“We must not build the future for our youth,” declared Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “We must build our youth for the future.”
One could analogize Roosevelt’s quote to a dilemma confronting the country’s workforce: how can businesses retain knowledge held by retiring employees? One solution is to build workplaces that foster collaboration among rookie and aging workers, and to capitalize on the strengths of both.
The University of Indianapolis’ Center for Aging & Community (CAC) advocated that strategy at its recent Managing the 21st Century Workplace conference. Various statistics were presented to illustrate the growing challenge of the United States’ aging workforce.
• There are currently 76 million Baby Boomers (individuals born between 1946 and 1964) in the U.S. As they exit the workforce, the composition of their respective industries will change dramatically
• Approximately half of the country’s federal workers, for example, will reach retirement age by 2008. And, in 15 years, 50% of nurses will retire
• Further, more than 40% of RNs will have passed age 50 by 2010. An anticipated 60% of the petroleum industry’s employees will have retired by that same year
A CAC study, Gray Matters: Challenges and Opportunities for Indiana’s Aging Workforce, compares Indiana’s aging workforce strategies to those of other states.
Divided into three phases, its first features an aging matrix that measures the degree of aging, as well as the level of activity for participating states. Next, Phase II involves a survey of Indiana employers in “critical aging occupations,” such as teaching, managers (including financial services, health and engineering) and nursing. Phase III will detail recommendations and best practices.
Early findings reveal that 11% of Indiana’s workers age 55 or older have earned a bachelor’s degree, 16% occupy high-skill occupations and 0.3% attend college. Those figures rank Indiana 46th, 42nd and 50th, respectively, among all states.
Preliminary survey results indicate that respondents view Indiana’s frontline supervisors/managers as the most difficult employees to replace.
Survey feedback thus far shows that participants consider the mature workforce to perform poorly in three areas: willingness to learn new technology, try new approaches to problem solving and participate in training. They score the older workers highly, however, in customer service orientation, ability to pass drug tests and reliable performance records.
Six major strategies businesses can use to benefit from older workers’ contributions are:
• redirecting recruiting and sourcing to include mature workers;
• retaining valued employees through alternative work arrangements;
• preserving critical knowledge;
• providing opportunities for workers to upgrade skills;
• facilitating multi-generational workforce; and
• ensuring effective use of technology by the mature workforce.
Among national companies that have implemented related workplace programs successfully are MITRE, The World Bank, Bosch and General Electric Company.
