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In four years’ time the over-50s will make up half the UK’s workforce. That means employers can continue whining about ‘lack of talent’ or wake up to the experience and resilience that’s sitting in front of them.
In previous blogs we’ve looked at what older workers want, so the obvious next question is: what are the best practices for supporting older workers? Or to put it another way, how do you achieve a multi-generational workplace that works for everyone?
Also, is it possible to create a win-win by boosting your business while giving older workers what they need? Here at Brave Starts’ towers, we reckon the answer is ‘yes’.
How do you achieve a multi-generational workplace that works for everyone?
1. Creating an inclusive workplace for older workers
Remember your grandparents’ retirement? It was like falling off a cliff – one day they were working, as they had done for decades, the next they were sitting at home, many struggling with the loss of routine. Most older workers want a more gentle journey these days – besides, many can’t afford the cliff edge stop. A lot of Gen Xers don’t have the pensions their Baby Boomer colleagues enjoyed.
As an employer, you might be saying ‘not my problem’ but whenever someone retires from your organisation, you’re losing workplace memory. Instead of spending a fortune reinventing the wheel, why don’t you set up an official process that enables your older employees to mentor newer recruits?
Brave Starts’ own research is backed up by dozens of academic papers: there comes a point in life when people stop being purely focused on acquisition and start wanting ‘to put something back’. Opportunities to mentor and coach fulfil older employees’ needs, create a workplace knowledge transfer strategy and add value to your employer brand.
The most successful people admit to recruiting people who have more experience than they do. Therefore, educating your recruiters and hiring managers not to be terrified of experience would also be a good move.
2. Flexible working arrangements for older employees
The current generation of older employees is the one that’s had more experience than any other of adapting to changing workplace norms. They can remember when things were done on paper (handy if you’re unfortunate enough to experience a major cyber attack), they’ve coped with the introduction of computers, seen fax machines come and go, are now embracing social media and many adjusted to working from home during Covid.
Losing this adaptability and resilience seems like bad business to us, yet so many over-50s leave employment because they need more time than the traditional nine-to-five allows. The issues are varied and range from health to caring responsibilities, from grief to simply wanting more time for themselves.
This is where flexibility comes in. The type of flexibility depends on the business and the employee but could be reduced hours or hybrid working. In the case of roles where there are more physical demands, flexibility might mean more opportunities to sit down or less lifting.
For the employer, it means being brave enough to have a conversation with employees: asking for their input and acting upon it. It means being careful with your communication so employees understand you are not forcing them to change roles but are offering them the opportunity to think about their future with you.
It also means supporting your line managers to have these conversations by training them. We’d suggest using a trainer who’s over 50 so they can see we’re not that scary…
3. Reskilling older workers
Older employees don’t want to leave their employers – they know how hard it is to land a new role. But they are conscious, in a way their younger colleagues are not, of the passing of time. And that means that they’re pretty clear about what they don’t want to do, which can translate into ‘what I’m doing now’. One of the things we’ve discovered is that they’re less clear about what they want to do in future.
Here at Brave Starts, we’ve helped thousands of people work out what they want to do. And all the research we have done indicates the over-50s love learning new things, often simply for the sake of learning. If you’ve got knowledge gaps in your business, why not offer to retrain your over-50s? They’re far less likely to take that fresh knowledge to a new employer than someone under 30 and, with the way the state pension age is rising, many have more than a decade in employment to go.
Investing in reskilling the over-50s is a long-term investment these days.
4. Unpaid Learning Opportunities
We’re pretty clear that responsibility for lifelong learning rests with the individual, but what employers can do is communicate the opportunities. Research among our members indicates that simply increasing the training budget doesn’t help. Partly this is due to not knowing what they want to do but it’s also down to the sense of passing time: older people often want to study to fulfil lifetime ambitions. Offering unpaid learning opportunities might be a cheap way to boost your attractiveness as an employer.
Our research showed us that 44% of over-50s are interested in work shadowing opportunities to help them decide on whether a different internal role is for them or not. Offering work shadowing for all ages has to be a win for employers wanting to keep talent within their organisations.
An increasing number of organisations are offering midlife financial or health MOTs. We’d suggest expanding those to include career or role change options.
To sum up
- Be flexible – both in the hours and location of the jobs you offer and in the opportunities you create. New ideas = new opportunities for everyone.
- Train your line managers to have conversations with over-50s team members and to listen to them. Unless tragedy strikes, they too will join the over-50s club one day.
- Communicate carefully – this is about new ideas and opportunities, not sticking people on the scrap heap. But if an over-50 wants to retire, make sure their knowledge doesn’t depart with them.
