The Impact of Leadership on Successful Aging at Work

Abstract

The increasing proportion of older employees in the workforce underscores the need to understand how leadership can support sustained motivation, health, and workability across the working lifespan. This paper explores how leadership contribute to Successful Aging at Work (SAW) at the individual level. Leadership behaviors such as individualized consideration, ethical conduct, and inspirational motivation are proposed to serve as critical resources that enable older employees to adapt to age-related changes and maintain high levels of engagement and effectiveness. Employing a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design, combining qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys, this research seeks to examine how different leadership styles influence older workers’ capacity to age successfully within the workplace. The anticipated findings are expected to identify key leadership practices that facilitate SAW and provide evidence-based insights for organizations aiming to support aging employees through leadership. By focusing on individual experiences, this research contributes to a deeper theoretical understanding of leadership’s role in shaping successful work trajectories in later career stages and offers practical guidance for human resource management and leadership development in the context of demographic change.