Although Employment Minster Ed Davey hailed the abolition of the Default Retirement Age as ‘great news for older people, businesses and the economy’, not everyone agrees.
As Mary Clarke, chief executive of Cognisco points outs, some business leaders and lobby groups have voiced concerns that businesses may be saddled with an ageing and incompetent workforce, incapable of performing their jobs, but unwilling to leave the workforce.
The CBI, for example, said that companies would face “huge uncertainty and greater risk of tribunal claims if the government does not tackle the unintended consequences of the decision”. Others argue that if companies have expensive older workers on their payroll, it will harm the job prospects of younger workers, which will, in turn, exacerbate current youth unemployment problems.
While some of the concerns may be valid, they overlook the fact that older workers can deliver significant benefits to companies, not least in terms of the knowledge, experience and ideas they can deliver.
Interestingly, in industries such as engineering and manufacturing where there are skills shortages, one of the big concerns is the future impact of retirement among the Baby Boomer generation. Companies in these sectors are looking for ways to retain the knowledge of these ‘older’ workers and ensure it is passed on to successors in order to avoid what is commonly termed a ‘brain drain’.
Today, there are around 850,000 workers in the UK who are over 65 years old – and there has been no evidence to date that their performance has had a negative impact on company performance.
Positive impact
In fact, it has been demonstrated by firms such as B&Q who employ many older workers that more mature personnel can have a very positive impact on corporate performance and culture, particularly where if they assume a training and mentoring role for new recruits.
I would also argue that age is immaterial if the right processes are in place to ensure that employees are developed effectively and their skills and talent are used in the right way.
But there are some barriers that businesses do need to overcome when managing older workers. New research out last month from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development showed that older workers are, rather worryingly, at the bottom of the priority list for companies when it came to training and performance management.
The report entitled ’Employee Outlook: Focus on an Ageing Workforce’, whichsurveyed 2,000 employees, found less than half (46%) of respondents aged 65 and above had had a formal performance appraisal either annually or more frequently compared to 65% of overall workforce.
The study also revealed that 44% of employees aged 65 and above had not had a formal performance appraisal in the last two years or had never had one since they hit retirement age. The figure compares unfavorably with a 32% average across all other age groups.
Such statistics are worrying. It appears that UK companies are neglecting the development of their older workers in the mistaken belief that they don’t need to invest in them if they are near the end of their careers. However, with the law changing in October, there needs to be a ‘mindset change’ in certain companies.
Training isn’t enough
It goes without saying that businesses need to invest in the skills and training of employees of all ages and at all stages in their career. But this simply isn’t enough. Managers also need to ensure that they truly understand the training, coaching and mentoring requirements of each individual at all levels so they can provide targeted interventions that have a genuine impact on performance.
The only way to gain this insight is via regular employee assessments in order to test the skills, knowledge and performance of all employees. If they are situational or “on the job” assessments, then the information gleaned will give managers a complete and accurate picture of the skills, knowledge and competencies of their workforce.
Assessments also make it possible to benchmark employees against performance criteria, enabling managers to understand where skills gaps lie in the organisation and what training is required for each individual in order to improve their performance and productivity.
Such knowledge will not only enable companies to deliver more targeted training and development programmes, but will also ensure that the skills of workers are maintained and improved, whatever their age or the stage they are in their careers.
Another benefit of undertaking regular assessments, however, is that they serve to highlight transferrable skills in order to help managers make sound decisions if they need to redeploy workers into other parts of the business.
Star performers will likewise come to light so that decisions can also be taken around whether they should be given more responsibility, promotion or even a mentoring or coaching role.
What this all means in practice is that, from October, whether they like it or not, employers will have to find ways to get the most out of their staff, no matter how old they are.
Mary Clarke is chief executive of online knowledge appraisal and learning software provider, Cognisco.
2 Responses
Getting the best out of “Older” workers
The comments so far are important and prove that something positive CAN come out of ideas that have been allowed to build over time – that if you are over 50 you might as well be dead.
Is this a serious statement? Wait till you get to fifty…
The older worker may have great experience but if you want an old dog to learn new tricks then you also need to consider how the brain works.
The younger you are the quicker you learn. You learn how to "cheat" the learning process in order to get to the winning post faster than others. You learn how to cover your mistakes so that others cannot see that you are in fact learnng on the job.
The older you are, you recognise that whilst this was good fun years ago, it also had its pitfalls. Better to get things right first time. The other significant challenge is that your memory works in a different way to when you were younger. Whilst you used to be able to FILE things away you can no longer do this. Now you must find ways to log where information can be found when needed and this takes more time making you appear SLOW to your younger peers.
If this is not recognnised as the single biggest challenge, all your other good works will be wasted.
Older worker performance assessments – it takes two to tango
Unfortunately the CIPD report tells us nothing new; research shows that for decades older workers have been disregarded for training and development often with the excuse that "they aren’t interested" or "they’re resistant to change".
The advantage of the recent anti-discrimination and equality legislation is that it gives older workers the right to be treated equally i.e. to insist on the same treatment as their younger colleagues in terms of performance appraisals and training and development activities. But, they need the motivation to take such a stance
While employers need to be reminded of the advantages of performance management for all (65% falling well short of an adequate percentage) equally older workers need to be encouraged to be proactive in requesting performance appraisals and related development activities.
For many this may involve working out with their manager or employer how best to pass on their skills and experience to younger, less experienced colleagues, to the benefit of the company, their colleagues and themselves.
As my own recent research has confirmed, most older people are highly motivated by concepts of contribution, giving back and developing others. Reverse mentoring may also be beneficial as a means of helping older people keep up to date with new practices and developments, while having the additional effect of improving intergenerational communication and teamworking.
Employers are missing a trick by failing to utilise the natural conduit that is the performance appraisal as a means of instigating these and other activities.