Coping With an Aging Workforce
With the available skilled labor pool shrinking and seasoned workers aging and retiring, it is important for corporations to consider the following options to keep their workforce viable longer.
In this economy, it's imperitive to lower costs.
Although it might seems prudent to purge older workers, it can result in higher costs when replacing these workers with untrained, inexperienced hires.
Retain employees longer by applying ergonomic solutions, alternative or flexible work scheduling, effective training, and traditional or reverse mentoring programs.
Many older workers become frustrated in their jobs because natural aging makes it difficult to maintain efficient job performance.
A little ingenuity and creativity can accommodate for employees' natural deficiencies caused by aging without compromising a company's bottom line.
Small ergonomic and technological changes can offer effective accommodations.
Many companies have the technology already existing within the over-the-counter (OTC) software resident on their employees' computers, but employees don't know how to access the solutions.
Inform employees during orientation or send a company-wide notification instructing employees to contact the tech department to activate these settings "Productivity is reached not by making employees work harder and faster but by eliminating unfriendly circumstances that prevent employees from reaching their fullest potential.
Applied extensively to a business, ergonomics can be as significant as strategic planning and quality control.
It has a real and evident impact on productivity, performance, delivery of services, and the bottom line.
It can influence an entire business by amplifying the most important business essential-enabling workers to do their job.
"
Organizations, like Easter Seals, will loan equipment that will accommodate many of these age-related performance issues at no cost to the company.
Offer work time alternatives: In 2000, 13% of our workforce was 50 or older.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2020 that number will raise to 20%.
No decline is expected until 2050.
Many of these workers have the added responsibility of caring for aging parents and minor children.
Increasing health issues reduce these employees' ability to continue working in a traditional environment.
Flexible work arrangements can help both employer and employee balance life and work.
Retired employees can be rehired part time, as consultants, or temporarily; older workers may want to share jobs, work at non-traditional times, or work from home.
Older workers also value longer vacation time, self-funded leaves, and phased-in retirement.
Provide training: Despite laws to punish age discrimination, many employers still maintain misperceptions of the mature worker.
Many managers still feel older workers are inflexible, slow to accept new technology, less productive, less able to perform strenuous jobs, and unable to learn new skills.
Educate younger managers to understand their mature workers.
Many employers reinforce these attitudes by excluding older employees from training...
causing these employees to be less able to adapt to new technologies and policies.
Ineffective training of these employees places them in direct disadvantage to younger workers.
It may not be that your older employees can't learn, but that they learn differently.
Offering training in various styles will help companies ensure that every employee learns Computer-based training (CBT), for example, allows employees to learn at their own pace.
Ensure knowledge capture: Experienced employees hold two kinds of knowledge: articulated and unarticulated.
If this information is never captured or documented, it's lost to the company forever; especially wisdom and best practices for non-routine incidents and processes.
This documented knowledge can shorten the learning curve for new employees without the company paying to reinvent the wheel.
Very similar to capturing knowledge is capturing relationships.
Be sure customer contacts are introduced to varying ages of employees.
A good way to do this is through mentoring.
Conduct mentoring and reverse mentoring: Experience can't be bought...
or can it? Mature, experienced employees can play an essential role in transferring knowledge and skills to younger or less experienced workers.
How a company proposes to accomplish this can vary: initiate mentoring programs, formal training sessions, or perhaps general orientation.
Combining reverse mentoring and traditional mentoring can facilitate learning in both directions.
If the company establishes a practice of paring younger and older workers where both are conditioned to learn from each other, knowledge transfer becomes multi-generational making older and younger workers more effective and efficient.
Setting specific objectives makes this time more valuable and productive.
To facilitate the learning environment, each participant must be coached to respect and listen to the other; this is a perfect opportunity to smooth generational biases and adjust attitudes.
In this economy, it's imperitive to lower costs.
Although it might seems prudent to purge older workers, it can result in higher costs when replacing these workers with untrained, inexperienced hires.
Retain employees longer by applying ergonomic solutions, alternative or flexible work scheduling, effective training, and traditional or reverse mentoring programs.
Many older workers become frustrated in their jobs because natural aging makes it difficult to maintain efficient job performance.
A little ingenuity and creativity can accommodate for employees' natural deficiencies caused by aging without compromising a company's bottom line.
Small ergonomic and technological changes can offer effective accommodations.
Many companies have the technology already existing within the over-the-counter (OTC) software resident on their employees' computers, but employees don't know how to access the solutions.
Inform employees during orientation or send a company-wide notification instructing employees to contact the tech department to activate these settings "Productivity is reached not by making employees work harder and faster but by eliminating unfriendly circumstances that prevent employees from reaching their fullest potential.
Applied extensively to a business, ergonomics can be as significant as strategic planning and quality control.
It has a real and evident impact on productivity, performance, delivery of services, and the bottom line.
It can influence an entire business by amplifying the most important business essential-enabling workers to do their job.
"
- Prevent injury: The average person loses 40% of his or her strength by 45 years old, up to 80% by 70.
If this person's job requires lifting, the job becomes more hazardous with age and injuries take longer to heal.
Try some of these low-cost options to protect employees from injury: - Convert pulling to pushing by employing hand trucks and conveyors.
- Keep work in progress at waist level.
- Avoid having employees reach more than 15" in front of their bodies.
- Train in proper lifting techniques and provide lifting belts.
- Accommodate for loss of mobility: A standard keyboard and mouse often becomes more difficult to use as people age because of various mobility diseases (arthritis, repetitive stress injury).
Voice-activated equipment, setting up macros within OTC software, and a few ergonomic modifications to the workstation (such as keyboard/monitor height, adjustment to mouse reaction settings and click speed, and using "stickykeys" and keyboard filters) can reduce or prevent many strain-related injuries. - Compensate for vision loss: As early as age 35, workers can begin to experience such common vision changes as colorblindness, general eye fatigue, and shrinking pupils.
Providing more light in the work area can reduce a lot of eye stress.
OTC software offers sound cues, larger fonts, and accessibility buttons.
Use a keyboard extender to keep the viewing distance to the monitor about arms length.
Seating should be height-adjustable so that the user's eyes can be positioned in line with the screen.
Another must is a document holder that enables the user to place paper documents as close to the monitor as possible. - Acknowledge hearing loss: Partial hearing loss can restrict workers' ability to interact with others; to get, receive, and interpret information; and to identify hazards in the workplace.
OTC software offers visual cues and warnings, sound/volume control, and text captioning.
Organizations, like Easter Seals, will loan equipment that will accommodate many of these age-related performance issues at no cost to the company.
Offer work time alternatives: In 2000, 13% of our workforce was 50 or older.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2020 that number will raise to 20%.
No decline is expected until 2050.
Many of these workers have the added responsibility of caring for aging parents and minor children.
Increasing health issues reduce these employees' ability to continue working in a traditional environment.
Flexible work arrangements can help both employer and employee balance life and work.
Retired employees can be rehired part time, as consultants, or temporarily; older workers may want to share jobs, work at non-traditional times, or work from home.
Older workers also value longer vacation time, self-funded leaves, and phased-in retirement.
Provide training: Despite laws to punish age discrimination, many employers still maintain misperceptions of the mature worker.
Many managers still feel older workers are inflexible, slow to accept new technology, less productive, less able to perform strenuous jobs, and unable to learn new skills.
Educate younger managers to understand their mature workers.
Many employers reinforce these attitudes by excluding older employees from training...
causing these employees to be less able to adapt to new technologies and policies.
Ineffective training of these employees places them in direct disadvantage to younger workers.
It may not be that your older employees can't learn, but that they learn differently.
Offering training in various styles will help companies ensure that every employee learns Computer-based training (CBT), for example, allows employees to learn at their own pace.
Ensure knowledge capture: Experienced employees hold two kinds of knowledge: articulated and unarticulated.
If this information is never captured or documented, it's lost to the company forever; especially wisdom and best practices for non-routine incidents and processes.
This documented knowledge can shorten the learning curve for new employees without the company paying to reinvent the wheel.
Very similar to capturing knowledge is capturing relationships.
Be sure customer contacts are introduced to varying ages of employees.
A good way to do this is through mentoring.
Conduct mentoring and reverse mentoring: Experience can't be bought...
or can it? Mature, experienced employees can play an essential role in transferring knowledge and skills to younger or less experienced workers.
How a company proposes to accomplish this can vary: initiate mentoring programs, formal training sessions, or perhaps general orientation.
Combining reverse mentoring and traditional mentoring can facilitate learning in both directions.
If the company establishes a practice of paring younger and older workers where both are conditioned to learn from each other, knowledge transfer becomes multi-generational making older and younger workers more effective and efficient.
Setting specific objectives makes this time more valuable and productive.
To facilitate the learning environment, each participant must be coached to respect and listen to the other; this is a perfect opportunity to smooth generational biases and adjust attitudes.