Training the Aging Workforce

Alice Snell kind­ly brings to our atten­tion her nice post, Baby Boomers: The Beat Goes On, com­ment­ing on sev­er­al reports and arti­cles on the aging work­force challenge. 

This is a very impor­tant top­ic, and direct­ly relat­ed to what we are doing. Let me pro­vide an overview with these 10 points. First, some context:

1) The Con­fer­ence Board pub­lished a good report in 2005 titled America’s Aging Work­force Pos­ing New Oppor­tu­ni­ties and Chal­lenges. Quotes:

Not only in the US: the largest sin­gle group with­in the UK work­force in 2006 was com­prised of peo­ple between 45 and 59.

2) Some con­sult­ing com­pa­nies like Accen­ture seem to be bet­ting that the solu­tion will be to improve tech­nol­o­gy for knowl­edge trans­fer and train younger employ­ees as soon as pos­si­ble (inter­view notes of the con­ver­sa­tion between Accen­ture’s CEO Bill Green and William J. Hol­stein, edi­tor in chief of Chief Exec­u­tive magazine.)

3) And the mar­ket for Tal­ent Man­age­ment and Suc­ces­sion Plan­ning solu­tions has been grow­ing steadi­ly, and has more room to grow: The Bot­tle­neck — A Lack of Suc­ces­sion Plan­ning in HR. 

Now, Alice men­tions a few inter­est­ing reports and articles

4) Prepar­ing for an Aging Work­force: A Focus on New York Busi­ness­es, a sur­vey of 400 HR man­agers spon­sored by AARP. One inter­est­ing tid­bit I found in the report: when asked about “Strate­gies to help employ­ees work past tra­di­tion­al retire­ment age”, the top answer was “Train­ing to Upgrade Skills (out of 8 such as “eas­ing into the retire­ment” or “work­ing part-time”).

5) The Tal­ent-Short­age Myth, by Work­force Man­age­ment edi­tor John Hol­lon, where he tries to debunk the myth of a mas­sive, simul­ta­ne­ous work­er short­age, high­light­ing that many baby boomers will want to remain in the work­force for many more years.

6) She ends up ask­ing “Does your orga­ni­za­tion have—or need—a baby boomer exit strategy?”

My 2 cents

7) Com­pa­nies need a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy, more than a baby boomer “exit” strategy: hir­ing and train­ing younger employ­ees, ensure knowl­edge transfer, man­age tal­ent and suces­sion plan­ning, AND train­ing baby boomers who want to stay. I tend to agree with John Hol­lon that there won’t be a mas­sive short­age. Many baby boomers will want to, and need to, keep working. But it will be impor­tant for sec­tors like gov­ern­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, ener­gy, util­i­ties, to man­age their wor­force of peo­ple over 50 and ensure flex­i­ble and appro­pri­ate work­place arrange­ments, and start plan­ning now for those arrangements.

8) An impor­tant component of that strategy, that seems to be over­looked so far, is how to help those Employ­ees to ensure max­i­mum Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Health. We have been dis­cussing the grow­ing research behind brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive train­ing and the increas­ing num­ber of tools and poten­tial acco­mo­da­tions. Won’t companies think about them as part of their Cor­po­rate Train­ing, Well­ness and Talent Management ini­tia­tives? does­n’t it make sense to try to find the best match between tal­ent and job pro­file, and won’t an old­er employ­ee with bet­ter atten­tion span, pro­cess­ing speed, mem­o­ry and exec­u­tive functions be in a bet­ter posi­tion to keep adding val­ue, to be more healthy and productive?

9) Which is why we have start­ed to help edu­cate com­pa­nies and pro­fes­sion­als with arti­cles such as Ten Impor­tant Truths About Aging: How we age is at least par­tial­ly under our con­trol, By Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, pub­lished in The Com­plete Lawyer.

10) At a glance, those Ten Truths are: 

• Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy Indi­cates That We Can Con­trol Our Aging
• Aging Means Life­long Devel­op­ment, Not Auto­mat­ic Decline
• Some Skills Improve With Age
• Some Skills Need To Be Con­tin­u­ous­ly Nur­tured And Trained
• Not All Instances Of For­get­ting Are Of Equal Concern
• We Are In Con­trol, To A Large Extent
• There Are Four “Pillars Of Brain Health”
• Cross-Train­ing Our Brains Builds Up Cog­ni­tive Reserve
• Com­put­er-Based Brain Exer­cise Pro­grams Can Help
• Embrace “Good” Stress; Elim­i­nate “Bad” Stress
• Retire­ment Is Overrated

So, let me ask, does your orga­ni­za­tion have—or need—a com­pre­hen­sive baby boomer strat­e­gy? does that strat­e­gy include a tai­lored Train­ing, Well­ness and Tal­ent Management com­po­nent? and does the Tal­ent Man­age­ment part include employ­ees over 50?