Age and Labor Productivity in Services

This project likewise employs empirical methods to investigate the relation between employee age and labor productivity. The modus operandi corresponds to that used in the study "Age and Labor Productivity in Manufacturing", but is applied to the service industry instead. To that end, we approached a large insurance company for the collection of data appropriate to the subsequent statistical analysis. To measure productivity, performance indicators are determined for 11,143 workers in 1,623 in-house task groups on 908 days (3 years, unbalanced). Examples for such performance indicators are the number of new policies entered into the system, the number of claims processed, or the number of phone calls made. These indicators are then linked up with personnel data. Preliminary results suggest that on average over the entire firm the age productivity profile is flat. If we look at profile for different tasks separately, however, we find considerable differences: At workplaces with rather simple tasks, productivity significantly declines with age while at workplaces with more complex tasks, productivity increases slightly (albeit not significantly) with age. The project is close to completion with the final data analysis done and a manuscript in preparation.