Is Age a Key Human Factor to be Considered as we Enter the New Millennium? Symposium Summary

Abstract

In most industrially developed nations, the workforce is aging. This is expected to continue well into the next millennium. At the same time, we are in the midst of a period of rapid technological development wherein what we do, how we do it, and the conditions under which it is done are also changing. How these changes will interact with an aging workforce is not clear. It is possible that these interactions will lead to both decrements and increments in worker ability, health, performance, safety, and quality of life. This symposium explores the potential, for these decrements or increments in the next millennium, through a comparison of the diversity now present in the contemporary global workplace. Investigators from Brazil, Croatia, Poland, Ukraine, and the USA offered the same survey to samples of their health care workers. This symposium is the first presentation and comparison of data from all five nations. Overall, these presentations suggest that aging variable differences are a significant factor and merit human factors design consideration.