Industrialized workforces across the world are aging and growing more age-diverse. It is estimated that by 2024, 38.2% of workers in the United States will be age 55 or older (Toossi et al., 2015). Similarly, in about half of the European Union (EU) countries more than 20% of the workforce will be older than 55 in 2035 (Aiyar, Ebeke, & Shao, 2016). At the same time, the overall labor force participation rate is declining. In the United States it is estimated that the labor force participation rate will be 61% by 2026 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017). Similarly, the EU workforce is expected to decline by 4.3 million people by 2020 (Eurostat, 2017), and it is expected to shrink further by 12% in 2030 and by 33% in 2060 compared with 2009 levels (European Commission, 2010). These low rates of workforce participation along with the aging workforce strain retirement systems and other social safety net programs. For example, while there were 3.8 people of working age for every dependent person over 65 in the EU in 2002, this number fell to 3.2 people in 2015. By 2020, there will be fewer than three people of working age for every dependent person over 65 in the EU (Eurostat, 2019). To combat this strain on retirement systems, many European governments are raising their official pension age, but labor market participation continues to decrease from age 50 onwards in Europe (Eurostat, 2017). In addition, with increased retirement ages, workplaces are growing more age-diverse, with younger and older people working together more frequently than in the past (Boehm, Kunze, & Bruch, 2014; Finkelstein & Truxillo, 2013).

Each year since 2015, the Visibility Committee of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology has hosted Smarter Workplace Awareness Month, highlighting the work that I-O psychologists do to make work better for everybody, and providing resources organizations can use to improve their workplaces.

For the third week of the 2019 celebration, SIOP members share information and insights on agility and agile organizations, the gig economy and contract work, and sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement.

SIOP Fellowship Committee Chair Derek Avery is encouraging all SIOP Members to submit their nominations for Fellowship before the November 1 deadline. As an I-O psychologist who has devoted his career to studying and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, he acknowledges that SIOP fellows are not representative of our society in a number of key dimensions. By pointing this out, he does not seek to diminish the accomplishments of those who have received this prestigious honor, but rather to call attention to the possibility that other deserving individuals have not been recognized similarly for their accomplishments. Lack of diversity among the SIOP fellows is not a new discovery.

SIOP’s Smarter Workplace Awareness Month continues with a question and answer session with SIOP member Carra S. Sims on another Top Ten Workplace Trend for 2019, sexual harassment.  Carra is a senior behavioral and social scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

The Gig Economy is #4 on SIOP’s Top 10 Workplace Trends and, as part of SIOP’s Smarter Workplace Month, Emily Campion, assistant professor of Human Resources in the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University, agreed to answer some questions to help us understand why it is growing in importance (moving up six spots from number 10 in 2018).