Work in Progress: Barriers and Concerns of Elderly Workers Towards the Digital Transformation of Work

Digital transformation of work is in progress and will force employees to focus on computer related competences, training and flexibility. In addition, elderly workers are less experienced and slightly less efficient in training, will play a key role for labour markets in the near future due to demographic change. To understand elderly workers needs and to further guide this transformation process, this article focuses elderly workers concerns and barriers about the digital transformation at work. In a fist step, we could identify user, technology, and context related factors of importance, such as working effort, lack of competence, unclear responsibility, fear of unemployment, compromised work-life balance, insufficient legal foundation, changing habits, and lack of support in the company. In a second step, we found that elderly workers are most concerned about changing habits, but nevertheless, concern ratings were not high. These results show that it is of high importance to consider employees needs during the digital transformation of work. Results were discussed in order to provide validated instructions on how to supervise and encourage digital transformation, and how to ensure participation of less technology enthusiastic workers.