'A lot of the people that work for us have a lot of industry experience, which is really helpful,' says HR leader at MEC
With a tough economy and labour shortages as a backdrop, employers these days are struggling to find the employees they need to grow.
But for those who want to win the war for talent, the cohort of older workers is well worth looking into, according to an academic.
“With historically unprecedented low birth rates and generally longer lives, populations will simply look older,” says Paul Irving, senior fellow at the Milken Institute at the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology in Los Angeles.
“What that means is the composition of workforces will change along with the composition of the population… and enlightened employers who think about how to determine ways to enjoy the benefits of it now will have competitive advantage in the future.”
Irving co-authored a recent study, along with Bob Kramer, Jacquelyn Kung, and Ed Frauenheim, looking at data from 35,000 workers in the U.S., and found that there are a number of principles that should be employed to best take advantage of more experienced employees.
Flexibility encouraged at MEC
Offering purposeful and important roles to more senior workers is one key principle, according to the researchers, who found that 76 per cent of survey respondents who would recommend their company to others say, “My work has special meaning: this is not ‘just a job.’”
Flexibility in schedules and work conditions is also important and for a retailer based in B.C., this principle is embraced by older employees.
“We have many different types of job statuses,” says Adrienne DeBruyn, human resources business manager at Mountain Equipment Company (MEC) in Vancouver, such as full time, part time or seasonal, so employees “don’t have to work as many hours and we find that this category works really well for both a demographic that’s a bit older: this flexibility is really important.”
As a retailer that sells outdoor equipment that can be highly specialized, MEC has leaned on its older workforce for years, says DeBruyn.
“A lot of the people that work for us have a lot of industry experience, which is really helpful for MEC and our members,” she says. “There’s a lot more legacy experience in the outdoors that’s really beneficial to us [so] have a lot of [those] staff members, whether they’re still active in the community, or just want to work to maintain their knowledge and stay connected to the community — that knowledge is very beneficial to everyone.”
This wide array of expertise is one of the biggest benefits the older worker can bring to the workplace, says Irving.
“We know from research some of the characteristics that older workers bring: obviously, wisdom and experience; understanding the challenges of navigating business environments; increased loyalty; and, interestingly, reduced rates of absenteeism and presenteeism.”
Workers who are 50 and older are much more reluctant to ask for help while on the job, found another study by the Institute for Work & Health (IWH).
“When it comes to the recruitment, we also need to be creative with our strategies,” says Robert Nim, talent acquisition specialist at MEC, which means going beyond LinkedIn or Indeed.
“We need to partner with different organizations and use different recruitment methods, such as job fairs [and] in-store signage versus social where we might not get much traction on that side.”
Salary not so important
The study also showed that, contrary to popular belief, compensation was not as highly rated by older employees, and of 60 factors looked at when it came to recruitment and retention, it didn’t make the top 10 in terms of importance.
“Part of this is the expectation that compensation always has to be increased, and that benefits are always more expensive but the reality is — and this has been recognized now for many years — older people are flexible about this,” says Irving.
“They want respectful positions, positions that capitalize on their talents, that provide the same kinds of opportunities for engagement, meaning, purpose they enjoyed when they were younger. But, also, they recognize some of their aspirations for increased flexibility for the need to accommodate caregiving needs for spouses, parents, and sometimes grandchildren.”
Older employees are delaying retirement due to the struggling economy, according to another survey.
Age as a disqualifier
Making accommodations when needed is another important factor — but there is a blind spot for many employers when they make judgements about these employees, according to Irving.
“This notion that somehow an arbitrary age, the chronology, is a disqualifier just really has no reasonable basis. I think the incorrect assumption of not just employers but oftentimes of our culture generally is that people are less intellectually capable, physically capable and somehow less engaged than they were when they were young — and that’s just simply not true.”
“Ageism is certainly a problem — not just in the U.S. and Canada but across much of the world — and there is an expectation that aging simply means diminishment, decline, a loss of capacity, loss of interest, and really nothing could be further from the truth,” he says.
At MEC, this common negative misconception is not shared among older staff members, says DeBruyn.
“A lot of our area staff members in that demographic are very active. We have, for example, a staff member at one of our stores, they’re an avid rock climber, and on their 50th birthday, they did 50 climbs in one day. We have people who are in their 60s and 70s and then go bike to the top of [Mount] Seymour and come back down and go home from work.”
Shift in understanding
While medical science has enabled people to live much longer and more fulfilled lives in the past 150 years, employers need to catch up to this reality, says Irving.
“We haven’t figured out a way to capitalize on this remarkable achievement. I’m excited about the prospect for the employers who will be out front to recognize the potential for this older worker [and] also understanding what older clients and customers are going to want. Designing and manufacturing products to this is changing demography, the field is wide open, the door is open and what an opportunity for business leadership to walk through it.”
A Quebec business group recently began encouraging employers to bring back older workers who have left the job market in order to solve talent shortages.
Governments can also better promote and encourage the hiring and retention of these workers, he says — but this won’t happen overnight.
“It involves a shift in understanding of the workforce composition; it involves enlightened immigration policy; it involves creative, innovative technology policy; it involves aligning education systems; and lifelong learning and re-skilling with employers to meets the needs of the future society. There are a series of things that can be done. Unfortunately, not many countries are doing well.”
