Ageing engineers’ occupational self-efficacy to continue working until expected retirement age

Background: Engineers' work has become increasingly complex and demanding in today's ever-changing working life. At the same time, the workforce is ageing, and the society demands longer working careers. Occupational self-efficacy, that is confidence in one's own capability to perform work tasks successfully, is an important personal resource in working life and essential for coping with work-related changes. Self-efficacy has also been shown to compensate for the negative effects of engineers’ job demands on their psychological strain. However, occupational self-efficacy of ageing engineers is under-researched. Therefore, this study explored ageing engineers' self-efficacy to continue working until expected retirement age.
Method: A total of 125 engineers, aged 45-65 years, and working in globally productive companies based in Finland, answered two open-ended questions in an online survey about what positively and negatively influences their belief that they can continue working until their expected retirement age. Qualitative inductive manifest content analysis was used to analyse the data.
Results: The ageing engineers gave 574 utterances about their occupational self-efficacy for a full working life. The qualitative analysis revealed six categories regarding what positively influences the engineers’ confidence to continue working until expected retirement age: Engagement in one's own health, Healthy work environment, Confidence in one’s own competence, Intrinsic work motivation and life orientation, Social inclusion and leadership support, and Personal life and financial conditions. Six categories emerged that negatively influence confidence to continue working: Declining health, Consequences of workload, Insufficient security and work well-being, Declining prime mover of work, Jurisdiction and societal attitudes, and Leisure and economic situation.
Conclusion: Supporting the perceived health of ageing engineers and continuously improving the working conditions that directly and indirectly affect health, together with a supportive working community and leadership, are essential aspects of enhancing ageing engineers’ occupational self-efficacy that they can continue working until their expected retirement age. In addition, valuing the acquired knowledge of ageing engineers and enabling their continued knowledge development are crucial as well.