ABSTRACT
The special sensitivity and dependence that older workers feel towards their environment affect health and well-being. Training in information technology was often inappropriately managed and an absolute reliance on screen-based work was viewed as unhelpful by professionals who have spent much of their career honing their skills and optimising their productivity. Above all, there is a kind of unseen institutional bias within even the most humane organisations that manifests itself in uncertainty and ambivalence about the value of an ageing workforce. More recently, the American academic Franklin Becker has written about 'organisational ecology' the symbiotic relationship between the social organism of the organisation and the internal physical structure of the environment within which it breathes and mutates. Few company leaders initiate a programme of change management without at least some mirroring or underpinning in the physical design of the workspace. This explains why there has been so much restless experiment in office design in recent years.
