majority because the State Pension is too low and the majority of private sector workers have no access to employer funded pensions and/or having to manage financial risk of private savings, so what you're left with is 1/3 of the older population now dependent solely on SPA as the only source of retirement income.
Matt
Hi Mariano,
I think it is a really good piece. Well done! I agree with Matt that you could opt for a slightly more opinionated sounding title but other than that it doesn't seem to need much.
I have made some very minor editorial suggestions - highlighted in yellow in the attachment - to correct small grammatical points in the main.
Best wishes,
Chris
Hello,
Find attached the final version of the blog piece on active ageing, ready for publication. We have included authorship because we are not sure about the policy to apply. Should this piece be just signed as "The ASPIRE research team", an output of a collective effort?
Thank you all for your collaboration!
Mariano & Pilar
Hi!
Please find attached some interesting articles on elderly employment in Japan.
Best,
Paolo
Dear colleagues,
here we have cover pages for GB partner report and summary.
Chris, I asked graphic for the distinction of the country name. The answer was: not possible - much is happening on these covers. This is artistic concept. What to do :)
Thank you for understanding!
Best
Iza
and Spain
Mariano, we need logo your University (empty space in the middle on the white strap).
Best
Italy,
Paolo, we need your logo also
Iza
This report has just been published. It would seem to be relevant to our project
Exploring Retirement Transitions
Chris
Hi everybody,
here we have final version of cover pages.
https://we.tl/unuD2c3VNc version friendly internet use
https://we.tl/2YTZwbgwH7 version for print (good quality).
Best
Iza
INTERESTING PAPER
I have just read this paper and have found it relevant to our research. An excerpt from its "Conclusions" section follows:
"The widespread use of generational labeling without a firm empirical basis is beginning to trouble researchers. Regardless of the validity of generational labels, our study provides some evidence that the use of these labels may negatively impact older workers. These results suggest that generational labels are not merely uninformed or overstated, they are potentially detrimental for older workers. Our study is one of the first to demonstrate that the use of generational labels may negatively impact the ability of older workers to be hired, trained, and treated respectfully at the workplace."
I think that at some point age discrimination (in its many formats) will enter our discussion about the content to be included in the active ageing materials that we envision as one of the main outputs from our project. Different ways to label older workers may have an impact on how age discrimination pervades.
I hope that you enjoy reading the paper as much as I did.
Mariano
Thanks for sharing this interesting piece Mariano - as you say, enjoyable to read. My only concern relates to the problem of language. If one is not to use generational terms for fear of the sorts of impacts implied, are we to ban discussion of generations? Is the mere act of posing a question in generational terms contributing to generational inequity? I can't believe that it is, but if so, pity the poor researcher who is interested in age discrimination but doesn't wish to make it worse!
Chris,
I don't think that the problem is with using generational terms but with adscribing mono-generational identities and tags to people as if this time a one-tag-fits-all strategy might work. My stance is clear in this case: we are all multi-generational depending on the sense of timeliness that we wish to use when trying to understand people's life fully. Therefore, reducing the generational map to a bunch tags (one for each of us) intending to shrink human diversity is not really a powerful pathway. It is a dead-end road instead!
Best,
Mariano
Mariano,
I follow and agree with your thinking on this. I wonder whether you have tried this rather philosophical construct with a bunch of HR managers, union reps or whatever? How did they react? I suspect that they may take the view that "age is age, we count it in years and months and we can't escape the facts of how hold we are, therefore to which generation we belong." Personally, I like the AARP maxim that, "You are as old as you feel and life is what you make it," and I think that, like gender, ethnicity and so on, obsessing over generational differences is sterile, but I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can vary and we can vary with some similarity according to generations, but not only generations and not immutably so.
Chris
Chris,
Of course, a generational perspective is just one possible way to understand who human beings are and how they behave. I have met HR managers and reaised that issue in front of them. Reaction? After some initial bewilderment, and a little time to explain the idea with a few examples, they embraced the concept of multi-generational identities as an interesting lens to understand the workforce.
We need an effort to move beyond chronological age which by the way it says less and less about anyones' motivation, wishes, hopes, fears,... and work preferences, I believe.
Mariano
Mariano,
Your experience interests me. I wonder whether we could write something about this as a joint article for People Management? (One of the key journals for HR practitioners in the UK) Or you may have other ideas. It could be a short piece but your examples would be an important contribution and it would help us to share news about the project.
Chris
Hi Chris,
Of course I am ready for that. It'll be great to combine our thoughts about it.
Mariano
Hello,
This recent document from Eurofound may be interesting in the framework of our project:
Best wishes,
Mariano
PUBLICATION OF NATIONAL REPORTS
Hello,
A quick question. When and where in the website are we planning to upload and publish the national reports? We'd need to share the Spanish report with social partners and it would be better to do it through sharing a link to the site where all reports are available.
Thanks!
Mariano & Pilar
PUBLICATION OF NATIONAL REPORTS
Hi Mariano,
The national reports can be published on the website. In order to upload them, I need all the final pdf versions edited according to a common standard: they are currently not homogeneous in terms of character, style, editing etc.
Best,
Paolo
Paolo,
I thought we had agreed that there would be some variations but the front covers would all be harmonised - which they have been.
Chris
Hi Paolo (and everyone)
First of all I'm sorry I've been so quiet in the last few weeks. I've been terribly busy at work. There's a big strike over pensions in the UK higher education (over pensions) so have been hugely busy. I think CHris and I sent the UK report/exec summary, Euro summary and consolidated summary. Are these ok? Which ones need changing?
By the way- Mariano and Pilar- the blog piece looks great! If it's ok, I'll put it on the CROW website as well. Iza and I have one on active ageing in SME's which can be added after a while.
Yes, Matt, go ahead and put it on the CROW website if you like.
Hi Everyone,
I thought you might be interested in this briefing guide by the UK public sector union, UNISON. It is one of the few I have seen which has been published by a union as a guide for members and negotiators at local or branch level. The Union official tells me that they are trying to put pressure on the Scottish Government to reflect ageing workforce issues in a Fair Work Convention which the Scottish Government is currently working on.
I know Matt has done work in Scotland - he may have other comments
Greetings everyone-
I have in my diary our monthly call tomorrow. I ought to have checked earlier, but is it in everyone else's diaries? If so, along with our rolling agenda, I wanted to talk through some slides I have developed for the BRNO training next month. I may have mentioned that I have been asked to do a short slot with students on active ageing. I thought it would be a good opportunity to 'road test' a structure for the management tool and training material which we will be developing. I've therefore put together a skeletal outline. We have to add flesh to the bone which will be gathering through the workshops. However I thought it would be a good opportunity to get some feedback as we develop the output.
Matt
Thank you, Matt. Talk to you tomorrow morning!
Hi Matt,
When is your presentation in Brno scheduled to take place? Do you have at this stage a more elaborated version of your original Power Point to be shared so that we are able to make comments?
Mariano
Not as yet. The event is 19-22 March. I realise I also owe you an analysis protocol, but I have been incredibly overloaded recently and haven't had time to work on either but i'm hoping to from the weekend. The slides are just skeletal but if you could put notes in of content which you think i should add (maybe just cross refer to the national reports) that would be a huge help. It doesn't have to be elaborate, just a few notes onto the slides.
By the way, do you know when we can get the national reports up onto the website? The project manager may be having a look soon as i'm going to try to give him a verbal briefing of progress in addition to the written report i circulated earlier.
Matt
Paulo would be the one able to say something about publication date for national reports.
Hi all-
The reports now on the website look great. Thanks Paolo for putting them up. (The main report for Spain is missing the cover page. Could we just fix that?)
We talked before about doing a 'launch' of the reports. How should we take that forward. Would you like me to draft a short press release which we can then circulate within our respective universities' press offices?
Matt
Yes, the Spanish report cannot be accessed. I'd suggest to include the reports's title on top of all the reports (by the "REPORTS" headline). Otherwise it is unclear what are all these reports about. Just a thought!
Mariano
Hi everyone-
Greetings from Brno.
Attached are the updated slide. I pored over the national reports and added information. If you all are happy with them, perhaps we could add the slides to the website.
As we proceed with the work, we'll no doubt want to add more information to them. If there are any glaring errors, please let me know.
Matt
Hi Matt,
I have found your slides very interesting. I have introduced slight changes in slides #2, #23, & #25.
Enjoy Brno!
Mariano
thanks Mariano! I'll let you know how it goes.
Matt
I am not sure whether ASPIRE colleagues have seen this report from Eurofound, looking at working conditions fort older workers across Europe, based on the 20015 wave of the European Working Conditions Survey. Some useful contextual material for our work
https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/sites/default/files/ef_publication/field_ef_document/ef1747en.pdf
Dear all,
attached is the template of the FAYP guidelines that might be useful to replicate to draft the ASPIRE short training/learning toolkit answering our 5 questions.
Best,
Paolo
Blog piece on state pension age, health and the hardness of work, Huffington Post
https://bit.ly/2J0fSO5
Chris
Dear Chris,
It would be nice to re-publish it in our bulletin, perhaps with the reference to our project.
Attached is the template where the article should be transferred and edited.
Thanks,
Paolo
Hi everyone-
THanks everyone for our discussion yesterday. Attached as promised is the new coding structure. I've highlighted changes in yellow and explanations when needed.
For consistency, it would be ideal if we could keep to the top and second lines of the nodes but have some flexibility below that. Please feel free to share when you want to add nodes to third line and below when data shows a new issue or idea which emerges.
Matt
Thank you, Matt! Would you please remind us all the timeline ahead for analysis and national report drafting?
Mariano & Pilar
Hi everyone- Attached is the draft of the UK workshop report. It is still very much in draft form and needs a bit of editing. We also have two extra workshops this week which we were unable to organise earlier because of logistics with the employers and unions. However, we want to share with you all to show the general thrust of the report . We're also going to add about 2 a4 sides on what the stakeholders have said they want from us which is mainly online tools. We have highlighted in yellow where we will be adding material
Let us know what you think. Once we get all four reports together, we should have an online call to pull out common themes and areas of divergence.
Matt
Hi everyone. We are attaching the Spanish report after the thematic analysis of our 4 workshops.
Best wishes,
Mariano & Pilar
"That Age Old Question. How Attitudes to Ageing Affect our Health and Wellbeing"
I have found this recent report very interesting with regard to our project.
Mariano