Compensating losses in bridge employment? Examining relations between compensation strategies, health problems, and intention to remain at work

In order to better understand the precursors of bridge employment, this study aimed to investigate whether individual action strategies in terms of selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC; Baltes & Baltes, 1990) are able to buffer the well-known negative impact of poor health on the intention to remain in the workforce. 784 employees (60–85 years, 74.8% male) affiliated with a temporary employment agency that specifically contracts employees older than 65 participated in a cross-sectional survey. Results of moderated hierarchical regression analyses indicated that for older employees with high use of SOC there was no significant relationship between health status and intention to remain in bridge employment. However, for older employees with low use of SOC, there was a weaker intention to remain in bridge employment when their health status was poor, while this intention was stronger in case of a better health status. On closer examination of the SOC subdimensions, this moderating effect was especially due to the compensation behavior of these older workers. As a conclusion, SOC seems to mitigate the detrimental effects of health problems on older employees' intention to remain in bridge employment. From a practical perspective, these findings provide important suggestions for the development of practical measures for the tertiary prevention of poor health during the retirement process