Your company faces a looming threat to its competitiveness: a severe shortage of talented workers. In the coming decades, as baby boomers retire and birthrates decline, there won’t be nearly enough young people entering the workplace to replace retirees. New workers will be harder to come by. The valuable skills, tacit knowledge, and relationships that older workers have accumulated will melt away from your organization.
How to prevent mass retirement from starving your business of talent? Replace the traditional notion of retirement—whereby people stop working at a certain age—with a more flexible one that encourages people to become lifelong contributors to your company. Win mature workers’ hearts and minds by creating a culture that honors their experience. Develop retention programs that reengage baby boomers—such as flexible work arrangements, assignments that help them master new skills, and opportunities to take on part-time contracting work after they retire.
Many older workers don’t want lives of pure leisure. They hunger to learn, grow, and try new things. Retire retirement in its traditional sense, and you solidify your connection with older employees—before competitors can snap them up.
The Idea in Practice
To reengage your older workers:
Create a Culture that Honors Experience
Most work environments alienate anyone over 50: Recruitment ads emphasize “energy,” “fast pace,” and other youthful qualities. Older workers receive less than half the amount of training their younger cohorts receive. To win back baby boomers’ hearts and minds, use recruiting strategies, training programs, and corporate communications to send the message that you value experience and knowledge. Example:
Retailer CVS has created a welcoming environment for older employees. It has no mandatory retirement age. Half of its 3,400 regular, full-time employees are over 50. Company newsletters highlight older workers’ productivity and effectiveness. In the past 12 years, CVS has more than doubled its percentage of over-50 employees.
Offer Flexible Work
Many mature workers want to keep working, but in a less time-consuming and pressured capacity. Offer flexible work arrangements—job sharing, telecommuting, compressed workweeks, part-time schedules—to older workers. But structure them so participants aren’t sidelined or overlooked for promotions. You and your older workers will benefit. Example:
At business-process outsourcer ARO Incorporated, productivity had sagged as turnover hit a whopping 25%. To revive productivity, the company upgraded technology to enable some 100 call center employees to work off-site. Then it actively recruited baby boomers to fill these jobs. The mature employees proved an excellent match for ARO’s older customers—who appreciated talking about shared concerns with them. Turnover plummeted to 7%, while productivity rose 15%. And the company was able to expand without moving into a larger, expensive facility.
Introduce Flexible Retirement
Some government regulations make it financially prohibitive for older workers to delay retirement in favor of flexible work arrangements. To get around these restrictions, allow employees to take regular retirement and then, after a specified break in service, return as independent contractors working on a part-time basis. Example:
Aerospace Corporation’s Retiree Casual program lets long-term employees retire with full benefits at 55+. They can then work on a project-consulting basis for up to 1,000 hours per year at their old base salaries or less, depending on responsibilities. Eighty percent of retirees sign up—some starting back the day after they retire. Most participate into their mid-60s, some beyond 80. The program assures Aerospace “corporate memory,” keeps expertise around, and helps transfer it to others.
