Healthy aging at work: what employers can do, based on evidence

According to Eurostat, the EU employment rate for people aged 55 to 64 has been on an upward trajectory for the past decade. In 2025, it stood at 72.3% for men and 60.8% for women, up 12.2 and 13.5 percentage points respectively since 2016. The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) notes that extending working lives has been an objective of national and European policies since the late 1990s, and that managing safety and health for an aging workforce has become a priority.

France is one example of how this plays out. The minimum age at which an employee can retire depends on their year of birth, and the 2023 pension reform raised it for younger generations. The schedule changes with legislation, so the official page is the reference.

Age does not tell the whole story

EU-OSHA stresses that age-related changes go both ways. Some functional capacities, mainly physical and sensory, decline; others, such as wisdom, strategic thinking and the ability to deliberate, increase or first emerge with age, and work experience accumulates. Above all, older workers are not a homogeneous group: people of the same age can differ considerably, depending on lifestyle, nutrition, fitness, education and their working environment.

EU-OSHA lists the risks that are particularly relevant to older workers: heavy physical workload, shift work, and hot, cold or noisy work environments. In France, the national agency for the improvement of working conditions (Anact) has published a guide on the work of employees aged 55 and over. A regional labor authority presenting it notes that occupational wear linked to longer working lives can lead to early departures, loss of motivation, more sick leave, difficulty with some tasks and trouble retaining staff.

Each of these risks is first tackled for every age group, and we cover them in detail elsewhere:

• effort, repetitive movements and posture, in workplace MSD prevention;
• night and irregular hours, in sleep and shift work;
• sedentary work, food and cardiometabolic risk factors, in workplace metabolic health and workplace heart health.

Anact frames prevention and skills development as something that runs “throughout careers”: wear is prevented long before an employee approaches retirement.

EU-OSHA recommends age-sensitive risk assessment: taking into account the characteristics of different age groups, including potential changes in functional capacity and health. With one clear limit: because differences between individuals grow with age, assumptions should not be made purely on the basis of age. The assessment weighs the demands of the work against the person’s abilities, not their date of birth. EU-OSHA also points to the Work Ability Index as one way to measure the balance between work and individual resources.

The agency lists several adaptations: job redesign or rotation, more frequent short breaks, better-organized shift work (for example, fast forward-rotating shifts of two to three days), good lighting and noise control, ergonomically designed equipment, and policies that make returning to work easier after long-term sickness. It stresses that good workplace design benefits all age groups.

Anticipate, collectively and individually

Anact insists on anticipation: preventing wear means addressing situations both individually and collectively, and rethinking working conditions as well as career paths. It also points to what aging brings: know-how, experience and support for newcomers. Organizing that transfer of skills is part of the approach.

Depending on the country, prevention appointments at key ages may already exist, through occupational health services or public health programs. The employer’s role is to make them known and easy to attend, not to replace them. France offers two useful examples.

A mid-career occupational health check

In France, a mid-career medical check-up is carried out by the occupational physician, as a rule in the calendar year of the employee’s 45th birthday unless an industry-wide agreement sets a different schedule. The occupational health service, the employer or the employee can initiate it. It reviews how well the job fits the person’s health, assesses the risk of being pushed out of work, and raises awareness of aging at work. Afterwards, the physician can recommend in writing changes to the workstation (less manual handling, no work at height, better lighting, less noise) or to working time (adjusted hours, part-time arrangements). Wherever you operate, ask your occupational health provider what a comparable mid-career review could look like.

Public prevention check-ups

On the public health side, France’s Mon bilan prévention is open to people aged 18 to 25, 45 to 50, 60 to 65 and 70 to 75, once per age bracket, and fully covered. Two of those brackets fall in the middle of a working life. Such a check-up belongs to the employee’s private life: the company can promote it, but has no business knowing who attended or what was discussed. To get the most out of one, see our guide to the preventive health check-up.

Among the levers for a longer healthspan, physical activity is one of the best supported. In adults and older adults, the World Health Organization links it to a lower risk of death, including from cardiovascular disease, of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and falls, and to better mental and cognitive health and sleep. The WHO notes that any amount of physical activity is better than none, that muscle strengthening benefits everyone, and recommends more opportunities to be active, including in workplaces.

EU-OSHA makes the same point: the decline of functional capacities can be delayed and minimized by healthy habits such as regular exercise, and the workplace has a key role in supporting them. A few practical options: make it easier to walk or cycle to work, offer activity sessions open to everyone and adapted to each person’s abilities, and break up long periods of sitting where the job allows.

Wanting to support older workers gives no right to their health data. In France, the data protection authority, the CNIL, states that employees’ medical files are held by occupational health services, and that the employer and HR have no right to hold medical information about staff, except in specific cases of work accidents or occupational diseases. The employer receives recommendations for adjustments, not diagnoses.

Two pitfalls to avoid: singling out “vulnerable” employees based on their age or appearance, and creating a program for older workers that labels them. An offer open to everyone, where each person chooses what is relevant to them, protects people better. How to separate individual journeys from program management is covered in our article on employee health privacy.

With MyTwin for employers, the organization chooses the preventive health modules its workforce needs. Employees who want to can follow a personalized journey, coordinated by a MyTwin physician or by the company’s own medical team; the employer tracks the program through aggregated indicators, without access to individual medical data. This journey complements action on the work itself and occupational health follow-up; it does not replace them.

A healthy aging at work initiative should be judged by what it changes, not by the number of workshops held. A few useful questions to track over time, always in aggregate:

• How many demanding work situations have been analyzed, then adapted?
• Do employees know about the mid-career reviews available to them, and do they actually take place?
• Are the adjustments recommended by occupational health put in place, and how quickly?
• Are returns to work after long absences going better?
• How are early departures and unfitness-for-work decisions evolving over several years?

To build these indicators without sliding into monitoring, see our method to measure a workplace health program.