Perception of Employee to Older Employees

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

In Malaysia, individuals who are 40 years of age or older than 40 years old are protected under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 from employment discrimination based on age. It is not illegal and unlawful if someone discriminates towards a person. Under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, someone should not discriminates because of her or his age in many kinds of terms, privilege of employment, benefits or conditions and it is include the hiring, firing, promotion of the jobs, layoff, compensation, job assignments and training.

There are so many negative perceptions of older adults. From the researches, there have consistently shown that older employees in particular have suffered negative perceptions of their capabilities and desires for continued work. Besides that, there are also a lot of arguments about older employees are less productive than young employees. The task or assignments that is involves psychical strength, normally ole employees barely perform it well.

However, some are believed that older employees are live to work. There are also positive perceptions of the older employees. Based on many researches, they found out the older employees are loyal to the company and they are also willing to wait for their pay, bonus or reward.

As today’s older adults live longer and remain healthy for a longer periods if compare to the previous generations. David Cutler, the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics conducted a research and shows that very poor health hits people in the last several years of life. However, the advance of the technologies and the contribution in the medical part, poor health is more likely to occur only just before death.

From the Department of the Statistics, Malaysia shows that the life expectancy in Malaysia had increased to 74.84 years in year 2010. The life expectancy for women was 77.25 years and for men was 72.55 years....