BCP Social Sciences & Humanities ISSS 2022 Volume 16 (2022) 452 An Investigation Report on the Practice of Human Resource Management in Enterprises and the Motivation of Older Workers Jian Chen a, Haoyin Yu b Guang Dong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China a 1875023278@qq.com, b 924611282@qq.com Abstract. This paper is based on the current population ageing problem in China and is based on the concept of life-long development and the SOC model of selecting compensation, from the perspective of older employees’ self-perception, this paper makes a qualitative study on the role of human resource management practice in the motivation of older employees. This paper investigates some senior employees in a large state-owned enterprise by means of semi-structured interview. It is found that different types of senior employees have different perceptions of human resource management practices in enterprises. In addition, the human resource management practices provided by enterprises, in particular, human resource management practices that are conducive to the career development of older employees have a positive impact on the work input of older employees, and help older employees to achieve “Successful aging” in the organization. At the same time, older employees are also more likely to expect the company to provide more human resource management practices on the career development of older employees. Keywords: Older Workers; Human Resource Management Practices; Senior Staff Motivation; Population Ageing; Successful Aging. 1. Introduction Population ageing, the decline in the proportion of the working age population is the world’s problem. Combining the effects of the baby boom of the 1950s, the one child policy that began in the 1980s, and the changing attitudes of young people, China’s population ageing is remarkable. The number of people aged 60 and over in China is 264018766, accounting for 18.70 percent of the population, according to the basic communiqué of the seventh national population census released by the National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China of the 2021 on May 11, the number of people aged 65 and over was 1,906,35280, accounting for 13.50 percent of the total population. Compared with the results of the sixth population census in 2010, the proportion of people aged 60 and over increased by 5.44 percentage points (China Statistics Bureau, 2021), we have a serious population ageing problem. Not only does the population ageing mean that the proportion and size of the elderly population in the total population is increasing, it also means that the working-age population is getting older (Tong Yu fen, 2014; Wang Yingying, Tong Yu fen, 2015; Wang Ping, 2016). China’s “Demographic dividend” is about to dry up, a country or region’s Demographic window means a demographic structure that is more conducive to economic growth in a changing population structure (Du yang, 2019). Based on the demographic dividend depletion theory and the results of the National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China’s sixth census, economists predict that China’s demographic dividend will completely disappear and become irreversible around 2030(China Statistics Bureau, 2011). In view of the changing trend of the population ageing and the demographic dividend, in March 2017, Premier Li Keqiang signed and the State Council issued the National Plan for the development of the undertakings for the aged and the construction of the old-age pension system in the 13th five- year plan. “Plan” clearly stressed that China in the “13th five-year plan” period to promote the cause of the elderly and old-age pension system. In November 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the population ageing, which sets out five BCP Social Sciences & Humanities ISSS 2022 Volume 16 (2022) 453 specific tasks to tackle aging, this includes improving the effective supply of labor in the context of population ageing, and improving the overall quality of human resources in China through the construction of a lifelong learning system. Based on the analysis of the overall situation of the Chinese population, the proportion of the working population and China’s policy response, it can be seen that China has a serious population ageing problem and the proportion of the working population has gradually decreased, the Chinese government is also very concerned about this issue, and has launched a series of targeted policies and related institutional measures. This article is based on the historical background of the serious population ageing at home and abroad and the serious population ageing of China’s labor force, and is aimed at the current demographic situation. This article makes a preliminary qualitative study on the practice of human resource management and the motivation of senior employees in enterprises at the present stage. This paper explores the role of human resource management practices in motivating older employees and helping older employees to achieve “Successful aging” in the organization, in order to improve the effective utilization rate of the older labor force, and solve the problem of the insufficient proportion of the labor force population caused by the population ageing, this paper explores the new type of incentives for enterprises that meet the needs of the older employees at the present stage, then improve the overall quality of the labor force, so that China’s “Demographic dividend” by the quantity dividend to the quality dividend conversion (original new, Taurus, 2021) . 2. Literature Review 2.1 SOC Model and Lifelong Theory The core guiding theory of this study is the concept of life-long development (Baltes, Staudinger, & Lindenberger, 1999) , the selection of compensation-optimized meta-model (Soc)(Baltes, & Baltes, 1990) , as well as reference other researchers in the life-long development concept and SOC model of further exploration and research. The concept of life long development is the core concept of Bartels’s developmental psychology, and the SOC model is the classic successful aging model proposed by Baltes. An important assumption in the SOC model is that successful aging of the elderly requires not only better functional maintenance but also efficient use of resources (Xiong Bo, 2018) . According to the SOC model, people will encounter opportunities and limitations in their lifetime, which can be realized by three strategies: selection, optimization and compensation (Freund & Baltes, 1998) . Selection means that the individual is forced to make a choice because of the limitation of resources, on the one hand, it means to abandon some goals, on the other hand, it means to choose new goals. Compensation refers to the need for alternative processes or means to maintain a certain level of function and then achieve the goal when resources are lost or the target path is blocked in the chosen functional area. Optimization refers to the allocation and refinement of internal and external resources to a higher level of function in a chosen field, thus maximizing the quantity and quality of life, improving individual adaptability (Wang Yemei, Chen Guopeng, Song Yi, 2007). In short, the SOC model holds that people adapt to age-related changes in demand and resources by selecting and prioritizing goals, optimizing goal pursuit, and compensating for losses in goal-related instruments (Baltes & Baltes, 1990; Freund & Baltes, 2002), and eventually achieve successful ageing. In the SOC model, “Successful development” is defined as a combination of profit maximization and loss minimization. In addition, the model shows that motivation changes with age, with age, individuals will allocate less resources to optimize goals (that is, to achieve higher levels of functioning), more resources are devoted to maintaining (that is, maintaining current levels of functioning in the face of new challenges) and regulating losses (that is, functioning at lower levels) (Baltes, Staudinger, & Lindenberger, 1999) . This idea was supported by Freund (2006), who found that while the primary goal in young adulthood was optimization, older adults showed a greater focus on compensatory goals to prevent further resource loss (Ebner, Freund, & Baltes, 2006; Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004) . BCP Social Sciences & Humanities ISSS 2022 Volume 16 (2022) 454 In addition, the life span perspective states that cognitive abilities such as rapid information processing, new problem solving and reasoning (“Fluid intelligence”) generally decline with age. In contrast, knowledge gained through experience (“Crystallized intelligence”) tends to be relatively stable and even increases with age (Baltes et al.,1999; Salthouse, 2012). Kanfer et al. believe that there are four types of changes within individuals as they age: loss, gain, reorganization, and exchange (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004). Depending on their job characteristics, older workers can compensate for age-related variable mental decline by applying their experience, knowledge and judgment in the work environment, and older people’s work motivation can be enhanced by targeted job-role reconfiguration strategies (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004). Specifically, from the perspective of life-long development, with the change of age, the health status, work ability, job matching and work input of the older employees in the enterprise will change dynamically. Organizations can influence and intervene the dynamic change through human resource management practices or some regulations, and adjust the work motivation of older employees to promote the work input of older employees. 2.2 Human Resource Management Practices and Incentives for Older Employees Current domestic and international research on the human resources practices of older employees and the motivation of older employees shows that for some people who have been doing the same job for decades, it does not necessarily show boredom and lack of work input, for some other older people in manual labor, age-related changes in physical function and health can lead to maladjustment (Bal & Kooij). Therefore, organizations need to maintain a high level of performance by strengthening management practices for older employees. Robson and Hansson (2007) set out to identify self- directed strategies, arguing that individuals will choose different strategies or engage in different activities at different stages to achieve successful aging (Bal & Kooij). Tu Ba Polat et al. argue that developmental HRM practices create an environment in which older employees can develop themselves to enhance their motivation to continue working (Polat, Bal, & Jansen, 2019). Companies that meet the flexible work needs of older employees can significantly increase their job engagement (PittCatsouphes, MatzCosta, 2008). Factors such as “Good opportunity to participate in decision- making and harmonious superior-subordinate relationship”provided by enterprises have a positive effect on the engagement of older employees (Liu Min, Yu Jianglong, 2019) . Wang Zhongjun and others believe that job remolding at the end of a career can help older employees maintain better motivation and work ability, achieving successful aging at work (Wang Zhongjun, Zhang Liyao, Yang Yinyin, Wang Renhua, Peng Yisheng, 2019). Xiang Zhang’s research shows that companies can positively influence employees’job satisfaction and emotional commitment by promoting lifelong learning and eliminating age discrimination. (Xiang Zhang, 2015). Research by Veth Klaske N and others argues that organizations should focus more on building good relationships with older employees in their daily lives than on human resource practices aimed at control, to improve the work attitude of older employees (Klaske, Heijden, Hubert, Annet, Emans, 2018). Especially for those with low levels of work ability, age-based age diversity practices can help older employees to adopt different SOC strategies according to their goals and needs, they will also become more committed and more likely to delay retirement, ultimately achieving results that will help organizations extend their working lives (Sousa, Sara, Helena, 2019). The study by Matthijs Bal et al. shows that the use of career design will be more closely related to the engagement and commitment of the older employees in the middle-aged and older employees who are highly supportive of career design by managers. Therefore, the implementation of career design as a human resource practice can enable older employees to achieve greater success in their career (Bal, Kleef, Jansen, 2015). Similarly, research by Carol Atkinson and Peter Sandiford has shown that human resources practices designed to accommodate well-being and flexible work arrangements in small businesses can meet the needs of older workers (Atkinson & Sandiford, 2016). Older employees will be rewarded with greater effort, dedication, energy, and commitment to the organization when they realize that BCP Social Sciences & Humanities ISSS 2022 Volume 16 (2022) 455 the organization values their wellbeing and expects motivation from their leaders through human resources practices (Bentley, Stephen, Catley, Blackwood, Roche, & P. O’Driscoll, 2019). Research by Taneva, SK et al. demonstrates the importance of human resource practices and personal strategies in promoting successful aging at work and in helping older workers flourish later in their careers (Taneva, Stanimira, Arnold, & John, 2018). Enterprises can also enhance the motivation of older employees by implementing target incentives and supporting appropriate target assessment, and take positive incentives such as empowerment and democratic management to motivate older employees (Huang Dujian, 2009). The implementation of HR practices is also associated with greater employee satisfaction with current employability and increased organizational productivity, and the widely adopted human resources practices aimed at health, motivation, and employability contribute to employees’ sustainable employability (YBEMA, Vuuren, Dam, 2020). By combing the previous studies on successful aging, human resource practices and job incentives for older employees, we find that, the current research in this field focuses on the influence of human resource management practices on the work outcomes of older employees by influencing the organizational climate and the psychological contract of employees. However, few studies focus on the effect of perceived level of senior employees on the work of senior employees. Based on the above-mentioned research gaps, this paper intends to explore the effect of human resource management practices of senior employees on the motivation and presence of senior employees. 3. Research Design 3.1 Research Overview In this study, we used one-to-one interview to conduct a research on human resource management practices, motivation and successful aging of senior employees in the southern branch of a large-scale state-owned enterprise. The survey was conducted among senior employees at the grass-roots level of a large state-owned enterprise. In this study, the authors chose 40 years as the age limit to distinguish older workers from younger workers. The Age of 40 has been widely used as a criterion to classify older and younger employees in human resource management, including empirical studies (Collins, 2009; Yang Fan, 2017). Only senior workers aged 40 and over were allowed to participate in the study. All participants in this study were contacted through the author’s personal network, and the confidentiality and anonymity of the interviews were strictly guaranteed. The senior staff who participated in the study were all from the Shao guan branch of the research enterprise in Guangdong Province. They were from three different units. A total of 29 junior senior employees participated in the offline interview research, according to the interviewer’s preliminary understanding of the interviewees, including 18 male employees, 11 female employees. The average age of the older workers in the study was 48.1 years, with 17 of them aged 45 or older. Of the 29 senior employees in the study, three were grass-roots leaders and the remaining 26 were grass-roots frontline employees. Of all the respondents, only 2 had a high school education level or below, 22 senior workers had a college degree, and 5 had a college education level or above. 3.2 Research Problems and Research Methods Offline interview is the core of this research. Through offline interview, this paper makes an exploratory study on the effect of human resource management practice on the work engagement of older employees. The interview method used in this study is semi-structured interview. The author designs a rough outline of the questions based on the research questions, the core issue of this interview is the incentive effect of human resource management practice on the senior employees in the organization. All of the questions were based on the above-mentioned core (important content) and were supplemented by reality-based interviews. After defining the core issues, the author interviewed 29 senior employees at the grass-roots level of the research enterprises one after another, and interviewed 3 senior employees at the grass-roots level of the research enterprise in July 2020, 2021 conducted interviews with the remaining 26 older employees between May and July. In this BCP Social Sciences & Humanities ISSS 2022 Volume 16 (2022) 456 interview, we mainly discussed the following issues, “How do older employees perceive the company’s human resource management practices, and how does this perception affect older employees’ own work engagement?”, “How does the company influence older employees’ work engagement through human resource management practices?”, “How much do you think the company’s human resource management practices affect your motivation at work?” “What are the positive (negative) effects of human resource management practices on the successful aging of older employees.” This interview research belongs to the qualitative research, the author obtains the first-hand data through the offline interview and carries on the related exploration based on this. All the interviews were conducted in the interviewees’ office, and the average interview time was about 50 minutes. The interviewees were interviewed one-to-one in their working time or free time before lunch. Each interviewee received a small gift from the interviewer to thank him or her for participating in the survey. Most of the interviewees were cooperative during the interview. Only a small number of them moved around and looked at their mobile phones frequently during the interview. The interviewer also recorded these behaviors together, for a preliminary understanding of the interviewees personality and attitude towards the interview. 3.3 Data Collection and Analysis The data collection of this paper is based on the research topic of “The impact of human resource management practices on the motivation of senior employees”. The information and data collected in this study are mainly from two parts. The first part is the first-hand data obtained through the semi- structured interview with the eligible senior employees of the enterprise, the second part is the second- hand data related to research, such as related websites, announcements, internal systems, etc., which are collected and sorted out by means of internet, official websites and internal OA system. In order to ensure the validity and reliability of the research data, the “Triangle validation” was carried out by using different data sources. The research object of this paper is the southern branch of a large state- owned enterprise in China. The senior employees in three basic units of the Shao guan branch of the research enterprise are selected as the research sample. 3.3.1 Semi Structured Interviews In order to ensure that the interviewees meet the restrictions of the study, such as the age and work unit of the participants, the study adopts the snowballing sampling method, that is to interview a group of eligible older employees first, the first group was then asked to introduce another group of eligible older employees to semi-structured interviews. In order to ensure the reliability and validity of the data, multi-sample and multi-stage sampling was used in this study. The author first contacted three senior employees of the research enterprise through the personal relationship network, and conducted semi-structured interviews with these three senior employees, obtained the research related first-hand data material and initially acquaints with the research enterprise present stage situation. Through the introduction of these 3 senior employees, the author completed a semi-structured interview with 5 leaders of 3 grass-roots units of the surveyed enterprises. Finally, with the help and introduction of these 5 leaders, the author completed a semi-structured interview with 29 eligible senior employees from 3 grass-roots units. A total of 256 pieces of data were collected. At the end of each round of interviews, the authors randomly selected three older employees, then presented them with relevant interview transcripts and asked if there was any deviation in the participants’ expressions and records, after confirmation, the collected interview data are screened and sorted out. Through the preliminary collation of data, delete irrelevant content, wrong answers to the research questions, and some ambiguous answers, a total of 214 valid data retained. 3.3.2 Internal Access to Information There are two main sources of documents in this part. The first one is that the author looks up some public documents on the official website of the enterprise. The second is to obtain the approval of the internal staff of the enterprise, from the Research Enterprise’s internal OA system to obtain BCP Social Sciences & Humanities ISSS 2022 Volume 16 (2022) 457 part of the public documents, internal circulars and other information. This paper collects and sorts out the documents and materials, mainly investigates the practice of human resource management, the circular documents which are closely related to the human resource management system, and some systems and circular documents which are aimed at the older employees. This evidence from official sources provides us with a way to cross-check interviews and control backtracking bias. 3.3.3 Internet Information In addition to the above two kinds of information access channels, this paper also through the academic database retrieval of other scholars on the enterprise research literature and some news reports on the enterprise research. The information obtained through these Internet channels serves as evidence of third-party information supplements and verification checks. 4. Research Content and Analysis 4.1 The Overall Level of Work Involvement of Older Employees is Relatively Low at This Stage, and the Factors Affecting Their Work Involvement Mainly Focus on the Work Itself, But Also Include Factors Such as Family, Physical Condition, Age, Etc. In this part of the interview, the interviewer first described the concept of work engagement to the interviewee. The author chose the concept of work engagement by Schaufeli et al., a positive, fulfilling emotional and cognitive state associated with work. Three items were selected from the work engagement scale for older employees (Schaufeli, Bakker & Salanova, 2006): “I feel energetic when I work” and “I feel energetic when I work”, “When I get up in the morning, I’d like to go to work” helps interviewees better understand and grasp the concept of work engagement to ensure the interview goes smoothly. Interviewer: Would you please talk about your level of work input at this stage according to the brief introduction of work input and your actual situation? What are the main factors that affect your work engagement? I need you to describe. Ms. Huang, the senior employee representative: As far as I am concerned, I feel that my level of work input is low and I cannot be as energetic and active in the workplace as I mentioned earlier, it’s more like getting the job done. As for the influencing factors, I personally think it still lies in the work itself. First of all, at my current age (44 years old) and my previous education is not very high (junior college), so my promotion space is very small promotion possibility is basically zero. And I belong to the first-line power supply staff, there’s a lot of work to be done every day. All of this has resulted in a low level of commitment to my job, and I have to devote at least half of my time to my family and children. Data from offline interviews showed that only three of the 29 senior employees at the bottom of the survey said their level of work engagement was good enough to reach the above-average level, while most of the respondents, all of the 17 senior employees reported a lower-to-average level of job involvement, while the remaining 9 reported a lower level of job involvement. The 29 older employees who participated in the survey all considered the work itself to be a very important factor affecting their job engagement, in addition, 18 respondents cited family reasons, 16 cited age and 11 cited physical health as factors that influenced their work engagement. 4.2 Different Types of Older Employees have Different Perceptions of Human Resource Management Practices Although there were similarities between skilled and experienced senior employees in their perceptions of the company’s human resource management practices for older employees, there are lots of differences. Interviewer: Please give a brief account of your experience in the current stage of human resources management practices, such as: Focus on the work skills development of older employees, and provide relevant training. BCP Social Sciences & Humanities ISSS 2022 Volume 16 (2022) 458 Mr. Gao: Well, our company has formulated and implemented the policies of human resource management that you just mentioned. What impressed me more is the company’s appraisal and training system for its employees, we belong to the inspection team under the operation and maintenance department. Our daily operation is dangerous to some extent. Therefore, operational safety is the most important link. The enterprise also attaches great importance to this aspect, twice a year will be held in the work safety operating standards of the examination, and requires the examination to achieve more than 90 points to be qualified (full 100 points). In addition, the enterprise will provide special operation training after the replacement of new equipment and new instruments. The front-line workers need to upgrade their titles, such as senior technicians, senior engineers and so on also need to pass the relevant skills training and assessment to be able to get promoted. In addition to assessment and training, there are such as older staff to take young staff (apprenticeship system) and so on. Ms. Wu: Yes, our company has these systems. For example, because of the older, one of my colleagues applied for a transfer from the first line power station to work in the logistics department. Line staff who meet the conditions may apply for early back. Collating the responses of all the senior employees interviewed, we can find that the perception of skilled senior employees of the human resource management practices of the enterprise is mainly focused on the work itself, for example, training for job skills, job title assessment, etc,. Experienced senior employees’ perception of human resource management practices is more personal and career development management practices such as job transfer, retirement, personal career planning and so on Nearly 91.67% of skilled senior employees are aware of the “Skills, business training” offered by the company, 83.33% of the senior technical staff have experienced the human resource management practice of “Professional title examination and Business Ability Examination” provided by the enterprise; 88.24% and 82.35% experienced senior employees perceived the human resource management practices of “Transferring to a more comfortable position” and “Applying for early internal retirement” respectively. 4.3 The Degree to Which the Work Engagement of Older Employees is Influenced by the Human Resource Management Practices of the Enterprise as a Whole is at an Average Level, at the Present Stage, the Practice of Human Resource Management in Enterprises Cannot Effectively Enhance the Level of Work Involvement of Older Employees Based on the first part, the author conducted a preliminary interview on the work engagement of the older employees and its influencing factors, as well as the perception level of the older employees to the enterprise management practice, the author conducted an interview on the impact of human resource management practices on the work engagement of older employees. And in this part of the interview questions, the author referred to Likert’s five-point scale to design the five-point scoring method, the influence of human resource management practices on the work engagement of older employees is divided into 1-5 grades, where 1 stands for “Little influence” and 2 for “Little influence”, three stands for “General effect”, four for “Greater effect”, and five for “Significant effect”. Interviewer: Based on the human resource management measures provided by the company mentioned in the first question, do you think that the human resource management of the company has an impact on your own work engagement? If you could describe in detail the impact. Ms. Chung: On this issue, I feel it definitely has an impact on my work engagement. First of all, the measures just mentioned are more or less felt by every employee in the work process. My personal feeling is that the practice of human resource management in our enterprise, that is, those systems have more of a guarantee effect. For example, training enterprises within an enterprise provide more skills and business training focused on the current job demand, there is less training for personal development and advancement. Simply put, I feel that these systems only allow me to do my job properly and do not allow me to be as energetic and active as you suggest. BCP Social Sciences & Humanities ISSS 2022 Volume 16 (2022) 459 Ms. Li: most of the HR practices mentioned above can be felt, but there are differences for every part, every job, every position and even every employee. I personally feel that these human resource management practices have had little impact on my work engagement. the average score of the senior workers at the grass-roots level was 2.86. The average score of the senior workers at the technical level was 3.83, the average score for experienced older workers was 2.18. According to the score, the feedback level of all the senior staff participating in the survey on “The management practice of the senior staff in the enterprise has an impact on their work input” is at the general level, at this stage only the role of maintaining, basically cannot effectively enhance the work of older staff input. The senior employees who participated in the survey showed a relatively obvious characteristic. The level of the effect of the human resource management practices of the technical senior employees feedback on their own work engagement was significantly higher than that of the experienced senior employees, the average score of the two types of employees was 1.65 higher than that of the experienced employees. Technical senior employees in the interview about the degree of impact described mainly “Have a more significant impact, have the impact of basic protection.” and the latter is more “The impact of the general, basically no impact.” 4.4 Older Employees are More Likely to Expect the Company to Provide More Personalized Human Resource Management Practices that Will Help Them Develop Their Personal Careers This part of the interview did not appear in the initial interview outline, is the interviewer according to the actual situation of the interviewee answers to the interview to carry out the appropriate cross- examination. Considering that some of the older employees involved in the study could not grasp the problem correctly, the authors selected Kulik et al. (2016) to measure the human resource management practices of older employees, this includes encouraging older employees to take on new roles or tasks that challenge them, and encouraging older employees to serve as mentors within the organization to help respondents better grasp the issue. Interviewer: Based on your current work situation and your personal career planning, what human resource management practices do you expect the company to provide? (or what human resource management practices do you feel your organization can provide to increase your engagement?) Mr. Xu, senior employee representative: I Am an employee of the operation and maintenance department. I personally hope that the company will have technical and skill training specifically for senior employees, this can help us better adapt to some of the enterprise’s advanced equipment and office technology, but also conducive to my self-improvement, can help me better achieve my personal career development. According to the analysis of the interview data, most of the older employees expect the company to provide the training plan, the training program and the promotion system with more potential, such as senior staff can serve as internal mentors, as well as take on new roles, new tasks and other human resources management practices conducive to the personal development of senior staff; Some employees also say they want the company to offer personalized human resources practices such as the opportunity to redesign jobs or move to less demanding positions. 5. Research Conclusion Based on the one-to-one interviews with 29 senior employees from the Research Enterprises, the author has a preliminary understanding of the perception of senior employees in the state-owned enterprises on the human resource management practices, it also explored the practice of human resource management, the motivation of senior staff and the “Successful aging” of senior staff in the organization. Through the analysis of the phenomenon, the following three conclusions are worth thinking about. BCP Social Sciences & Humanities ISSS 2022 Volume 16 (2022) 460 5.1 There are Significant Differences in the Perception Level of Different Types of Senior Employees to the Human Resource Management Practices After sorting out and analyzing the interview data and other documents, it is concluded that in the same enterprise, in the same working environment, different types of senior employees have different perceptions of human resource management practices. From the interviews, among the senior employees who took part in the survey, the senior technical employees’ perception of the human resource management practices of the enterprise is more concentrated on the human resource management practices of the work itself, for example: skills, business training, job title assessment, and so on; in contrast, experienced older employees are more aware of their own work life-related human resource management practices, for example: transfer of posts, extraction of internal retirement, etc. . Based on this situation, the enterprise should make a plan to improve the perception level of different types of senior staff to the Enterprise Human Resource Management Practice. 5.2 The Practice of Human Resource Management has an Effect on the Work Engagement of Older Employees According to the feedback from the senior employees at the grass-roots level in the state-owned enterprises who participated in the survey, the practice of human resources in the enterprises has an impact on the work input of the senior employees. However, according to the interview data, the self- perceived HR practices of all the employees surveyed had a more general impact on their work engagement, and the average score of all the employees’ feedback was only 2.86 on a five-point scale, according to the score, the effect of human resource management on the work engagement of the older employees is less than the middle level from the perspective of the older employees’ self- perception. And in this study, the authors found that among older employees who participated in the study, the scores of skilled senior employees were significantly higher than those of experienced senior employees in the same work environment on “The influence of the senior employees’ self- perception on their work engagement”. Based on the above conclusions, the state-owned enterprises need to adjust the human resource management practices. 5.3 Older Employees are More Likely to Expect the Company to Provide Human Resource Management Practices that are Conducive to Their Career Development The study authors of this section used open-ended interview techniques and used the 8-item scale presented by Kulik et al. in 2016, to help senior employees make choices and think without affecting their self-judgment, and to avoid the influence of objective factors on the interviewees to the greatest extent possible, finally, we learn about the human resource management practices that older employees most expect from the company. The data obtained from the interview show that the answers given by the interviewees are relatively scattered, but after the author’s collation and analysis of the interview materials, the senior employees participating in this survey expect that the enterprise can provide human resource management practices for the personal career development of the senior employees. In view of the expectation of the older employees, the state-owned enterprises should make corresponding adjustment in the human resource management practice at the present stage, and increase the human resource management practice which is beneficial to the individual career development of the older employees. This can not only improve the perception level of the senior staff to the practice of human resource management in the enterprise, but also serve as a bridge, through the enterprise’s human resources management practices to enhance the enterprise’s older staff’s work involvement and work engagement. BCP Social Sciences & Humanities ISSS 2022 Volume 16 (2022) 461 6. Summary 6.1 Practical Implications This research takes semi-structured interview as the core, with the aid of related data analysis, and starts from the level of older employees’ self-perception, this paper makes a qualitative study on the practice of human resource management in enterprises, the motivation of older employees and the “Successful aging” of older employees in organizations. The results show that in the environment of state-owned enterprises in China, the human resource management practices, especially for personal development, have a significant positive impact on the work input of older employees. In 2018, when General Secretary Xi Jinping took part in the deliberations of the Guangdong delegation, talent was the first resource. Combining the current situation of China’s population ageing and the “Demographic dividend” failure, the author argues that fully mobilizing the work enthusiasm of older employees in enterprises, increasing their work input is of great significance to solving the problems of labor population ageing and labor shortage in a country or region as a whole. This is also conducive to an enterprise to enhance the overall performance of employees, reduce enterprise salary costs. Based on the conclusion of this study, the author believes that at the present stage, enterprises should shape a good corporate culture in line with the characteristics of enterprises and formulate relevant supporting management measures, and pay attention to the development of human resource management practice system for older employees to improve the perception level of enterprise human resource management practice of older employees. Through positive human resource practices that meet the personal development needs of the enterprise’s employees, increase the work input of older employees, and help the enterprise reduce labor costs, increasing the utilization rate of the older labor force also helps employees to achieve “Successful aging” at work and realize their career development goals. 6.2 Research Limitations There are three limitations in this study: (1) This research is a qualitative research, which mainly uses the qualitative research method to analyze the factors that affect the older employees in the enterprise and preliminarily explores the influence of the enterprise human resource management practice on the older employees’ job involvement, the following research still needs to pass the quantitative research, constructs the suitable model to carry on the verification; (2) the samples of this study come from three different grass-roots units, but still belong to the same state-owned enterprises. In the follow-up study, we should expand the source of the sample and investigate the older employees of other state-owned enterprises to verify the generality of the conclusion (3) the core research content of this paper: the effect of human resource management practice on the work engagement of older employees is only a preliminary exploration of the existence of this effect, the follow-up study should probe into the source and mechanism of the influence, such as the positive effect of human resource management on the work engagement of older employees. References [1] Communiqué of the sixth national census. China Bureau of Statistics. April 28,2011. [2] Bulletin of the seventh national census. China Bureau of Statistics. Published: May 21,2021. [3] Du Yang. (2019). A correct understanding of the changing trend of China’s demographic dividend. People’s Forum, (14), 70-71. [4] Huang Dujian. 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