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Another impact of ESF on older workers has been around helping their employers to grow and become 'more competitive'. Interestingly, it was only under the older workers target group that benefits to employers were clearly identified by stakeholders as an impact of ESF- for the other two target groups, the impacts were only focused on the individual. This is partly explained because many of the older workers supported were in work meaning an improvement in their skills levels, qualifications and self esteem for instance not only benefited them but also led onto a more productive and improved workforce for employers. None of the ESF projects that were looked at as part of this study had undertaken any assessment of the economic value of skills development on employers themselves.

The project example below provides details of an Austrian project that worked with employers to encourage them to support their older workforce.

Title: "Flexibility Advice for Companies", Austria

The Project works with companies directly as well as jobseekers, and has a successful programme called "Flexibility Advice for Companies". The project receives 46% funding from ESF, with the objective of enabling older people to stay longer in the workplace and helping their employers become more competitive and benefit economically. This measure promotes training for HR/ personnel managers, analysis of the staff age structure, promoting occupational health, restructuring companies and finding new ways of working (to take account of the needs of older workers). Take up in Vienna has been high and the project now has a contract from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2013, and the programme is to be mainstreamed nationally across Austrian federal states. In the regional state of Upper Austria this ESF supported AMS instrument focusing on organisational aspects was further piloted and evaluated with 77

companies, complimenting "work management coaching" funded by the regional government, which focused on individual capacities with 901 coaching conversations.

Companies receive up to 15 days of advice including three steps: an initial advice day to establish what advice is needed, followed by a "Flexcheck" (up to 5 days) outlining which 1-3 of the seven action areas in the programme are most appropriate for the company. Some 91 companies have explicitly opted to focus on "Productive Ageing". "Productive Ageing" was already an action area in the previous "Flexibility Advice for Companies" contract, but has now become a stronger focus in the current contract, which the Austrian social partners wanted to include, along with Diversity and Work-Life balance.

Previously most companies opted for actions relating to organisation and compressed working hours especially for mothers. Examples of actions include maps of 'older people friendly' workplaces, training plans for employees and a special support day for women. A key success factor is that the PES advisors have strong links with the companies, working directly with employee works councils, which helps to successfully embed the messages in the advice, compared to an approach that only engaged managers. The output of the measures has been as follows: between 2007 and 2010 almost 1300 companies with over 50 employees took part in the first stage of advice under Flexibility Advice for Companies, with more than 577 companies having more intensive advice, while in March 2011 4700 companies had taken up the similar "Qualification Advice for Companies" aimed at those with less than 50 employees. Some 1600 companies rated their satisfaction with the measures as very high.

An example of the impact can be seen in a company that runs old people’s homes, employing 800 people, mainly women, almost half of whom were aged over 45 themselves. Advice on the results of an employee questionnaire led to measures that reduced the amount of illness and incapacity, through rewriting task descriptions with age in mind, management of returns to work after sickness and training being offered to employees with caring responsibilities for seriously ill relatives for example with Alzheimer's. An additional achievement was for employees to receive an extra week’s holiday from the age of 50. These changes were also seen as increasing job security.

Meanwhile “Flexibility Advice for Companies” advised firms on the temporary introduction of shortened working weeks, to minimise job losses during the economic crisis in 2008-10, which was very well received even by EU critics. The measure achieved a very high participant satisfaction rating of 1.6,153 and was very significant for employees and employers, and successfully maintained employment as very few companies had to make redundancies154.

Although the above issue is positive, stakeholder perception was that employers were apprehensive about 'investing' in their older workforce because the return on investment was limited. This was mainly because, according to stakeholders, employers perceived older workers as coming to the end of their working lives and that investment in skills and training would only bring benefits to the employer for a short period of time- often only a few years. Alternatively, employers saw investing in the skills and qualifications of their younger workers was seen as a longer term benefit to their competitiveness and which is why they were less apprehensive in terms of putting them forward for ESF supported provision. 153

AMS Annual Report, and evaluation of “Flexibility Advice for Companies”

154

This issue was picked up in an overall assessment of older workers and ESF155 which highlighted it as a possible barrier for a greater number of older workers being supported and benefitting from ESF.