ABSTRACT
Over recent years much attention within the United Kingdom has been focused on the work experiences of employees aged 50 and over. This interest has been driven by a number of factors: first, the aging workforce and growing life expectancy of the UK population has led to the need to retain older workers in order to access the skills and experience required by organizations and reduce the strain on social security systems; second, changes in UK legislation have outlawed age discrimination in line with EU Directives and, more recently, abolished employers’ ability to set a default retirement age. Consequently people can now continue to work for as long as they are willing and able to do so. On top of this, people themselves are being driven to work longer either for reasons of financial necessity or to meet their desire to remain actively involved in purposeful activity and the social networks that work provides. Within the UK, as across the rest of Europe, this has led to a move away from the trend of early retirement apparent in the 1980s with the result that over the past decade, an increasing number of older people (those aged 65 and over) are remaining in work. This increase is seen in both full-time and part-time employment (ONS 2012), as well as in those returning to work after having retired and stopped work (LV= 2012).
