ABSTRACT
This part of the book attempts to relate human changes brought on by age, to modifications in the work environment. The basic question raised is how can these two kinds of change be reconciled, at both the personal and company levels. Job transformations undeniably offer interesting opportunities for adapting the work environment to the human worker. The need to rapidly cash in on technological investments makes it necessary for employers-right from the planning stage-to foresee any potential operating problems caused by the non-adaptability of a new device to its operators and to the actual job it is intended to perform. There are two sides to this story, however. The massive introduction of new technologies into work situations, with the obsolescent knowledge they engender and the ensuing and increasingly frequent need to acquire and/or restructure employee skills, generates a number of problems for both the company and the working population. This is true, for instance, of unskilled workers, for whom new technologies may lead to difficulties such as unemployment, retraining, or even career changes. More highly qualified individuals also have problems, however: many years of experience in an occupation, which in other cases is an asset because it grants these ‘experts’ a high degree of adaptability, may turn into a liability when it comes to technological change. Furthermore, the sheer pace of such transformations is often a major constraint for many employees. In the face of this constraint, companies too often take the easy road, so that rather than questioning the new job requirements themselves, they search for ways of separating the employee population into two groups, one consisting of those who appear apt to succeed at making the change, and the other, of those who do not. In such cases, the most frequently used selection criterion is age. The chapters in this part show that using age to account for the difficulties encountered during a transition often masks a series of problems that are, in fact, rooted in the way the company goes about making the change.
