Singapore - Keeping older workers healthy ...

SINGAPORE - A health corner where workers can measure their blood pressure and weight. Weekly Monday morning exercises for them to keep fit. Investment in machinery to ease workers' burden of carrying heavy cartons.

These are some of the measures that corrugated box manufacturer TCG Rengo Singapore has implemented to make the workplace friendlier for older workers, said company managing director Phua Thye Hin yesterday. He was speaking at the final day of the Age-Friendly Workforce Asia conference, which saw companies sharing their best practices.

The Minister of State for Health, Dr Amy Khor, who was the guest of honour at the conference, said "a basic starting point" of extending the relevance of workers to the workplace "is to help workers remain healthy and fit for work for as long as possible".

"We also understand that one of the key reservations of employers to employing older workers would be the impact of an ageing workforce on healthcare costs," said Dr Khor, who noted that the Government is trying to help by promoting proactive screening and management of chronic diseases.

Dr Khor said with the re-employment laws kicking in January, tripartite action "needs to be focused on creating the conditions to enable older workers to work longer".

She suggested that employers consider investing in preventive health programmes at the workplace, put in place flexible work arrangements to appeal to the needs of older workers and review if work processes can be changed to help increase the productivity of the older workers.

But "while we can make the national context more conducive to workers", workers themselves "need to want to work longer and take charge of their own career planning and development", Dr Khor told the conference at NTUC Building.

"Individual workers must take responsibility for their own health management ... They also need to make an effort to learn, unlearn and re-learn new knowledge and skills to maintain their relevance in the workplace," she added.

NTUC Assistant Secretary-General Seng Han Thong, who delivered conference's keynote address, reiterated the benefits of employing older workers.

"In those employments where experience counts, the advantages of employing mature workers outweigh the disadvantages." He said the perception of older workers being "more expense and less productive in many ways" has to be changed as "it assumes that mature and young workers are mutually exclusive in the process of delivering economic value".

"What is needed is our ingenuity to make innumerable combinations of matured and young workers to deliver sustainable economic value," said Mr Seng.

Ong Dai Lin

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