How can older workers and retirees address labor gaps and shortages? Is there an opportunity for employment to enhance our well-being as we age? The opportunity in both these questions hinges on building a remarkable employee experience. Explore how organizations and leaders can support the well-being of older workers and maximize their potential.
Understanding the Value of Older Employees in the Workforce
Older employees bring a wealth of knowledge, skills, and experience to the workforce, making them valuable assets for virtually any organization. In addition, an increasing number of people intend to gradually decrease their time working over a number of years, as opposed to the traditional sudden stop at retirement, increasing their presence in the workforce.
As technology advances and work becomes more specified and complex it can take a decade or longer for workers to gain the technical competence necessary to reach full performance in a role. For example, for middle-skill roles, like frontline sales, it can take as much as a decade for reps and sales associates to master fluency within an industry and product line.
Before we talk about the experience of older workers, who are we talking about, exactly? For the purpose of our discussion we're talking about employees roughly age 60 and older. Notably, their median tenure is over ten years, compared to just three years for early career workers, ages 25 to 34. There's a broad range in how older workers seek to tailor their careers with some employees seeking out retirement and leaving the workforce, while an increasing number reconstruct their careers decades before what we think of as the start of traditional retirement.
By retaining (and hiring!) older workers, organizations can maximize a vast resource of knowledge, creativity, insightful perspectives, and abilities. Employers who understand the value of older workers and those downshifting as part of retirement recognize that their unique contributions can lead to increased productivity, improved decision-making, and enhanced innovation. Moreover, retaining older workers bridges quickly widening skills and knowledge gaps making this a prime opportunity for talent.
Creating a Remarkable Employee Experience for Retirees
One of the key challenges in attracting and retaining retirees in the workforce is delivering a remarkable experience that earns their commitment. Remarkable is an attention grabbing word we use as part of our purpose and vision, but what does it mean?
Definition-wise markable means noteworthy or worthy of attention. What will earn the attention and commitment of employees with decades-long experience, seeking some form of retirement, or seeking to re-envision how their careers?
If we look at our framework for the employee experience, we can start by looking at what will attract and retain older workers at each level.
Work Environment: Flexibility
While we might first think about flexibility in terms of hours and schedule, that definition falls short in considering all the aspects of flexibility we can offer. Yes, an important part of flexibility is work hours, and making sure the structure and number of hours is attractive to each employee. Intriguingly, older workers are increasingly embracing self-employment in part because of its flexibility, giving organizations another source of competition for their sought after skill sets. Ultimately, older workers emphasize flexibility across the employee experience. Flexibility can also involve -
Project based work.
Your business may have specific projects that occur on a regularly scheduled basis or unpredictably. Older workers may find value in niche projects and the ability to tailor the nature of their work around those projects. For example, if you have tenured software developers that relish a certain type of technical work, they could devote their time to just this work they find most fulfilling. Or, there may be a cluster of tasks that deliver a consistent schedule year-round that engage retirees seeking a reduced hourly workload. Older workers across industries and skill are increasingly taking on contractual or gig-work to achieve fulfillment professionally and personally, long past what was considered a full-stop retirement age.
Job sharing.
Job sharing with older workers is increasingly becoming a strategy harnessed across industries and can take various forms. Older workers may choose to reduce their hours while mentoring and partnering with junior employees. This arrangement allows them to pass on critical skills and guide their successors.
Junior workers benefit from exposure to different aspects of the job, gaining a holistic understanding of their roles. They can step into leadership positions more confidently, armed with both theoretical knowledge and practical insights. As skills gaps exist, or loom in the immediate future, for the majority of industries, programs that maximize hands-on coaching make a huge difference.
Virtual and remote work.
To craft the ideal work arrangement, seek to understand what the ideal employee experience is for your older employees. How could virtual work deliver what that audience is seeking? For knowledge workers, if your business has in-office requirements, relaxing those for roles that are part-time or project/gig-based could positively influence retention and commitment. Remote and hybrid work arrangements are increasingly demanded by older workers with the experience and sought after skills to have multiple offers for employment
Photo by David Siglin on Unsplash
Leadership and the Employee Experience
In the whirlwind and unpredictability of our days, managers may easily overlook the significant potential offered by older employees. Indeed, the majority of workers over age sixty report the experience of discrimination and bias barring them from opportunities. Building a remarkable employee experience for older workers will not happen without leadership. How to make it happen?
- Educate and direct leadership in seeking and involving older employees in their decision-making. Allow them to have a seat at the table to make decisions and exercise influence over things that matter in the business. Think of decisions over key projects, strategy, mission, or hiring, in which loyal, older individual contributors can get involved and provide input.
- Infuse your culture, values, and vision into the employee experience. It's easy for employees that may have different schedules, contribute outside of your four walls, and work less hours to lose their voice. As we shared earlier, even the majority of older workers in full-time roles face bias and discrimination. Communicate the importance of delivering on your values and beliefs, and creating an environment of belonging, for everyone. Make sure older workers, and retirees with alternate work arrangements, are included in surveys, performance management, and any gathering and sharing of feedback.
- Take an evidence-based approach. Over time there may be similar types of hiccups or setbacks that managers negotiate when leading older employees. Consider how you can keep track of employee and manager feedback as it relates to age. If older workers retire, document their reasons. If they left for another employment opportunity, try to understand why. With exit interviews, you may want to consider administration by a third party, and consider conducting the interview as an online survey that's sent a couple weeks after the employee's last day. We've found this can produce more candid and authentic feedback as well as a better understanding of the reasons for separation and the person's plans for employment.
Coworkers and Team: How the employee experience closes labor and skill gaps
The power of older workers and retirees to reduce the challenge of skill and labor gaps depends on them forging relationships that further the transfer of knowledge, coaching, and the consistent execution that delivers results. We're also managing the epidemic of loneliness. Relationships and connection may matter more for older workers than their younger counterparts. Despite the extensive marketing urging us to spend our "golden years" traveling, golfing, and lounging by the pool, studies reveal a stark reality - many individuals who retire face challenges such as depression, heart issues, and a sense of purposelessness. Organizations can play a meaningful role in reversing this crisis.
Training and Development
For older employees with significant skill, ability, and expertise in their roles, are there ways you could maximize their talent to strengthen or more strongly scale learning and development? What if we maximized the expertise of older workers and retirees for mentorship and coaching in ways that are difficult to otherwise? By knowing your current skill and knowledge gaps and the strengths of your workforce you can tailor opportunities for teaching and learning.
We can also change the mold for traditional mentorship and offer two-way mentoring. Retired workers downshifting their time at work are often eager to expand their areas of competence and take on new tasks. Building mentoring and training programs that allow for dual, two-way transfer of knowledge and skill bring a multitude of benefits, including increased belonging and connection across teams. Efforts to support learning and growth strengthen the perception, across employees, of you commitment to the growth and success of all employees, fostering a stronger culture of continuous learning and development.
Furthermore, the decision to retire, or reduce the resources we dedicate to employment, often comes from a decision to prioritize our other passions. By knowing what matters to your current employees considering retirement, and your potential applicants you can build an experience that delivers what's remarkable and worthy of their time and contribution, and allows them to grow the competencies that matter to them the most.
Burnout, Work-Life Tradeoffs, and Well-being
In addition to tackling labor shortages, thinking about how to craft remarkable employment experiences for older workers is exciting because of the opportunity for paid employment (whether full-time, contract based, or part-time) to enhance well-being. Meaning and purpose are often neglected in our decision-making when we consider our career decisions. We often underestimate how the connections we make at work support our ability to thrive. With that in mind, consider nurturing the following aspects of the employee experience for retired workers:
- Connection. We spoke earlier about project-based and virtual-remote work. In what ways could employees in these roles have stronger connections with other employees?
- Burnout. Recruiting and retaining older workers requires we understand not just their ideal employee experience, but their broader vision for themselves. What are their non-negotiables for how they balance work with life? What are they not willing to sacrifice for this opportunity?
- Well-being. We're seeing across industries the significant dividends to retention and commitment that come with building an employee experience that supports well-being. How are leaders equipped to practice empathy and seek to understand each employee's individual experience and what they need to flourish?
Of course, these questions apply to all employees, but as we consider the opportunity to dually tackle labor and skill gaps as well as strengthen well-being as we age, they become central to attaining these outcomes and creating remarkable places to work where we all feel a sense of belonging.
