Older Workforces: Re-Imagining Later Life Learning

We are all going to become old. Many countries are ageing demographically with ageing workforces. Despite anti-discrimination and equality laws, older workers are routinely left out from learning opportunities even unconsciously so, suffer stereotyping or they simply do not participate. Why is this so? This book looks to understand the background to this and re-imagine older workplaces to capitalise on older workers.

The author explores what learning and development offers a best fit for older workforces through literature, research and case studies with organisations and individuals. She considers how an organisation might shift its strategic processes to offer a holistic workforce opportunity of value to both employee and employer, as it is cognitive skills that will be needed in future workforces.

Emphasising the area of work agency and the human right to learning, this book turns ageing and learning in workplaces on its head, seeing older workers as vessels of untapped potential. It re-imagines their possibilities in a time of intense demographic and digital change. This book will be a pragmatic guide to academics, researchers and practitioners in the fields of workplace learning, human resource development, social policy and diversity.

Domini Bingham is Lecturer in Educational Leadership at the Institute of Education, UCL, United Kingdom. She leads on several modules of the MBA (Educational Leadership), MA Leadership and MA AELM (Masters in Applied Educational Leadership and Management). She researches in the areas of ageing, older workplaces, leading for wellbeing, workplace learning and citizenship in schools. She is a former adult teacher with a wider professional background in international development, the media and marketing. She has previously worked at the Commonwealth Secretariat and as Deputy Literary Editor of The Mail on Sunday, in the film industry and in public relations. She is a Chartered Marketer and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a Teaching Fellow, Advance HE.