Managers hit peak capacity in their 50s

Tel Aviv -  Managers hit their peak professional vitality in their fifties, reveals a new study which examined the functionality of high-tech, engineering, and infrastructure  executives.

Professional vitality is defined as the ability to carry out tasks with passion, vigour and competence, and to gain satisfaction from his or her work performance.

"The advantages and disadvantages of taking on mature employees have been widely debated over the past few years. This new study now shows that in terms of vitality, advancing age  plays a significant role," note Shmuel Grimland, Yehuda Baruch and Eran Vigoda-Gadot, who conducted the study at the University of Haifa, Israel.

The new study, based on Grimland's doctoral dissertation (supervised by professors Vigoda-Gadot and Yehuda Baruch), set out to examine which factors are related to professional vitality  and whether that vitality interrelates with a manager's career.

Participating in the study were 545 high-tech, engineering, and infrastructure managers from the public and the private sectors. They represented the full management spectrum - from  project managers to senior company managers, according to a Haifa statement.

Professional vitality was positively linked to the manager's position in the company's organizational hierarchy: the more vitality the manager demonstrates, the higher his organizational  status.

Vitality was also found to be positively linked to career and life satisfaction. Moreover, the higher the level of vitality, the less a manager considers leaving his or her place of work.

The older the manager, the higher his or her professional vitality, reaching a peak at 50-59 and 57 being the highest point in this sample group. The manager's vitality then begins to drop.

"Workers' vitality 'fuels' the success of the organization, and the fact that professional vitality is preserved and actually rises well into one's 50s indicates that organizations investing in this  aspect of the workplace will be able to benefit from productive workers for many years," the researchers concluded.