Read the research paper below and critically evaluate the quality of the paper. Also, provide at least two suggestions to enhance the validity and reliability of the paper.

Rita Claes, Mieke Heymans, (2008) "HR professionals' views on work motivation and retention of older workers: a focus group study", Career Development International, Vol. 13 Issue: 2, pp.95-111, https://doi.org/10.1108/13620430810860521

Abstract:

Purpose This paper aims to explore the views of human resource (HR) professionals on work

motivation and retention of older workers. Furthermore, it seeks to generate qualitative data to inspire measures for future survey research.

Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a qualitative approach, using focus groups. A

total of 15 participants were purposefully selected from different organizational settings (e.g. private and public organizations, various sectors, various organizational sizes, HR departments and HR consultants) and from different areas of HR practice (e.g. recruitment, selection, training, evaluation, diversity management, industrial relations). Several procedures are applied to carry out a rigorous qualitative analysis (i.e. interview guide, video recording and field notes, prompt transcripts, double coding, direct quotes and rich data slices when presenting findings).

Findings The paper reveals that focus groups generate rich interaction and their content analysis

results in five topics: definition of older workers, diversity amongst older workers, work motivation of older workers, retention policy and practices, and contexts of work motivation and organization retention policy/practices.

Research limitations/implications Three focus groups with HR professionals give just a glance

of the intended retention practices. Broader qualitative and quantitative research with HR

professionals and older workers are needed, preferably carried out by an international and

multidisciplinary team.

Practical implications The paper provides preliminary advice to HR professionals as to which

practices aim at retention of older workers, based on insights in theories on work motivation.

Originality/value The study takes place within Belgium where far-reaching societal reform is still needed to promote employment of older workers and to move away from the early-retirement culture. The paper confronts the wealth of work motivation theories and the plethora of HR practices with HR professionals being challenged to retain older workers and to keep them motivated.

Methodology

Sampling HR professionals as focus group participants. As university department we can usually count on HR professionals, often our graduates, to participate in our research. HR professionals have busy time schedules and heavy workloads. We demanded a lot of them, requiring them to spend several hours in focus groups after a hard days work. Hence only 15 participants took part in our study, divided over three mini-groups (Greenbaum cited by McLafferty, 2004). Their age ranged from 25 through 52 years (M 31:8, SD 8:2). The HR professionals were purposefully selected. This involves to continuously compare the views and the experiences of respondents who have been selected precisely indeed, purposively in order to illuminate subtle but potentially important differences (Barbour, 2001, p. 1116). Recruitment of participants continued

until the authors sensed that adding more would only yield redundant information. Participants were selected from different organizational settings (e.g. private and public organizations, various sectors, various organizational sizes, HR departments and HR consultancies) and from different areas of HR practice (e.g. recruitment, selection, training, evaluation, diversity management, industrial relations). We aimed for enough diversity within groups to stimulate discussion and sufficient homogeneity to facilitate comparison between groups (Barbour, 2005, p. 746).

Three focus groups were conducted in September 2006 with the second author as a moderator. They lasted an average of two hours and took place at a quiet location within the university that was convenient and neutral for all participants. To ensure accuracy of information, the focus group was recorded on video and one observer per focus group [1] took field notes. A focus group interview guide was used as the main tool for data collection (see the Appendix). The interview schedule served as a framework for the group discussion, as the moderator could ask questions beyond it. The authors developed the interview guide by reading literature on older employees and on ways to retain them in the organization. The second author acted as a moderator in the three focus groups. Being a researcher, she was familiar with the topic while her training as an organizational psychologist enabled her to develop competencies in interviewing skills and the understanding of group processes. Her role during the focus group was to put participants at ease, to lead the interaction, to compare and contrast participants views, and to ensure the necessary information was obtained by asking questions (from the interview guide and beyond). After the HR professionals had left, she met briefly with the observer to debrief each focus group session.

As to ethical considerations, at the beginning of each session, all participants were asked by the moderator to sign an informed consent form, which assured anonymity and confidentiality, and reminded them that participation was entirely voluntary and that they could withdraw from the study at any time. Participants gave their permission for the focus group to be taped on video and to have an observer present to take field notes. During the transcription, all members of the focus group were made anonymous by substituting their names by numbers. Tapes, transcripts and field notes were kept separate from participants personal data. Access to the focus group data

was strictly limited to the authors and the observers.

In our data analysis, we adapted a pragmatic variant of the grounded theory, which, in its purest form (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), derives all explanations or theories from the data itself. Our study involved constant comparison not only between new material and the previous data, but also between data collected in the focus group sessions and themes emerging from our literature review (see introduction and interview guide). Per focus group, the moderator viewed the videotape and made an initial transcript using a clear standard (Poland, 1995). She then consulted with the observer of that session based on his/her field notes. Between them, they established a complete transcript for each focus group. Finally, the moderator and the first author acted as two independents

coders of the final transcripts. Given the small number of focus groups, coding was done manually. Transcripts were re-read several times to come to an overall idea of both the content and the process of the discussions. Then, an inductive data analysis process followed. The first step was breaking the data into meaningful units of information (i.e. significant sentences or paragraphs were colored with markers). Then, units were combined into larger categories (i.e. cut and paste of similar colored text fragments). The third step was combining categories into topics (i.e. again cut and paste of similar colored text passages). Next, the two coders met to discuss their content-analysis of the transcripts. When an agreement was reached, we combined emerging categories and topics across the focus groups. There was a great deal of agreement between the two coders regarding the quotes that were examples of the themes identified. All in all, our data analysis was a pragmatic version of double coding (Barbour, 2003).

Conclusions and discussion

The content analysis of the lively interaction in our three focus groups generated qualitative data, which, in general, was able to provide the information that was needed to answer our research questions. We were able to group the views of HR professionals into five topics. Furthermore, we obtained suggestions for measures for future survey research on work motivation and retention of older workers, as well as for the design of such studies. HR professionals state that for organizational policies and practices, other criteria than chronological age should be used to denote somebody as an older worker. They prove their statement by pointing to the diversity amongst older workers evolving from individual differences, job characteristics or their interaction. It is obvious that work motivation functions as an important discriminator between older workers. The

work motives of older workers fit into contemporary theories (i.e. cognitive evaluation theory, goals-setting theory, and expectancy theory), as well as into the very recently developed framework of motivational forces that drive decisions about whether to stay or leave an organization (Maertz and Griffeth, 2004). Ideally, HR professionals view retention practices as based on long-term HR policy, preventive, and tailor-made to individuals or subgroups that are still able and willing to work. Specific retention practices for older workers are either conventional (e.g. training, compensation) or rather novel (e.g. proactive behavior, confidential counsellor, skill pooling). Finally, multi-level contexts (i.e. societal, organizational, and direct work environment) can inhibit or facilitate work motivation of older workers and organization retention

policies/practices oriented towards older workers.