SmartWork took the lead and coordinated together with four other Horizon 2020 projects: Ageing@Work, sustAGE, See Far and us to provide the comments to the EU Green Paper for Ageing that was opened for consultations until 21 April.
The Concerted Response welcomes the initiative to mainstream the topic of ageing in the EU policies as timely, relevant and well-structured. It also calls for better recognition of the potential and the role of new technologies in keeping the older people at work and in good health. New technologies relate here to the digital solutions and include the AI-based tools.
The Green Paper mentions the “wide range of solutions” but it feels that it excluded the number of ideas, tools, methods or approaches that are currently developed, applied, popularised and made available through e.g. initiatives and projects like ours – the technological solutions that can support health, wellbeing and workability of the older people.
The authors of the Concerted Response provided some principles to be followed when promoting the technological solutions for “Making the most out of our working lives”:
- The technologies should be designed in such a way that they are based on the needs of the users and take into account their available skills and resources (in terms of financial, material and digital skills).
- As the office workers have a problem to re-enter the labour market because of their lack of digital skills to use technological solutions, adequate, specific and adapted training(s) should be offered.
- More effort should be put to promoting the positive aspects of a longer working experience and reskilling among the older people, including health and wellbeing, financial and social aspects.
- Cross-sectoral action and responsibility should be promoted, where the industry has a crucial role in not only providing but also adapting technologies and tools introduced to their working environment to the needs of older employees.
- The deployment of technologies should take into account the socio-economic aspects, i.e. the availability of the devices and the internet, and their cost, as well as health and digital literacy of the users.
Read the response click here
