As people age, their relationship toward work is expected to change due to important events (e.g. childbirth, educational milestones). Studies found that the centrality of work in life generally decreases with age and that younger people value interesting work, while middle aged people value high income and security. However, most existing research measured work expectations in overly simplistic way either asking only about the general value of work or covering few most salient job aspects such as pay or intrinsic value of work.
In this research, to capture an individual relationship towards work comprehensively, we used a six-dimension heuristic model of job quality that integrates Jahoda's model of latent functions of work, Self-determination theory and Duffy and Bluestein Psychology of working theory. The SUPERB model organizes quality of work into six dimensions: Safety (economical and psychological), Upgrading (job providing opportunities for growth), Purpose (finding meaning in work), Empowerment (responsibility and autonomy), meaningful Relationships (with peers, subordinates and supervisors) and Balance (between work and life roles). We adopted a psychological contract perspective (i.e., asked participants about their expectations from employers) to investigate age-related changes in importance of various aspects of job quality in Croatia, a post-socialist Southeast European country.
We collected an online sample of 619 Croatian citizens (16 to 70 years old), who reported their beliefs about employer's obligations towards employees across the SUPERB dimensions. The results showed that, overall, age had small and mostly non-significant effects on importance of SUPERB dimensions for employees, suggesting that expectations about work remain relatively stable across the lifespan. However, we observed a small curvilinear effect of age on Purpose with expectations of work being meaningful declining between ages 20 and 35, and then gradually increasing at later ages. Additionally, age showed small positive linear effects on expectations about job being upgrading and empowering.