Hong Kong needs to better address age discrimination in the workplace

The ageing of populations is an unparallelled global occurrence, generating concern about labour and skills shortages in many countries. One way to ­address these concerns is to extend the working lives of older people through appropriate retirement, ­retention and recruitment policies.

Hong Kong only has a mandatory retirement age for the civil service, but most other sectors take this as a valid reference in establishing their retirement-age policies.

Since 2015, the government has taken active measures to extend civil servants’ retirement age.

Recently, the government has made provisions to allow them to stay on beyond the retirement age, subject to approval by heads of department, for a further 12 months, up to a maximum of five years in total. The new mechanism is long overdue and has just been announced, despite an earlier Legislative Council paper stating that implementation would be finalised within the first quarter of 2016.

The new policy comes in response to calls from staff unions to extend the retirement age, and is in line with global trends. One major shortfall of the mechanism, however, is that it gives the line manager immense power and control over the fate of applicants. Moreover, those applying for an extension are denied the prospects of promotion.

Longer and secure working lives lead to greater opportunities for “active ageing”. Conversely, job ­insecurity and low-status, poorly paid positions can be damaging to the health and well-being of older workers.