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SINGAPORE: Healthcare cluster SingHealth and Alexandra Hospital have both won an international award for their positive workplace policies towards older workers.
They were the only Asian winners among award recipients from the UK, Germany and Denmark. This is the first time that US non-profit organisation AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons), which represents people over 50 years old, has recognised overseas companies.
Rosalind Tan was a volunteer gardener at Alexandra Hospital while working as an occupational therapist. When she retired at the age of 62, she was offered a different job – landscaping the hospital's environment.
Five years on, Tan is still happily employed. "If I can make a difference helping other people, improving the environment, why waste my time at home? So when I went into it, I got more interested and I got hooked into it and I have continued till today," she said.
The hospital routinely offers re-employment to healthy staff who perform well in order to retain talent.
Last year, 22 staff members at Alexandra Hospital reached the retirement age of 62. Based on their work performance and health, 21 were offered new one-year contracts. Twenty of them continued working – most of them in their former jobs – while one employee chose retirement.
The hospital actively employs people aged 50 years and above, with one in seven of its 1,700-strong workforce categorised as a mature worker.
M K Fatimah, acting director, Human Resources, Alexandra Hospital, said: "By having them around, ultimately our patients benefit because they are able to empathise with our patients."
Healthcare cluster SingHealth employs nearly 15,000 workers. Of these, nearly one in five employees is aged 50 years and above.
The organisation has a unit called Silver Connection, which is dedicated to helping mature workers remain meaningfully employed while fulfilling their personal goals.
Professor Tan Ser Kiat, group chief executive officer, SingHealth, said: "We believe that age brings wisdom and skills that are not easily replaceable. Our age-friendly human resource practices such as retraining, flexi-work arrangement and job redesigning are able to equip and prepare our mature staff for pre-retirement."
As a result of its employment practices, almost 80 per cent of its staff choose to continue working with SingHealth after retirement.
Just over half of Singaporeans aged 55 to 64 years are currently employed, and more can still be done for them.
Gerard Ee, chairman, Council for Third Age, said: "Many employers are guilty of not providing enough training and where they do have training programmes, sadly to say, the better workers are kept so busy that they never have time to attend training courses."
But Mr Ee added that it is also up to employees to stay relevant and up-to-date, and to invest in their own lifelong learning.
- CNA/so
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