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An Evaluation of Performance by Older Persons on a Simulated Telecommuting Task

¹ Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Miami, Florida.
² Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Miami School of Medicine, Florida.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Joseph Sharit, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Miami School of Medicine, 1695 NW 9th Avenue, Suite 3208 (D-101), Miami, FL 33136. E-mail: jsharit{at}miami.edu

Telecommuting work represents a strategy for managing the growing number of older people in the workforce. This study involved a simulated customer service telecommuting task that used e-mail to answer customer queries about media-related products and company policies. Participants included 27 "younger" older adults (50–65 years) and 25 "older" older adults (66–80 years). The participants performed the task for two 2-hr sessions a day over 4 consecutive days. Although both age groups showed significant improvement across sessions on many of the performance criteria, in general the improvements were more marked for the older age-group participants. However, the participants from both age groups had difficulty meeting some of the task performance requirements. These results are discussed in terms of training strategies for older workers.