Stereotypes of older employees compared to younger employees in Slovenian companies

1.INTRODUCTIONAging population is one of the most salient social and contemporary phenomena in the world (Stamov-Rosnagel and Hertel, 2010; Pitt-Catsouphesand Matz-Costa, 2008). Carone and Costello (2006) explained that by 2050, the population of older workers (55-64) in Europe will grow to 60 percent. Further, Arthur (2006) argued that in the USA, the number of workers over 55 will increase by 73 percent by 2020, and the number of younger workers will grow by 5 percent. Therefore, the workforce will be more diverse in terms of age, and older and younger people are more likely to interact in the workplace, so it is important to examine the stereotypes they hold of each other (Bertolino et al., 2013). Age-related stereotypes are quite popular and often rather negatively biased (Posthuma and Campion, 2009; Rauschenbach et al., 2012; Hertel et al., 2013). Authors Armstrong-Stassen and Templer (2005) assert that the effective development and utilisation of older professional and managerial employees is an important issue. Moreover, organizations are not prepared to tailor the training methods to the needs and preferences of older managerial and professional employees. Stamov-Rosnagel and Hertel (2010) explained that negative stereotypes about older employees, usually based on subjective theories rather than empirical findings, require systematic research necessary to prevent age discrimination due to incomplete knowledge of older workers and related self-fulfilling prophecies.There are many different views about age and aging. In western societies, ageing is often seen in the context of decline and deterioration, while Asian cultures usually value ageing more positively (Leung, 2000). Because of the increasingly aging workforce and the demand of an effective diversity management, companies worldwide have to be aware of the issues mentioned above to achieve positive outcomes (Rabl, 2010). Morton et al. (2005) found that older employees are often seen as an obstacle or as a problem that must be solved and not as an opportunity for companies - especially in terms of transfer of knowledge and experience, which could be exploited.In this paper we present the importance of human resource management in the age diversity of employees in the context of stereotypes in the workplace. The main purpose of this research is to examine if there are statistically significant differences in stereotypes in the workplace between older and younger employees in Slovenian companies. This paper aims to answer the following research questions:RQ1: Are there statistically significant differences in stereotypes of older employees compared to younger employees in Slovenian companies? RQ2: Which stereotypes prevail among older employees compared to younger employees in Slovenian companies? Research presents descriptive statistics and the results of the Mann-Whitney test for answers about stereotypes between older and younger employees in Slovenian companies.The structure of this article is as follows. The next section shows literature review of the stereotypes of employees. The third section describes the methodology used in the survey about the stereotypes of older and younger employees in Slovenian companies. The results of this survey are presented in the fourth and discussed in the last section.2. AGE DIVERSITY AND STEREOTYPES IN THE WORKPLACE2.1. Age diversity in the workplaceAgeing has become a necessary focus of interest in today's society (Aaltio et al., 2014). Studies which were summarized by Shore et al. (2003) show that work attitudes and evaluations of older and younger workers are affected by the ages of their coworkers: older managers usually treat both older and young employees similarly, whereas younger managers provide more opportunities for development to younger employees.Authors Verworn and Hipp (2009) stated that older workers are as motivated as younger workers to contribute to their organizations or that they more consciously engage in discretionary behaviors to compensate for any losses in technical core performance. …