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Download fileThe journey to work - exploring difficulties, solutions and the impact of ageing
journal contribution
posted on 2015-01-29, 16:06 authored by Rachel TalbotRachel Talbot, Lucy Rackliff, Colette Nicolle, Martin MaguireMartin Maguire, Becky MallabandA study was conducted in the UK, as part of the New Dynamics of Ageing Working Late
project, of the journey to work among 1215 older workers (age groups 45-49, 50-55, 56-60
and 60+). The aim was to identify problems or concerns that they might have with their
commute, strategies that have been adopted to address them, and the role that employers
can play to assist them. Follow-up interviews with 36 employees identified many strategies
for assisting with the problems of journeys to work, ranging from car share and using public
transport to flexible working and working some days from home. Further interviews with a
sample of 12 mainly larger companies showed that employers feel a responsibility for their
workers’ commute, with some offering schemes to assist them, such as adjusting work shift
timings to facilitate easier parking.
The research suggests that the journey to work presents difficulties for a significant minority
of those aged over 45, including issues with cost, stress, health, fatigue and journey time. It
may be possible to reduce the impact of these difficulties on employee decisions to change
jobs or retire by assisting them to adopt mitigating strategies. It does not appear that the
likelihood of experiencing a problem with the journey to work increases as the employee approaches retirement; therefore, any mitigating strategy is likely to help employees of all
ages. These strategies have been disseminated to a wider audience through an online
resource at www.workinglate.org.
Funding
The work presented here forms part of the Working Late project, a 4-year collaborative research project conducted from 2009 to 2012 and funded under the UK Research Councils’ New Dynamics of Ageing programme (www.workinglate.org)
History
School
- Design and Creative Arts
Department
- Design
Published in
International Journal of Sustainable TransportationVolume
10Issue
6Pages
541-551Citation
TALBOT, R. ... et al., 2016. The journey to work - exploring difficulties, solutions and the impact of ageing. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 10(6), pp.541-551.Publisher
Taylor and Francis / © The Authors.Version
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence(CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2015-01-28Publication date
2016-05-10Copyright date
2016Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Taylor and Francis under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ISSN
1556-8318eISSN
1556-8334Publisher version
Language
- en