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Older workers in construction are valued by their fellow workers and managers for their experience and skills – but employment practices mean they are unlikely to reach retirement age in the industry.

These are the findings from a Loughborough University research project published last month and sponsored by the Strategic Promotion of Ageing Research Capacity (SPARC), a body set up to encourage more research into the ageing population.

Professor Alistair Gibb, one of the research’s authors, said the interviews with 55 workers aged over 50 revealed a marked preference for direct employment on a day rate over piece work. ‘Older workers felt they could deliver the quality but not always the quantity,’ he said.

However, with most activities delivered through subcontractors and sub-subcontractors, the opportunities for direct employment are rare.

Older workers tend to end up as supervisors in more general labouring roles, which require less manual strength, or they leave the industry, often due to health problems. There are no figures to show how many leave before retirement age but anecdotal evidence suggests few remain in the industry until 65.

Older workers were slow to admit health problems, considering damage such as bad backs as part and parcel of a construction worker’s lot. And they were unlikely to take time off for sickness.

Although there are devices that reduce the need for manual handling, the researchers discovered a reticence among older workers to use them because they feared the devices would slow productivity. Older workers also considered current health and safety practices such as wearing gloves and goggles unnecessary and restrictive.

Gibb said that with a steady supply of skilled, hard-working Eastern Europeans, there was little incentive for employers to adapt working and employment practices for older employees. This view was reinforced by a SPARC-sponsored study from the University of Surrey released concurrently, Workplace Design for the Older Worker. One of the report’s authors, Professor Peter Buckle, said few companies saw a business case for changing the ergonomics or management of workplaces to suit the over-50s.

Buckle said the government should invest in helping companies to adapt to an ageing workforce. Without this, the government would fail to meet its own employment targets since older workers were key to hitting this target, he added.