Active@Work: Active older adults at workplace

It is an established fact that European governments are raising the retirement age because the life span is getting longer. This is also motivated by the current socio-economic situation that is forcing Europe to rethink its social security systems; because of demographic ageing, innovative approaches are required. In particular, solutions to assist older adults to keep active, motivated and with quality of life in their work environment are sought after. It is also worth noticing that several studies claim that working beyond traditional retirement age may be beneficial for mental and physical health.
One way to address these concerns is to assist older adults at continuing their work without risking their health by promoting a feeling of wellness. But, efficiency and general learning ability decline with age. Physical constrains can also cause older adults to be less productive than their younger colleagues.
However, despite being more susceptible to physical strain, mental stress and fatigue, older adults are usually very skilled and prudent decision makers, and also have an invaluable knowledge that was gathered over the years. These are important and relevant assets that, if well "explored" will benefit the older adult and, consequently, the community. These also represent a valuable asset for the worker company. The retaining and transfer of these capacities to the younger workforce would undenia-bly beneficiate the respective employer. In fact, years of experience endow senior workers with knowledge that is not found in younger colleagues, no matter how competent they are, and this can be seen in every sector of society.
In short, by providing the means to keep senior workers active and by adjusting their role to their actual physical capabilities and health state, the workers would still have the capability to play an active role in the society, making them feel useful and capable to carry out their work, thus providing a sense of well-being which would, according to the multiple studies regarding "working after retirement age", provide him mental and physical health benefits.
The Active@Work project will result in a Virtual Assistant tool able to assist adult workers, in particular those close to retirement age, to continue executing their daily work or to continue active despite their age. It will be a multi-modal solution (e.g., PC, tablets or smartphones), capable of interacting with the end-user in a very natural and personalized way. Usability requirements are therefore a major concern to dynamically adjust interaction and notifications in conformity to each end-user profile, health needs and status.
The solution will incorporate an "intelligent agent" that will assist the user at accomplishing his/her work without compromising health and preventing any other risk derived from fatigue or stress at work. One of the main characteristics of the solution will be the capability to actively intervene, in response to identified potential health threats that could lead to the decrease in the work-ers attention or productivity. The solution will also provide support for the worker to easily interact with new solutions or technol-ogies, and also to engage in new and rewarding activities, where his knowledge and experience will be an important and recog-nized asset. Team management and tutoring of younger elements by older adults will be, together with the training environment, some of the innovative features within the project.
The project target stakeholders are older adults from the Service Sector, which consists of "soft-skills" of the economy, i.e. activities where people offer their knowledge and time to contribute to an ecosystem of interrelationships between different market sectors in modern societies. To keep the project focused on a specific sector, the set of services to be tested will ad-dress the needs of the stakeholder's from two distinct sectors: the Healthcare Sector (Hospital/Clinic work environment) and Consultancy Services at a multinational large company. The two pilots will also cover heterogeneous organizational processes, from medical procedures (productive services) to administrative processes (support services). Such approach enables to cover a huge spectrum of service providers and cope with more than 80% of a typical organizational structure, covering multiple stakeholders concerns and operational requirements.