The Warnowquerung GmbH & Co. KG is responsible for maintaining the Warnowtunnel that connects the eastern and western parts of Rostock. This tunnel was finished in 2003 and has about 11.000 users per year and has been privately funded. Users have to pay a toll for using it. The Warnowquerung has 37 employees.

The company decided to work with seniors because they saw the need to keep older employees at the job as long as possible. Therefore, they hired an external service to create and deliver tailored seminars and workshops for elder workers. These workshops cover a variety of topics that are highly relevant to older employees like insurance, health and care, ideas for activities (both physical and mental), healthy nutrition, and others. The older employees in the company are mainly working in the toll booths. Some are also in administration.

Because of the good selection of topics and the high quality of the external experts that implemented the workshops, the employees were quite interested in this offer. They already asked for additional workshops and there has been also interest from younger workers to participate in future trainings. There were no difficulties or resistance noted during the implementation.

Targeted workshops for older employees are a valuable tool to show appreciation and attention. These workshops can also be used for facilitating new skills like digital competencies. Older workers are still interested in learning something new and useful. The company would like to implement workshops by themselves if they can find the knowledge/curriculum somewhere. It is essential to offer a good mix of mental and physical activities.

There should be no fixed age limit for participation. If younger employees want to attend, that should always be possible.
An offer of online courses older workers can use to proceed after the workshop would be welcome and useful.
A structured feedback process should be implemented to enable an evaluation of the workshops and gather input for future offers.

The company is small but is trying to offer optimized working conditions for every employee.