Why are so many businesses stuck in the past when it comes to older workers?
“Performance has nothing to do with age,” says HR consultant Peter Cunningham. “Who would you rather have operating your machinery, driving your bus or operating on your heart – a fit and healthy 67-year-old or a 35-year-old who was out on the lash at the weekend?”
It’s a flippant point, but then much of the way issues of age are handled in the workplace is far from mature. Since the default retirement age was abolished in 2011, businesses ought to have been recalibrating the way they talk to older workers, and better utilising their talents.
Instead, says Cynthia Bartley, managing director of the consultancy Age Inclusive: “Companies haven’t fully woken up to just how innovative they are going to have to be to harness the skills of older workers in future. They are being reactive, not proactive.”
It used to be that people couldn’t wait to get their gold watch and escape to the freedom of the garden or the golf course. But then, many of them didn’t have a choice. Over the past three years, the number of 65-74-year-olds still earning a wage has risen to one in four, and the proportion of people over the age of 55 who are planning to work beyond the state pension age has jumped from 40 per cent to 71 per cent. For the first time, there are more than one million people aged 65 or over in the UK workforce, and a recent survey by Baring Asset Management found that 14 per cent of working people don’t plan to retire at all.
This is good news all round. Because people are fitter, more active and live longer, they can be productive at work for longer, relieving pressure on public finances and boosting their own pension pots into the bargain. Evidence suggests that people who continue working are happier because they feel valued. The benefits to companies include the fact that older workers have valuable and often scarce skills, are often more concerned about the success of the business than their own career progression and may have the confidence and tolerance to fill difficult customer-facing roles.
To those who fret that older staff ‘block’ opportunities for their younger colleagues or first-jobbers, CIPD chief economist Mark Beatson has a swift riposte. Young people might be finding it harder to get a foot on the career ladder, but it’s nothing to do with older generations. In fact, he adds, retaining more older people can enhance youngsters’ prospects: “In general, if the labour supply increases, as it will do if people decide to stay economically active for longer, over time this is likely to increase overall employment because new opportunities are created.”
In any case, the ageing population means that accommodating older workers will be a necessity. By 2024 it’s predicted that nearly half the UK population will be over 50, and by 2032 one-quarter will be over 65. Organisations have to attract and keep older employees in order to retain the skills they need to remain competitive.
Some industries have already been caught out. The Royal College of GPs warned recently that 543 GP practices out of the 8,000 in England could be forced to close over the coming year. Doctors nearing their carriage clock are being encouraged to stay on because there aren’t enough younger replacements. Other industries, including construction and engineering, are also trying to staunch a skills haemorrhage with programmes to retain older workers for longer.
Despite this, age discrimination, both conscious and unconscious, is alive and kicking in many organisations. A recent survey from AXA PPP among 250 companies found that just over half (59 per cent) said they consider older workers an integral part of their business – which suggests that just under half don’t recognise their contribution. Few organisations offer the kind of development opportunities that would help them maximise the benefits older people bring. More than a quarter of employees over 50 said they hadn’t had an opportunity to learn new skills and develop over the previous year, and only 15 per cent had had a conversation with their manager about their career during the previous six months.
There is evidence to suggest that both HR professionals and line managers are finding it difficult to manage the new type of conversations required as employees reach what used to be retirement age. These can undoubtedly be sensitive, and fear of falling foul of discrimination legislation is a factor. But by avoiding them, companies can unwittingly discriminate. Some, for example, have started offering older employees a health check, presumably as a prophylactic against some of the dire consequences they imagine will accrue from employing over-65s. As Cunningham points out, this is like offering a blonde woman an IQ test: both play to unsubstantiated stereotypes.
It doesn’t have to be this way. RoseMarie Loft, HR director of the National Gallery, says: “I have dealt with someone who is 50 going on 90. Every stereotype associated with older workers – memory loss, lack of energy, resistance to change – could have been levelled at him. But then we have employees here in their late seventies who continue to work productively.”
Many jobs at the National Gallery lend themselves to older workers – welcoming people into the different galleries, for example. But enlightened employers find valuable roles for older staff even in more ‘physical’ industries. Mike Emmott, employee relations adviser at the CIPD, says: “On any shop floor there will be someone who acts as the ‘go-to’ person to solve a problem based on their long experience and knowledge.”
Kim Taylor, HR and talent development adviser at Babcock International, says many of the skilled manual workers the group employs are in their seventies and still work full-time. “You have to look at the person, not the age,” says Taylor, pointing out that the way to assess and manage capability, competence and aspirations, whatever your age, is through robust appraisal and performance management systems.
However, as the experts acknowledge, even in the biggest businesses these systems are far from perfect. The challenge is even greater in smaller companies, where relationships can be closer. HR consultant Ken Allison says: “I’ve come across companies where the sales director, for example, has been there for years and his performance in a crucial role has deteriorated. The company is squeamish about addressing the issue, so they try to ‘contain’ the problem and just muddle along until the guy retires.”
This make-do-and-mend approach is clearly no longer viable. “Managers need training and support to have these sorts of conversations,” says Taylor, who says that every 18-24 months, all managers at Babcock International have to refresh and update their appraisal and performance management skills on a ‘management principles’ training course.
Bartley believes managers need specific training in how to lead an age-diverse workforce, and her team at Age Inclusive has just written the first qualification that covers the subject. It is being accredited as a module in an Institute of Leadership and Management qualification.
“We use the term ‘age diverse’ rather than ‘older’ advisedly because for the first time we have four generations working together, and if you understand the dynamics in a broad sense you are better able to manage older people,” says Bartley. “For example, you can introduce a health and well-being strategy for the whole workforce, but that is likely to benefit older workers disproportionately.”
Babcock International runs pre-retirement planning courses, which are open to all employees, whatever their age. No one is put under any pressure to attend one, says Taylor. Loft has worked in organisations with similar schemes, and their value, she believes, is that “they open the door to open and honest conversations with people about what they plan to do over the next few years.”
But such conversations should also be happening as part of regular appraisals for all employees, says Taylor: “When working with employees on their personal development plans we always ask them what they are thinking of doing over the next three, five and 10 years, and, whatever their age, we try to put in place what they might need to help them do that, including training and development.”
Where these sorts of open discussions are part of an organisation’s culture, ‘difficult’ conversations about performance issues can be mitigated, says Bartley. She cites an SME with a high proportion of highly skilled manual workers, whose managing director, keen to retain much-needed skills, spoke to every employee individually for 15 minutes every month about whether or not they were meeting their KPIs, and if they weren’t how the company could help them. “Several employees were in their late sixties and seventies, but age wasn’t an issue,” says Bartley. “The conversations threw up issues that he was able to deal with before they became problems.”
But despite the need for an inclusive approach to appraisals and performance management, the CIPD’s Emmott, who is 71 himself, says that “performance discussions inevitably change a bit… By the time you’re in your sixties you’ve usually come to terms with who you are and set aside unrealistic aspirations. Although you still want to do the best job you can, the conversation becomes more about how you can ‘give back’, share your knowledge and use the strengths you have rather than developing new ones.”
Any organisation fashioning itself as ‘young’ is “burying its head in the sand,” adds Mike Minett, managing director of The Positive Ageing Company, who says that employing older workers is both a business and societal imperative. “Young doesn’t equate to good,” he points out.
But there are some industries where that message hasn’t yet filtered through. The cult of youth in the high-tech sector at Silicon Valley is very strong. “Young people are just smarter,” the 30-year-old CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, once said. Not even the titans of tech will be able to hold back the tide of demographic change, and there will come a day in the not-too-distant future when Zuckerberg has to eat his words. Unless he plans to retire at 35, of course.
Read CIPD research on preparing for a four-generational future at bit.ly/CIPDAgeDiversity and age diversity in SMEs at bit.ly/CIPDAgeDiverseWorkforce