Senior Employee Policy

CPH puts into practice its senior employee policy guidelines in the following manner.
We take our starting point in the needs and resources of each senior employee

In practice, we assess our employees on the basis of their qualifications, not how old they are. When planning the future career of a senior employee, we focus on the person's resources and needs.  In this, our practice is no different than it is for CPH employees in general.

We create a good setting for a dialogue on life plans

Performance (appraisal) interviews: Are an offer open to all CPH employees. These interviews are also a good setting for a senior employee to discuss his/her life plan with his/her immediate superior, so employees over 55 may put this topic on the agenda for discussion if they wish.

Senior seminar: We offer all employees over 55 and their spouses a senior employee seminar intended to provide them with a good framework for a dialogue about their life plans, options and limitations. They have the opportunity for both an informal exchange of experience among senior colleagues and a dialogue with experts in various relevant fields.

Individual counselling: CPH also offers individual counselling in connection with specific problems related to a senior employee's life plan, e.g. possible effects on their plans for the future caused by financial options and limitations in connection with early retirement rules or pension. CPH will provide the option of a session with an expert to discuss what effects different choices may have on finances; spouses are also invited to attend.

Pensioner picnics: The dialogue about life as an older person does not stop when a person stops working at CPH. Retired employees are invited to CPH’s annual picnics, at which there is also plenty of opportunity to exchange experiences about life after CPH.

We challenge the preconceived notions that can block opportunities for development

We regularly spotlight facts about growing older in order to take apart the preconceived notions that exist. We do this through, among other things, our staff newsletter, individual counselling, employee performance interviews, and presentations held by lecturers at our senior seminars.

Employing these different methods, we seek to make a taboo subject into something that is regularly on the agenda. It should be all right to talk about it if you want your job to be different because you are in a different phase of life now than you were when you started working at CPH.

We allow the option of flexible schemes

How the job of a senior employee should change as his/her own and the company's needs change differs from person to person.

There are many ways a person can change his/her work situation. One employee may wish to replace his taxing night shift with a day shift. Two other employees may wish to share a single position. A third person may see that she could make better use of her resources if her job content were changed to better employ her abilities, experience and precision. These examples are mentioned simply to illustrate the fact that people have highly individual needs; there are, of course, many other options than the ones cited above. A department wishing to implement flexible schemes for employees must clear this ahead of time with HR.

Such flexible schemes should ensure development, not phasing out, of the employee. This also makes demands on both employee and company. The employee in question must be willing to learn what is necessary to ensure that his/her job changes in the direction that meets the needs of both him/her and the company. Likewise, the company must be willing to make available the resources necessary for the flexible scheme, e.g. extra days off or extra training.