Recruitment of seniors: which kind of employers recruit seniors – and why?

Abstract

The article investigates seven theoretical based hypotheses regarding the extent to which public and private companies are dispositioned to hire older workers. First, we test whether seniority-based wages are a reason not to hire older workers. Second, we analyze the propensity of companies to hire older workers at a time when investments in staff are needed: after implementing technological or organizational changes. Third, we test whether organizations are less likely to hire older workers if top management has negative perceptions of older workers. Fourth, we test whether companies are more likely to recruit older workers if they face recruitment problems in tight labor markets. Fifth, we test whether companies exhibiting a high concentration of older employees are more likely to hire older workers as compared to companies with a low concentration of older employees. Sixth, we test whether HR-offi cers in organizations where management is relatively old tend to hire workers that resemble themselves with regard to age. Finally, we test whether companies employing age management are inclined to hire older workers. We test these hypotheses using data from a survey with some 2.525 Danish workplaces (SeniorArbejdsLiv.dk). Two dependent variables were used: whether or not (1) the workplace had hired older workers (logistic regression) and (2) the share of older workers among those hired (linear regression). Despite reasonable explained variance (20% hired older workers and 32% of the share of older workers recruited), fi ve of the seven hypotheses are rejected. The only variable found to have a signifi cant impact is age of HR-offi cers and the share of older workers already employed. The higher the average age of HR-offi cers, the higher the propensity to hire older workers, and fi rms that already have a large share of older workers among its staff are also more likely to recruit additional older workers. Especially, the effect of the share of older workers is very strong. As a control variable, we furthermore found that large companies are more inclined to hire older workers than small companies.