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Introduction
The composition of the global workforce has been changing over the last century (Galanaki and Papalexandris, 2017), and age plays a crucial role in this change. Given that never before in human history has such a large portion of our planet’s population been elderly, population aging is a significant feature of global demography. In a competitive environment that changes constantly and requires creativity, innovation and adaptability, mature employees’ performance, experience and potential for further learning (Paloniemi, 2006) will become valuable assets, especially for companies in developed countries. It is clear that this shift in demographics will require new ways of thinking by employers, who will need to update their management practices regarding an aging workforce.
However, awareness on this issue by the management community seems to lag behind in comparison to issues such as generations in the workforce or talent management. Indicative of this are the ratios of internet search results (5,800,000 for “generations workforce,” 8,240,000 for “talent management,” as opposed to 800,000 for “ageing workforce management” – March 27, 2018). In Greece, in particular, the HRM professional press (“HR Professional” and “HR Newsletter”) has offered around 80 articles and reviews on the millenial generation’s entrance in the workplace, compared to around 15 articles on the aging workforce. Further, according to the latest CRANET research network (www.cranet.org) data from Greece, only 4.4 percent of the participating organizations provide action programs for older employees, as opposed to 26.5 percent of organizations that provide action programs for younger employees (these ratios are 13.6 percent and 31 percent accordingly at the international data set with 6,801 organizations from 35 countries around the world: 2015 – own calculations).
Human resource management (HRM) is crucial for increasing organizational performance (Takeuchi et al., 2007; Huselid, 1995) and HRM functions (training and development, employee participation, appraisal, rewards, status and security, staffing) have been linked to organizational performance outcomes in several ways (Datta et al., 2005), as have employee skills, motivation, commitment, work quality, performance and opportunities to contribute (Lepak et al., 2006; Liao et al., 2009).
From all HRM functions, we focus exclusively on employee staffing. Staffing is probably the single most important HRM practice because “if you have an inadequate personnel, all the trainings, incentives and...