Building industrial SMEs capacity for managing work ability: Workers life course and gender management approach

http://www.incose.eu./

14 e 16 de Setembro de 2016

 
Building industrial SMEs capacity for managing work ability: Workers life course and gender management approach

Cláudia Fernandes¹, Carlos F. Silva², Anabela Pereira^3
1 CATIM – Technological Center for the Metalworking Industry
² UA CINTESIS – University of Aveiro
³ UA CIDTFF – University of Aveiro

Abstract:

There is comprehensive academic literature on the effects of an aging workforce and its impact on workers, enterprises and public health. According to the 2015 European Annual Report, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) constitute 99% of all European enterprises, employing 2 in every 3 European workers and producing 58 cents in every euro of value added. Therefore SMEs capacitation for dealing with the workers life course is an important issue for maintaining a healthy and productive workforce.

It was conducted a cross sectional survey among 621 Portuguese active metalworking industry workers (386 men and 235 women) with ages between 20 and 65 years old. It was used the Portuguese version of the Work Ability Index (WAI) for measuring Work Ability (WA).

The data show that generally WA decreases with age, but also that there are life periods were gender differences are more pronounced. It were identified three vulnerability age bands according to gender differences on WA: i) 25-36; ii) 40-44; and iii) 60-64.

According to the identified age bands, there are specificities and differentiated evolution patterns according to work absence duration, accidents, physical and mental diseases and/or disorders. It’s clear that WA is not only related with working life but also with the workers ecosystem. This work supports the need for differentiated health and safety management within industry, namely SMEs to tackle with life course and gender specificities.