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Current research on mental health in the construction industry is fragmented, making it difficult to obtain a complete picture of young construction workers’ mental health conditions. This situation adversely affects research progress, mental health-care planning and resource allocation. To address this challenge, the purpose of this paper was to identify the themes of mental health conditions among young construction workers and their prevalence by geographical location.

The scoping review was conducted using meta-aggregation, guided by the CoCoPop (condition [mental health], context [construction industry] and population [construction workers 35 years old and younger]) and PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews) frameworks.

A total of 327 studies were retrieved, and 14 studies published between 1993 and 2022 met the inclusion criteria. The authors identified 13 mental health conditions and categorized them under nine themes. Mood disorders, anxiety disorders and substance-related disorders constituted the most researched themes. Studies predominantly focused on young male workers in the Global North. The prevalence estimates reported in most of the studies were above the respective country’s prevalence.

This review extends previous studies by focusing specifically on the themes of mental health conditions and giving attention to young construction workers whose health needs remain a global priority. The study emphasizes the need to give research attention to lesser-studied aspects of mental health, such as positive mental health. The need to focus on female construction workers and on homogenous sub-groups of young workers is also emphasized. The findings can guide future systematic reviews on the identified thematic areas and help to plan the development of interventions.

Social norms about the timing of retirement and stereotypes about qualities of younger and older workers are pervasive, but it is unclear how they relate to employers’ ageist preferences. The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of employers’ retirement age norms and age-related stereotypes on their preferences for younger or older workers in three types of employment practices: hiring a new employee; offering training; and offering a permanent contract.

Survey data from 960 Dutch employers from 2017 are analysed to study employers’ preferences for younger or older workers. Effects of organisations’ and managers’ characteristics, retirement age norms and stereotypes are estimated with multinomial logistic regression analyses.

Many employers have a strong preference for younger workers, especially when hiring a new employee, while preferences for older workers are highly uncommon. Higher retirement age norms of employers are related to a lower preference for younger workers in all employment decisions. When employers are more positive about older workers’ soft qualities (such as reliability and social skills), but not about their hard qualities (such as their physical capacity and willingness to learn), they rate older workers relatively more favourable for hiring and offering training, but not for providing a permanent contract.

This is one of the first studies to estimate the effects of retirement age norms and age-related stereotypes on ageist preferences for a diverse set of employment practices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the basis of the Low Pay Commission's (LPC) presumption of the “distinctiveness” of young workers aged 16 and 17 in the absence of any systematic and objective basis for determining “fair pay”. In the context of labour market theories and the issues they raise in relation to skill, training and pay, the paper questions the presumption that young workers are distinctive with reference to contemporary notions of skill and training requirements.

Using a sub‐sample of hospitality businesses in North Wales, the paper presents selected evidence from semi‐structured interviews about firms’ pay and employment practices that included a systematic method to enable managers to provide some objectively justifiable measures of job content and perceptions of personal attributes in relation to the pay of 16‐ and 17‐year‐old workers compared with their older counterparts.

Employers’ informal and pragmatic employment and pay practices both reflect and reinforce the LPC's presumption of distinctiveness for a predominantly student labour force. This indicative and exploratory method of quantifying jobs and personal attributes in relation to pay appears to have some validity, although the sorts of skills that are associated with young workers’ jobs may not be fully recognised or valued, reinforcing inequality and discrimination in some cases.

In raising awareness of potential inequality of treatment and discrimination in the context of age discrimination legislation, the paper will be of interest to researchers in employment relations, human resource management, equality and diversity management, minimum wages and the hospitality industry.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the transitional employment (TE) aspirations and training and development needs of older and younger workers at risk of early retirement due to limited education and/or employment in blue‐collar (BC) occupations.

A computer‐based methodology is used to evaluate the demographic effects of gender, education level, and occupation group on aspirations pertaining to TE and training and development in a sample of over 1,000 local government employees.

Older BC, secondary school‐educated and younger workers are less interested in TE than older workers with higher levels of education or from white‐collar backgrounds. The early retirement risk factors of BC work and secondary school education had a more limited effect on perceived training and development needs for older workers. However, for younger workers, these risk factors provided the impetus to undertake training to move into less physically demanding or more challenging roles as their careers progressed.

Via the identification of education level and occupation types groups' TE aspirations and perceptions of preparatory training and development within younger and older cohorts, long‐term strategies to develop and retain staff may be formulated.

Past studies of TE have rarely included younger workers or older workers at risk of early retirement. Preparatory training and development for TE roles has not been considered in the literature.

This paper aimed to investigate how older and younger workers are perceived in terms of Big Five personality and task and contextual performance. Based on the intergroup bias phenomenon, the authors also examined whether respondent age would moderate these effects.

Participants (n=155) completed a paper survey in which they were randomly assigned to rate either a “typical” younger employee or a “typical” older employee. They filled out questionnaires containing measures of perceived personality factors and perceived job performance of an older or younger worker.

As predicted, older and younger workers were perceived differently in terms of certain Big Five personality factors and organizational citizenship behavior. These perceived differences generally reflected actual age-related differences on these variables. However, respondents' age moderated many of these effects, such that respondents' perceptions favored their own age group.

These studies illustrate that dimensions such as perceived Big Five personality and job performance may be useful for examining workplace age stereotypes. They also illustrate that respondent age may affect these perceptions of older and younger workers.

This study goes beyond previous studies focused on the examination of general age bias. Indeed, this is the first study that examines perceptions of personality and performance dimensions of older and younger workers in a field setting. Such perceptions may have an impact on the decisions that managers make regarding older and younger workers (e.g. selection, promotions).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate younger workers’ perceptions of older colleagues, including whether there is evidence of ageism.

Convenience sampling was used to recruit ten individuals who were both below the age of 35 and employed at a multigenerational workplace in England. The study is qualitative, involving semi-structured interviews that were audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis.

This study found that whilst some younger employees valued working with older colleagues as they believe that their differing characteristics are complementary, others felt that it leads to intergenerational conflict due to contrasting approaches towards work. Positive perceptions of older workers included their increased knowledge and experience, reliability and better social skills; however, ageism was also prevalent, such as the perception of older workers as resistant to change, slower at using technology and lacking the drive to progress. This study also provided evidence for the socioemotional selectivity and social identity theories.

This study has a small sample size and participants were only recruited from London.

In order to create working environments that are conducive to the well-being of employees of all ages, organisations should place an emphasis on reducing intergenerational tension. This could be achieved by team building sessions that provide an opportunity for individuals to understand generational differences.

There is minimal evidence from the UK focussing on the perceptions of specifically younger workers towards older colleagues and the basis of their attitudes. Only by gaining an insight into their attitudes and the reasoning behind them, can efforts be made to decrease ageism.

To review recent research on work injuries among young workers, to examine efforts of Canadian authorities to reduce injury rates among this group, and to identify indicators of success. The information is useful in the design of public health programs or within organizations employing young workers, and identifies future research needs.

A range of recently published (1998‐2007) systematic and narrative reviews, research papers, government documents and websites, primarily from Canadian sources, was reviewed. Documents were critically reviewed to identify factors associated with increased risk of injury, and to examine the use of social marketing approaches in the prevention of injury.

Recent research tends to confirm that the types of jobs that young workers do, and the fact that they often have only short‐term experience in the job, are major factors contributing to the increased risk that young workers experience. Social marketing is being widely used in Canada as a prevention approach, but research on its effectiveness is in its infancy.

The paper summarises recent research on young worker safety, highlighting findings that are of value for program design and future research needs.

With age diversity in the workplace becoming increasingly prevalent, the conflict between younger and older workers can be pervasive because of their increased interpersonal tensions from heterogeneous interactions. Adopting an identity-based approach, this study aims to examine the causes, underlying mechanisms and specific strategies used to manage such conflict. It was hypothesized that there is an interaction effect between age-group identification and organizational identification on conflict strategies and that this relationship can be explained by the mediating role of motivational goal orientation.

A total of 380 clerical workers in Hong Kong, aged 19–65, responded to two hypothetical scenarios about conflict with a younger and an older worker using a structured questionnaire on social identity, motivational goal orientation and conflict strategies. Moderated mediation analyzes were performed to test the hypothesized conditional indirect effects.

Results showed that workers who identified with the organization emphasized less on independent goals (with a younger opposing party) and more on cooperative goals (with an older opposing party) when they did not perceive an age-group differentiation, and thus, they were more likely to respond in a way that de-escalates the conflict, including the use of integrating, obliging and compromising strategies.

Extending age-related conflict research beyond identifying generational differences, this study highlights the role of social identity and suggests that employers and managers should strengthen employees’ organizational identification and build a fair work environment that facilitates positive interaction between younger and older workers.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the key themes in the area of the impact of demographic change on young workers and older workers in relation to education, skills and employment, as discussed in the papers included in this section. The authors have also drawn upon data from their project “From Young Workers to Older Workers” as a context for the papers.

This paper draws out the main themes from the papers contained within this section and presents original data from interviews with 97 older workers who were interviewed at two points in time – labour market entry and labour market exit.

The selection of papers in this section is outlined, as well as offering some findings from the authors’ research on older workers.

The papers in this section, including this paper, offer an overview of some of the key debates in relation to the impact of demographic change on both young workers and older workers.