With 40 percent of the workforce nearing retirement, and too few workers in the next generation to replace them, companies need innovative solutions in hiring and retention. The good news: Such solutions are being developed.
By the end of this decade, two sets of facts will radically shape your company’s employment picture:
First, by 2010, more than 64 million baby boomers will be at or close to retirement age. That’s 40 percent of the workforce. How would your company be affected if four of every 10 employees, probably including your most experienced workers and your senior managers, simply weren’t there?
Second, the group now in their 30s and 40s that will replace those retirees is about 10 percent smaller than the workforce it will replace.
Bottom line: The coming “brain drain” is a classic employment squeeze play. To make it through, you’re going to have to find ways to hold on to your senior people longer, grab a larger share of the talented younger group than your competitors, or do both. Fortunately, HR professionals are developing solutions at both ends of the spectrum.
Keeping Senior Workers On
To hold onto their older workers, companies are thinking beyond traditional higher salaries and retention bonuses and beginning to recognize the concept of “semi-retirement.” This allow senior workers to set work schedules that permit some of the freedoms of retirement while keeping the pay and benefits of employment.
One Florida firm, TriQuint Semiconductor, has instituted such a plan. “There’s a mutual benefit,” says Sunder Gopani, a 25-year veteran with the company. “They retain my expertise and I want a schedule that gives me time to travel.”
The ultimate extension of this principle— 6 months on the job, 6 months off—has also been discussed, possibly with the employee working while away, e-mailing reports and evaluating analyses, even while sipping latte by the beach.
Recruiting Younger Workers
Meanwhile, employers have ramped up their recruitment efforts among younger workers, seeking candidates where they congregate, on Internet employment and professional sites and through the electronic classified ad service on the net, Craigslist.
When candidates are found, the lures put forward are unique to their generation. “Baby boomers wanted a big office, big title and a big paycheck,” says Donna Long, an employment advisor, “A big paycheck may not be enough for [the next generation].”
Younger candidates seek employment satisfaction and work-life balance as much as they do superior compensation, the experts say, and in any case, they cannot be expected to stay on a job all their working lives. Some projections are that the typical younger worker will have 20 jobs before he or she retires.
“They view a job as just that and not a career,” says Dr. Larry Rosen, an author who’s written on technology and the generation it spawned. “Either the job is shaped in a way that utilizes their expertise, or they won’t stick around.”
But for employers troubled by that notion, Jim Lanzalotto of the Philadelphia outsourcing firm, Yoh Services, has some good news. There’s a good chance that past employees who leave may be coming back.
“We have more ‘boomerang employees’ than ever,” Landalotto says. And when they come back, “they know the culture and the company, and [also] have a whole different perspective. They might be a real asset.”
Is your company concerned with the ‘brain drain’? If so, what are you doing about it? Use the Share Your Comments button and let us know your thoughts.
With a fast growing global economy and a shrinking talent pool, it is no wonder employers are needing to be increasingly flexible in retaining older workers and recruiting the next generation of professionals. Additionally, I suggest an additional resource for employers which not only fills critical talent gaps, but also builds a more competitive and globally diverse workforce.
A systemic problem exists in the US in integrating work-authorized immigrants into the mainstream professional workforce. Immigrant professionals in the US consistently struggle to reclaim their careers. In fact, at any given time, there are between 250,000 and 500,000 immigrants living in the U.S. who earned a BA/BS in their home countries, possess an average of 10 years of work experience and have the legal right to work. However, they struggle on the margins as the working poor, earning $10/hr or less. In their home countries, they were engineers, accountants, marketing managers and lawyers. In the US, they are nannies, security guards and cashiers.
While this pool of talent may not meet all of the talent needs you discuss in your article, they are a vastly under-utilized pool of talented, educated candidates that bring critical experience to companies trying to compete in the global marketplace. Skilled migrants are moving across borders at a higher rate than migrants as a whole. Between the years 2000 and 2005 total immigrants to US increased 16%, but the foreign-born population with college degrees increased 34% in the same time period. In the face of a looming skilled worker shortage, the skilled immigrant pool represents an untapped resource for American companies.
If you would like more information on the issue of the underemployment of skilled immigrants in the US, review the Upwardly Global website, http://www.upwardlyglobal.org.
Interesting Article.
Something is missing. I would like to give you my observations and share my own personal experience with you for the past 13 years.
1) During the 1990’s and early 2000’s many companies downsized their organizations.
2) Age Discrimination was/is alive and well and and has prevented many “Older Workers” (50+) from being gainfully employed.
3) Many “Older Workers” opted for early retirement because they could not find employment equal to or better than the positions that they lost.
4) We have not had a large number of new births in the U.S. in the past 20+ years. This left a void for of younger entrants into the workforce.
5) At one point I believed that at some point in the late 1990’s or early 2000’s companies would actually be forced into retaining or re-hiring Older Workers. But the following happened.
Many companies are either offshoring work or hiring workers from foreing countries, Like India, to fill open positions instead of hiring Mature Workers to fill these positions.
5)