New Age Audit Assessment Approach for Older Workers in a Longevity Economy: Ways to Support Their Positive Health Outcomes and Career Work-life Extension Efforts

Increasingly, aging adults will be wanting to “age in place” in their homes, workplaces, healthcare services, and broader living communities (e.g., Alley, Liebig, Pynoos, Banerjee, & Choi, 2007; WHO, 2015). To date, no one has developed a holistic“age audit” tool to evaluate the age friendliness of the workplace. Age friendliness in workplace environments goes beyond being a safe and physically-accommodating (e.g., accessible) environment, they also need to support aging workers through reducing the likelihood of loneliness and isolation, fostering cultural diversity in decision making, educating about healthy lifestyle practices, and increasing physical, social, and cognitive engagement. Based upon the content review of available age audit tools, it was concluded that most assessments focus on one aspect of older adult functioning in isolation (e.g., psychomotor capability), the age audit tools are limited in user options and limited in functionality for daily assessments, most age audit tools assessments focus on decline and limitations in older adult’s functioning, and to understand person-environment “fit” issues, employers need to design multi-sensory, multi-function assessments reflecting an integrated and coordinated system of sensory, psychomotor, social, and cognitive performance. A conceptual model related to the design of a workplace-based age audit tool is presented for assessment purposes.