In the foreseeable future populations in Germany and Europe will not only decrease in numbers but will also get considerably older. Between 1990 and 2005 the average age in Germany rose already from 39 to 42 years, and until 2050 it will further rise by a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 10 years (vgl. Statis 2006: 38). In some branches there may already be speaking of a lack of qualified employees. On the one hand, in the branches of chemical industry, synthetic materials, glass, and building materials the time needed to find personell increased from 44 to 60 days between 2004 and 2006, despite a decline of 6 days in the field of machine construction, electrical engineering, car industry it is still very long, and with 53 days in the field of metalworking/metal production it has stayed to be very long (see Kettner 2007: 2). In short: enterprises find it difficult to fill vacancies. On the other hand, with 12.8 % the unemployment rate among older people is very high and is considerably higher than the average rates of other countries. Furthermore, 54.3 % of older people have been unemployed for more than one year, for the total of unemployed this quota is 39.1 % (Bundesanstalt für Arbeit 2007: 9). According to this, there exists a double problem: just like other industrial nations, Germany is affected by demographic change, and also – compared to other countries – she is less prepared for this change. In this context the further vocational training of older employees becomes significant. Central Europe-wide surveys on the situation of further vocational training, a. o. the CVTS Continuing Vocational Training Survey 3 (2005) as well as the EU Labour Force Survey Ad-hoc Modul Lifelong Learning (2003) show a uniform picture: older employees participate or are allowed to participate in in further vocational training to a much lower degree than younger ones. One reason for this is the fact that some staff managers suppose that, due to age, the performance of older employees is reduced, because of which the respective companies do not invest in these employees´ further training. They say that it is not worth the effort (Gessler & Stübe 2008). This stereotypical condemnation of being older is on the one hand based on prejudices and on the other on scientific analyses. For example, the study on old age by the old age researcher Paul B. Baltes produced the result that mechanical intelligence (receiving and processing of information), declines massively already after the 30th year of age, whereas pragmatic intelligence (social-cultural knowledge), gradually declines as late as after the 50th year of age. This empirically found decline of mechanical intelligence, the study says, results in reduced perceptive faculty, ability to think and to remember, due to which also the total performance goes down only with increasing age (Lindenberg & Baltes 1997). What is critical about this study is not only that it sketches a deficit image of growing older but also that no professional skills were analyzed, but only non-domain-specific and de-contextualized skills, such as the ability to remember lists of words. The high significance of (cumulated) pragmatic knowledge for professional ability to act has then led us towards the hypothesis that the performance of older employees is higher than that of younger employees, in so far as older employees in the course of their professional life are confronted with non-routine tasks, so that continous learning experiences became possible and necessary.

We tested our thesis under more rigorous conditions: as a sector we chose a branch which is particularly dynamic and innovation-oriented: the IT sector. Typically, bigger non-routine tasks are done in the context of projects, because of which the group of heads of projects was the group of persons under analysis. Before a project is started, its degree of difficulty and its complexity are internally evaluated and project leaders are appointed according to this estimation. Appointing a head of a project is free from influence variables such as hierarchical positions. This is understandable in so far as projects of a size of several million Euros are a considerable risk for an enterprise. Then, our research question was: Is there any connection between the degree of difficulty of IT projects and the age of the heads of projects? For this purpose we analyzed 394 projects of 118 heads of projects of an IT services company in the years 2005 to 2007. The IT projects were evaluated according to a fixed scheme by five internal experts. Criteria for evaluating the projects were (1) duration of the project, (2) costs of the project, (3) scope, (4) density of resources (relation of resources available and running time of the project), (5) complexity, and (6) risks. Based on these indicators an index was developed across all projects which was summarized by (7) a project rating. The group of heads of projects was divided into three age groups: younger than 39, 40 to 49, as well as 50 and older. Then the data were evaluated by way of multi-variate methods.

The analysis produced the result that there is a close connection between single indicators or the project rating and age. In the same period of time older employees work on a smaller number of projects than younger ones, on the other hand the former´s projects are longer, more critical, more complex, and on the whole show a higher project rating. The budget of the project, on the other hand, is not a suitable indicator for differentiating age groups. This is not surprising in so far as IT projects with a high share of infrastructure are expensive but not complicated. The results suggest two conclusions: A learning-oriented work environment makes the development of expertship possible. This positive effect is increased with growing age, due to which older employees are not only able to compete with younger ones in such a setting but are go-to guys. There cannot be speaking of generally reduced professional performance of older employees, due to which it is definitely reasonable for companies to continously invest into further vocational training, independent of age.