Absenteeism in Age-Diverse Work Teams
- Age-diverse work teams are being advocated as an important management tool to enhance performance and productively employ older workers. However, this advice is not founded on empirical evidence. There are very few studies that look at the relation between performance and age diversity of work teams. This lack of evidence is mainly due to a lack of available data. Information on performance andAge-diverse work teams are being advocated as an important management tool to enhance performance and productively employ older workers. However, this advice is not founded on empirical evidence. There are very few studies that look at the relation between performance and age diversity of work teams. This lack of evidence is mainly due to a lack of available data. Information on performance and worker composition of a productive unit is available almost exclusively on the plant level in matched employer-employee data sets. But on the plant level/age heterogeneity of the workforce does not tell much about age diversity on the level where co-operation/teamwork takes place (work teams, departments, etc.). If all of the older workers work in the administration whereas all the young employees work in the production, the firm's workforce may be highly age-diverse, but work teams and departments are age-homogeneous. This problem notwithstanding, Grund and Westergård-Nielsen (2005) look at the relation between productivity and the standard deviation of workers’ age in a sample of 7,000 Danish firms. They find a hump-shaped relation.…
