Introduction: The proportion of people aged over 65 is expected to double from 12% in 2015 to 22% by 2050 (United Nations, 2024), making an aging, multi-age workforce one of the greatest challenges for organizations. To respond to this demographic change, organizations are increasingly interested in creating an age-friendly climate to retain and develop multi-age employees' knowledge, skills, motivation, and effort.
Purpose: The present study aims to investigate how age-friendly organizational climate influences employees' task performance and organizational citizenship behavior toward individuals (OCBI). Drawing upon social exchange theory, we propose that age-friendly organizational climate may be perceived as valuable organizational investments, prompting employees to reciprocate with improved performance and OCBI through two mediating pathways (i.e., thriving at work and social capital). The indirect effects may be mitigated by occupational future time perspective, as employees with an open-ended perspective may rely more on future occupational opportunities and less on organizational climate.
Method: We conducted a two-wave, time-lagged survey of 396 full-time employees. The hypothesized moderated mediation model was tested using structural equation modeling.
Results: We found that age-friendly organizational climate was positively related to thriving at work and social capital, which in turn positively linked to task performance and OCBI. Occupational future time perspective mitigated the relationships between age-friendly climate and both thriving at work and social capital: the positive effects were weaker among employees with a more open-ended occupational future time perspective and were stronger among employees with a more constrained occupational future time perspective.
Conclusions: An age-friendly organizational climate can improve employees' in-role performance and increase extra-role behaviors, particularly for employees who perceive their occupational future time as more limited. These findings inform the development of age-inclusive human resource practices that benefit employees across different ages.