Abstract
The ageing of population in Western societies has a marked impact on social reality and its effects affect many areas, including work.
Ageing has implications, both positive and negative, in people’s abilities and skills. While some abilities (vision, hearing, strength …) may decrease, some cognitive functions, such as controlling the use of language or the ability to process complex problems, may improve with age.
Although the effects of ageing on skills have been widely studied, the variability of the evolution of people makes it necessary to have assessment methods that consider older workers and, in particular, that value the ability to work and guide towards criteria that favour labour insertion and ergonomic adaptation of jobs.
These are the principles that have guided the development of the “Ergo + 50” methodology, an ergonomic assessment procedure aimed at detecting working conditions that have a specific relationship with the ageing process. The methodology includes two interrelated modules that analyse, on the one hand, the characteristics of tasks and jobs (environmental conditions, cognitive aspects, physical load, design, organization, policies …) and, on the other hand, the perceived abilities of older workers, to carry out the tasks. The results obtained include the prioritized diagnosis of the situation, as well as recommendations for improvement.
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Remesal, A.F. et al. (2020). Ergo + 50: Ergonomic Assessment Methodology Aimed at Older Workers. In: Goossens, R., Murata, A. (eds) Advances in Social and Occupational Ergonomics. AHFE 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 970. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20145-6_3
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