On Thursday July 7 the Financial Times had an article titled “Old hands back in demand in the global workforce”. Sorry but the FT is subscription only.
The gist of the article is older employees are good value.
Westpac, the Australian bank found that its age profile of employees was out of line with that of its customers. Nearly half its customers - but only one in five of its frontline staff - were over 45. "Research has shown that people like to be served by someone of the same age". I am not sure I agree with that conclusion. What I think it means is the people like being served by people who can answer their questions using a language and in a way they can understand. It just happens that there are more people like that who are of the same age as the customers.
Hartford, the financial services company found that it was facing a brain drain. In 10 years' time more than 40 per cent of its 30,000 employees will be 50 or over, making them eligible for early retirement.
The obvious answer appeared to be to hire more young people, but that offers a much smaller pool than the baby-boom generation. In addition, 44% of the group's operating income is earned from products aimed at "mature Americans" and it wants staff who matches its customer profile. Bingo…. the company is taking urgent measures to meet the challenge by recruiting workers over 50 and providing them with gradual retirement, finding ways to keep their older staff motivated.
In the days of sophisticated human resource planning systems it is amazing that such large companies suddenly discover they are about to suffer major staff shortages due to retirement. I guess it is better late than never that they find the solution is to keep existing or getting new older workers. Dick Stroud www.20plus30.com
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