Cognitive Fitness of Post-Retirement Employees in Control Room Settings

Abstract

The increasing number of post-retirement workers in the workforce has become a global trend due to efforts to extend the working period after retirement, which is implemented by many countries considering the rapid aging of their populations. While the presence of post-retirement workers can have positive impacts on personal, company, and government levels, they face challenges in interacting with equipment through interfaces that require heavy reliance on cognitive abilities. Cognitive abilities become more important than physical abilities in multitasking jobs that require a lot of interaction with technology, such as control room jobs. These jobs require a high level of attention, concentration, and decision-making ability, making them highly demanding and challenging. This study aims to determine how post-retirement workers meet job demands in the control room, based on identification of critical cognitive abilities. The method employed in this study is divided into two stages. The first stage involves identifying tasks in the control room based on Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) and identifying critical tasks using risk assessment and Focus Group Discussion (FGD). FGD was conducted on four different types of companies (telecommunication, broadcasting, process industry, and electrical power) that still employ retired workers in the control room jobs. The second stage involves measuring cognitive abilities in 116 individuals aged 56-60 years. The results of CTA indicate there are critical cognitive abilities in control room jobs, such as reasoning, attention, memory, and perception ability. According to the measurement, post-retirement workers (56 - 60 years old) had the problem of improving reasoning, attention, and perceptive ability, despite cognitive capacity measurements remaining in the medium range. In general, post-retirement workers have high memory abilities (above 500), while their abilities in recognition, perception, coordination, and attention are only at 200-400 (a medium level), indicating a decline in cognitive abilities for post-retirement workers. The high memory ability is positive for supporting work in complex systems, while improvement of cognitive abilities is needed for the declining cognitive aspects. Implication of this study were discuss to this paper to consider factors that affect critical cognitive abilities in post-retirement workers when recruiting and training them to work in the control room. 

Received: 7 May 2023 / Accepted: 28 July 2023 / Published: 5 September 2023