Promoting a Career in the Third Age Erasmus Project

Project Title

Promoting a Career in the Third Age

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

The mission of SILVER project is to provide tools and learning resources for age-friendly workplaces for all sectors.

SILVER project aims to create a coordinated response for the promotion of a career in the third age, that addresses a two-fold ambition:
_From one side, managers, HR and other interested professionals are given awareness, strategies and learning tools to a structured way to contribute to career extension or preparation of retirement, enhancing their readiness to support older workers;
_From another side, older workers themselves are aware of challenges of ageing and empowered for an active ageing within the workplace, either to keep working for longer or to support a smooth transition to retirement.

EU faces a rise of labour force participation of older people: in 2018,32.8% of EU‑28 population had >55 years,being encouraged to remain longer. This pressures both employers & employees as to tackle together the situation & be prepared for a third age career and a pre-retirement stage (Ageing EU Report,2019). There are some strategies to keep older workers’ active, as flexibility of schedule, working at home, part-time, but there can be different approaches which promotes them to stay at office, balance smooth transition into retirement, their engagement and contribution to organisation,whilst promoting their active lifestyle & pre-retirement life – thus,increasing job satisfaction, a key enabling factor for extending working lives (2019 Ageing EU).

SILVER specific objectives are to:
_Identify promising practices & work methodologies on active ageing in the workplace,by sounding old people themselves and HR departments;
_Raise awareness on organisations from different sectors (public, private, non-profit) about their practices & initiatives towards an age-friendly workplace and the improvements needed;
_Promote self-awareness on older workers about their sense of preparation and acceptance for retirement;
_Create an active learning programme, which respond to the needs of organisations and their HR staff in implementing an age-friendly workplace;
_Design and develop a toolbox to promote a career in the third age for older workers, within organisations from different sectors (public, private, non-profit), based on previous findings.

SILVER project will carry out 4 intellectual outputs with the work and effort of 7 partners from 7 different countries:

O1_Examining the field by inspiring practices and storytelling: a collection of desk and field-based-research with 35 inspiring practices, 50 stories of retired older people, and 35 interviews of managers and HR, to analyse the perspective of end-users, make awareness on the topic and provide recommendations;

O2_ Self-assessment Tool on Active Ageing in the Workplace delivered online, on 2 sides: a) awareness of organisations and their use of active ageing policies in the workplace, their preparation for retirement both for their older workers and for their teams; b) consciousness of older workers on their acceptance and preparedness for retirement; the tool will be tested with 140 managers or HR and 140 older workers (50+);

O3_Ageing, working and living – New training workplace for the valorisation of third age workers: development of a training course for 112 managers and HR staff. It will use experiential learning as a method of teaching, with 21 learning materials for a blended training;

O4_ Toolbox to promote a career in the third age: the use of design thinking to create a model of psychoeducational intervention with 21 tools and tested with 35 older workers engaged in workshops delivered by partners.

SILVER seeks for more age-friendly workplaces and more older workers with increased job-satisfaction, raising awareness on employers and employees and increasing the ability of managers and HR staff to implement tailor-made measures.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 394194 Eur

Project Coordinator

MERSEYSIDE EXPANDING HORIZONS LIMITED & Country: UK

Project Partners

• CENTER ZA IZOBRAZEVANJE IN KULTURO TREBNJE JAVNI ZAVOD
• ASOCIATIA EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR SOCIAL INOVATION
• KENTRO MERIMNAS OIKOGENEIAS KAI PAIDIOU
• APROXIMAR- COOPERATIVA DE SOLIDARIEDADE SOCIAL, CRL
• en3karriere
• Transnational Together
• AFEJI HAUTS-DE-FRANCE