Eric Lesser is an Associate Partner in IBM’s Institute
for Business Value. He is responsible
for research and thought leadership for IBM Business Consulting Services’
Human Capital Management Practice. He
is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Why did we
launch this report
on “Addressing the Challenges of an Aging Workforce in EMEA?"
Discussions with many of our clients, particularly those in the public sector, aerospace and defense,
oil and gas, and chemicals industries have indicated that they are wrestling
with issues regarding an aging workforce.
Additionally, our global study of over 300 Chief Human
Resources Officers (CHROs), released in May reported over 60 percent of HR professionals operating in mature
markets have difficulty identifying and developing the critical employee skills
and talents that are vital to remain competitive. This has a particular impact for organizations facing an aging workforce
issue.
Many companies are beginning to find it difficult to
hire new employees within certain disciplines, as the labor pools for younger
workers continue to shrink in many countries.
A less visible, but no less dangerous problem, is the loss of expertise
resulting from mature workers leaving the organization without passing on
their knowledge to others. As greater
numbers of “knowledge workers” retire, they take with them insights about
managing customer relationships, handling critical processes, and a host of
other experiences that can cost organizations significant amounts of time,
energy and resources to recreate or replace.
More often that not, the transfer of this knowledge is often ignored,
placing the organization in a position to repeat prior mistakes and expose
itself to additional financial and operational risk.
Most importantly, an aging workforce can affect a company’s
ability to compete. In an increasingly
global economy where work can be carried out wherever the talent resides,
unless an organization has the skilled workers to compete business will be
lost to those organizations that have proactively invested in and developed
their people.
In IBM Business Consulting Services, our Human Capital
Management practice has partnered with IBM’s Research division to develop
a diagnostic tool aimed at helping companies identify what types of positions
are at risk due to changing workforce demographics. Using a variety of analytic techniques to rapidly
extract and examine an organization’s workforce profile, this diagnostic can
help a management team identify key risk areas and model the impact of potential
interventions in real time.
What are
the main conclusions?
Companies that are looking to address the challenges
of the aging workforce should focus on six primary strategies:
1. Redirect recruiting and sourcing. Companies
are quickly facing worker shortages from labor pools where they normally would
draw younger employees. To reach mature workers, companies can conduct over-50
workshops at local job recruitment centers, offer targeted benefits such as
unpaid grandparent leave and look externally to identify retired professionals
desiring part-time or short-term work.
2. Retain valued employees through alternative work arrangements. While some companies are recruiting aging workers,
others are developing alternative work arrangements, such as part-time schedules.
Companies should also explore, when appropriate, the use of telecommuting
as a way of retaining mature workers/.
3. Preserve
critical knowledge. One approach elicits employees’
experiential, or tacit, knowledge through detailed interviewing or documentation,
explicitly capturing and storing these insights. Mentoring arrangements and
communities of practice can also encourage mature workers to pass knowledge
down to the next generation.
4. Provide
opportunities for workers to continually update skills.
Executives are recognizing the need to refresh the skills of workers whose
formal training may have ended years, if not decades, earlier. Companies are
seeking to actively transfer informal skills that have not been taught and
that are necessary in the working environment.
5.
Facilitate the coexistence of multiple generations. Often
overlooked as a facet of diversity, the viewpoints of different age groups can
present significant barriers. Organizations must balance the needs, interests
and work styles of all. By pairing senior managers with junior employees, each
can mentor the other in different areas.
6. Help mature
workers effectively use technology in the workplace.
A common misperception is that older workers have more difficulty learning
and adopting new technologies. While multiple has studies have shown otherwise,
accessibility requirements and strategies for application rollout and training
are needed to support all potential user groups, including mature workers.
According
to you, which European countries are the best prepared?
While no European country is immune from
the challenges of an aging workforce, one country that
is widely discussed as having made strides in this
area is Sweden, which has the highest workforce participation rates and the
highest average retirement age in Europe.
This is due, in part, to pension changes enacted in the late 1990s,
which made an individual’s decision to work or retire more financially neutral. In Sweden, the right-to-work age is also set
at 67, which is higher than in many EU countries. Also, there are extensive child and elder care systems in place,
making it easier for people caring for elderly relatives to remain in the
workforce and there is a long standing tradition of life-long learning, which
encourages individuals to develop new skills as they get older.
What
is IBM Business Consulting Services?
With business experts in more than 160 countries,
IBM Business Consulting Services provides clients with deep business process
and industry expertise across 17 industries, using innovation to identify,
create and deliver value faster. We
draw on the full breadth of IBM capabilities, standing behind our advice to
help clients implement solutions that are designed to deliver business outcomes
with far-reaching impact and sustainable results.
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