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Speech: Is Retirement Fading Away: Longevity, Labor Shortages and the Real Work World DOL forecasts 10 million more jobs than employees over next 15 years. Both the business and HR press have discussed this issue for several years. Non-profit organizations face loss of over 67% of management. Services, health-care, and other industries forecast losses of over half of management and experienced specialists. Yet two-thirds of CEOs indicate that they have not considered this issue in long-term planning. What should your organization do now? How can you analyze your needs and options? What are the best practices to attract, develop and retain mature workers? Framing the Issue
Defining Your Organization's Issues Step 1: Analyze your current demographics by age, function and position type. (Include length of service if you have a defined benefit pension plan.) Forecast changes for 5 and 10 years out. Assess your organizational short and long-term plans impact on needed skills and changes in organizational structure or size. Combine these to identify any areas of concern. Step 2: Using your analysis, look at current policies and practices. What are the positives and negatives you find in terms of impact on attracting, developing and retaining the talent your organization needs? As a guide for your analysis, common implications for organizations include: Attracting and Retaining Talent Step 3: Create a clear picture of the organization's strengths and weaknesses as these impact the organization's future. Develop options for ways to address these issues. Create a plan to educate and motivate your executive management to address these issues. Best Practices Meta-survey results: This list includes a range of practices. Few organizations offer all of these. Most of these options also appeal to other employees, not just mature workers. Management supports attracting, developing, and retaining the right workforce. Diversity of employee population is seen as valuable asset to organization. Retention issues are considered in planning compensation, training, job design, and organization development. Flexibility is provided where possible: regular part-time employees, job-sharing, flex-time, compressed work weeks, tele-commuting, phased retirement. Development and training is valued: offered to all employees, various formats and methods of training are available, mentoring programs, self-nomination option for training programs, retraining programs for new skills, job rotation. Benefits are seen as vital part of retention: age-neutral retirement savings, pension plans with 'top 3' or 'top 5' years feature, benefits available during phased retirement, benefits for regular part-time employees, wellness seminars or services, financial planning seminars, dependent/eldercare programs, flexible or cafeteria benefits options. Work design includes range of positions available for: flexible schedules, job-rotation, job-sharing, part-time work, phased retirement, sabbaticals, alumni rehiring. Employees are encouraged to: maintain and upgrade knowledge and skills, mentor others, share knowledge, move into new career areas, move into jobs with fewer responsibilities or demands as desired. RECOMMENDED RESOURCES Books Benefits for the Workplace of the Future, edited by Mitchell, Blitzstein, Gordon, and Mazo, 2003 Don't Stop the Career Clock, H. Harkness, 1999 Lost Knowledge, David W. DeLong, 2003 Other Sources and Publications 2003 Towers Perrin Retirement Study: Redefining Retirement in the 21st Century. Center for Retirement Research at Boston College (www.bc.edu/crr) University of Michigan: Retirement Research Center (www.mrrc.isr.umich.edu) International Longevity Center USA (www.ilcusa.org) MIT AgeLab (web.mit.edu/agelab) Congressional Research Service Reports Useful URLs Senate Aging Committee reports http://aging.senate.gov AARP has extensive offerings (www.aarp.org) example: Best Employers for those over 50: www.aarp.org/bestemployers Quick Facts on Older Workers www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/Qf-olderworkers.htm Challenges of an Aging Workforce (state initiatives) www.nga.org Workforce Boards National Assn. www.nawb.org Global Generations Policy Institute www.genpolicy.com And for your own future, the quiz at www.livingto100.com HRA-NCA Annual Conference Presentation, January 28, 2005 Patricia A. Frame is the founder of the consulting firm Strategies for Human Resources. We design and develop effective human resource management practices and programs which are directly relevant to achieving your organization's goals. Our solutions are tailored to your organization, based on best practices, and are simple to maintain without continued consulting support. More information on Strategies for Human Resources can be found at SHRinsight.com. ® Strategies for Human Resources, 2005, patricia@SHRinsight.com |
