Mar 3, 2020, 02:53pm Richard Eisenberg Next Avenue Contributor Group Editor of the Money and Work channels
for NextAvenue.org
After attending an all-day conference on
age-friendly workplaces, I’ve come to the conclusion that employers are
increasingly interested in hiring and keeping older workers. But it’s not so
much “do the right thing.” It’s more “do the expedient thing.”
The unemployment rate of 3.6% nationally (2.5%
or less in five states) means businesses, governments and nonprofits are
scrambling to find workers and hold on to the ones they have.
Combine this with an aging population and
thinning numbers of young adults and “there will be no
alternative but to recognize the value of older workers,” said Karen
Brown, director of Changing the Narrative’s Age-Friendly Workplace Initiative
in Denver, at the conference.
“If we can change the organizations, we can
change the lives of older adults.”
Added Joe Barela, director of the Colorado
Department of Labor and Employment, “There’s a critical-skills workforce
shortage in Colorado. We don’t have one worker to leave behind or to waste.”
The Age-Friendly Workplace Conference
Brown and Barela joined about a dozen other
experts sharing research and insights at the Denver event: Age-Friendly
Workplace Programs: Recruiting and Retaining Experienced Employees, a
collaboration between University of Iowa and Transamerica Institute and
co-sponsored by the Office of Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat. (I
moderated one of the panels, on behalf of Next Avenue.)
The conference had a strong Colorado focus.
That made sense, not just because of its location, but because the state has the
third fastest-growing aging population and a booming economy with a 2.5%
unemployment rate.
“I am
encouraging my staff to improve policies and programs to support the continued
recruitment and retention of Coloradans over 50,” Polis, 44, said. Both his
parents, who are in their 70s, are working. (They co-founded the Blue Mountain
Arts greeting card and book publisher.) And, Polis said, “My grandmother
retired when she was eighty-four.”
The Age-Friendly Workplace Survey of Colorado
Employers
Much of the data and research findings had
national implications though, notably the Colorado Above-Fifty Employment
Strategies (CAFES) Preview Report unveiled at the conference by Brian Kaskie,
its research chief and a University of Iowa professor in the College of Public
Health.
As part of their two-year project, Kaskie and
his teams at his university and the nonprofit Transamerica Center for
Retirement Studies surveyed human resources specialists and chief executives at
146 Colorado employers of all sizes — public and private companies, nonprofits
and government agencies. The goals: to learn what employers are doing, or will
do, to support their 50+ employees and job applicants.
“If we can change the organizations, we can
change the lives of older adults,” Kaskie said, adding that boomers are
pleading with employers to address their needs.
Sadly, not very many of the employers surveyed
were doing so. And Kaskie told me he believes those findings would be true
around the country.
Among the results of the survey, which was
funded by Colorado-based NextFifty Initiative:
·
Only half of the
employers surveyed have adopted a formal diversity and inclusion policy that
specifically includes age. (And that’s considerably higher than the 8% figure in a
PwC survey.)
·
Two-thirds don’t offer
phased retirement, letting employees move out of a full-time position over a
period of up to five years.
·
68% do not offer
health insurance to their retirees (though 75% provide health coverage to all
or most employees).
And these numbers may be higher than the
reality among Colorado’s employers, since the researchers sent surveys to 1,500
of them and the vast majority didn’t answer them. In other words, age-friendly
employers were more likely to respond. In the polling trade, this is known as
“respondent bias.”
“The ones who didn’t respond are the ones I’m
concerned about,” said Kaskie.
But, he added, some of the employers who did
respond said they’re offering a variety of programs and benefits for their 50+
employees. And many expressed interest in doing so: 70% of respondents said
they think “it is important to develop programs that support our experienced
employees age 50+.”
Overall, Kaskie said, “this is a story of good
and bad,” regarding recruitment and retention strategies.
But, he told the conference audience: “The
emerging consensus among employers is we need to start thinking about this.”
Age-Friendly Workplaces Report: Next Steps
For the next stage of this project, the CAFES
team aims to help them. The researchers will consult with 30 Colorado
employers, assisting each to take one significant step to better serve the 50+
population. That might be increasing recruiting efforts of older job
applicants, for a more diverse applicant pool. It could be developing a
caregiver support network for employees. Or something else.
Said Catherine Collinson, president and CEO of
Transamerica Institute: “We’re going to learn from [the research] and then the
question is: How can we roll it out on a broader basis across the United
States?”
Based on what other speakers at the conference
said, this will be challenging.
The Depressing Research About Older Workers
Rick Guzzo, partner and co-founder of the
Mercer Workforce Sciences Institute, cited studies showing that although older
workers typically perform as well as younger workers, their performance reviews
are worse and they’re less likely to be promoted.
“There’s a huge disconnect,” Guzzo said,
between the work of older employees and how their employers appreciate them.
One reason, Guzzo noted: Older workers often
display better “citizenship behavior” in the workplace — doing things like
assisting new employees and taking on extra work — but these activities
typically don’t count for performance reviews and promotions, despite their
positive effects.
Guzzo and Ramsey Laine Alwin, director of
thought leadership at AARP, also noted something I heard at the recent UN/AARP global
briefing on age-friendly workforces and wrote about for Next
Avenue: There’s conclusive data showing that multigenerational teams working on
projects lead to better products and better outcomes than teams of exclusively
younger workers (or of just older workers, for that matter).
“There’s magic in the mix when you bring all
generations together,” said Alwin.
AARP: 3 Ways Employers Can Be More
Age-Friendly
AARP has three recommendations for employers
to become more age-friendly, Alwin noted.
1. Remove age bias in job descriptions. “Enough with the ‘tech ninja,’” said Alwin.
2. Ban the box. This means: stop asking job applicants to
check a box on a job application saying what year they graduated college. “And
stop asking about prior wage and salary history,” she said. Connecticut has
made it illegal.
3. Evaluate age
inclusiveness in your recruitment and retention practices. “Sometimes, you need to be age aware and
sometimes you need to be age blind,” Alwin said.
A Vital Need for Older Workers: Job Training
Barela, of the Colorado Department of Labor
and Employment, added that more employers need to offer job training and reskilling
to their older workers.
As Paul Irving, chairman of the Milken
Institute Center for the Future of Aging, said in the conference keynote
address: “A third of workers over fifty believe their current company doesn’t
provide opportunities for training and progression.” A U.S. Department of Labor
report found that employees over 55 got an average of nine hours of training
per year, compared with 37 hours for those age 25 to 34.
“We have to look at not separating earning
from learning,” Barela said. That means “creating work-based learning
opportunities so you can continue staying on at work into your sixties,
seventies and possibly eighties.”
The inevitable march of automation makes
reskilling essential for many experienced workers. As a Marsh & McLennan Companies
global study noted, on average, 40% or more of the tasks done by older workers
are automatable.
“Almost no occupation will be unaffected by
automation; the half-life of tech skills will be five years,” said Barela. “My
advice is: If you’re working, make sure you have some tech-enabled skills that
allow you to work alongside tech. If you do, you should be fine.”
Ball’s in your court, employers.
As Barela said: “As we look to the future of
work, mature workers are critical to the success of so many industries that
drive our economies. There’s a tremendous opportunity in making people realize
the value experienced workers bring to the table. It’s in all of our best
interests to move to more age-friendly workplaces.”
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