Just back from a ridiculously enjoyable and relaxing break in Kefalonia under cloudless skies and amethyst waters. It’s hard not to be struck by the generational balance achieved on the island. The spiritual home, broadly, of Odysseus, Kefalonia also harbours the sort of modern yachts/floating penthouses that might make even Roman Abramovitch check his current account with some trepidation. The island has clearly achieved more in terms of this generational balance than my own family. When asked whether we might have a final, end-of-holiday photo of us all, commemorating a wonderful time, my son paused, sucked his teeth and replied, ‘Only if you don’t tag me on Facebook’. Great…
And achieving a healthy and effective balance across increasingly varying ages is something all employers will have to find an answer to over the coming decade. Workforces will take on an increasingly grey tinge, as over the next ten years, the employee base of UK plc will see 700,000 fewer people aged between 16 and 49, yet 3.7m more of those aged 50 and above – I ought, sadly, to register a certain association with this latter category at this point.
In the 50-64 year old age bracket, 68.5% of people are now in employment – just 15 years ago, this figure was only 60%. Over the course of the same period, the number of over 65s in work has doubled. The number of people aged over 60 in the UK will increase by a not inconsiderable 13% between now and 2020.
The implications for the workplace will be significant. On the positive side, this shift is driven not only by demographics but also by longer life expectancy as well as life expectancy of a higher quality. Less positively, inadequate savings and lower pension outcomes are also shaping this trend.
There will be inevitable challenges to employee engagement too – how do employers find the common ground between entry level talent (in some cases, 17 year old apprentices) and septuagenarians with 40+ years’ service? And although life expectancy is clearly rising, what will the healthcare provision ramifications be for an ageing workforce? Towers Watson also foresee challenges in terms of career progression – with more and more older people in the workforce, will ambitious Gen Y and Gen Z employees become frustrated by baby boomers potentially blocking their way? Fascinatingly, Saga’s Ros Altman, also envisages retirement as becoming more of a gradual process and less of a sudden binary switching off.
David Smith in the Sunday Times this week also posits the views that older people are less likely to push for salary increases, so accentuating what is fast shaping up to be an odd and counter-intuitive recovery: falling unemployment, emerging skills shortages but with apparently little pressure on salary costs.
This is a fascinating scenario playing itself out on broader canvasses. There is furious debate currently taking place as to how and when television presenters are quietly pensioned off from our screens and whether one gender enjoys a longer tenure than others. We are seeing more and more older models being used to promote goods and services. Barclays, in particular, are going out of their way to emphasise how they reach out via technology to older communities – I’m a personal fan of the walking football initiative.
George Osborne and his initiative, due to launch next year, that retirees are no longer forced to purchase an annuity but have far more and potentially far earlier access to their pension savings, suggests far greater autonomy and choice for this growing demographic. But is the workforce showing similar signs of engaging with older employees?
Apparently not, again according to Towers Watson, whose recent survey of senior HR professionals suggested that 59% of organisations are not making progress in the way they recognise older workers’ skills and talents. And just 50% were of an opinion that their organisation understands how the needs of employees change as they grow older.
This isn’t, however, a problem that will quietly go away. According to the DWP, the economy will create an additional 13.5m vacancies in the UK alone over the next ten years – during this time, just 7m school, college and university leavers will join the workforce.
The challenge is not whether employers should retain older employees but how successfully they are able to this.
From both an engagement and attraction perspective, this will place both a huge responsibility and a huge challenge on an organisation’s employer brand. If an organisation has a reputation and brand apparently focused on a younger demographic, will it find itself losing older talent and the knowledge and experience they possess? Similarly, it is clear that older people tend to be longer stayers and therefore by definition less inclined to move employers. Organisations which do not want to find themselves as victims of the DWP statistics above need to ensure they project the right messaging, the right channels and the right processes that attract rather than alienate the only growing employee demographic around.
Furthermore, creating an employee value proposition architecture which appeals to both 17 year old apprentices and those with grey hair and experience in equal measure, but which avoids the vanilla or the anodyne will be a massive challenge.
I’m going to tag him anyway on Facebook.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 