Streamlining Support for an Older Workforce

How do we ensure that our more senior employees stay engaged? And how do we also ensure that they have a fair and easy exit when they come to the end of their working relationship with us? For organisations that can achieve those things, the benefits are quite significant.

Sustaining the attention of more mature workers, however, can be more of a challenge both to them personally and to their employer than we first realised. If you have been working consistently for over 40 years, maybe in a very similar profession and potentially in the same organisation, finding ways to spark your interest rather than continuing to do things by rote can be quite the conundrum. The impact of performance on the same individual in this content can also be a challenge.

One of the benefits of providing streamlined and subtle support for older individuals at this stage is that it can help sustain them through bumpy periods of potential boredom and potential ill health. This is because they know they have the opportunity to think through their next steps.

Another advantage will be sustained focus on key activities within the business. What often happens in times of change is that the workers can get distracted by fears and concerns about their own tenure and the composition of the team around them. By giving senior employees a sense that they will have a future within and beyond their employer enhances their ability to sustain their focus on key elements.

A third benefit is that you allow yourself and the employee to plan, and planning yields advantages of its own. If you know that an end is nigh, it becomes easier to keep your focus. If you’re uncertain of when and how it will come about, you have to be amazing to sustain your performance in that context. When you know that you will have the chance to plan a new beginning, it changes your psyche to a more positive one.

So if those are some of the benefits, what about the return on investment?

The costs of bringing an end to a contract can be significant. Sometimes they can be colossal. If there is attrition, such as conflict between the employee, their boss and--as a result--the organisation, the costs of sorting this out both in terms of termination arrangements and the fuss made are huge. If the worker has access to good lawyers and legal advice and the employer is in the wrong, there can be a lot of time and money spent and a lot of loss of productivity for a quite a number of people.  

Supporting senior workers through the final period of their working life avoids these costs. And there is no loss of productivity. If you have a member of a team and a leader of a section or area of the business where you have this type of conflict, the impact on the company can be quite substantial. Not just in terms of the loss of productivity for those distracted but also in terms of immeasurable elements like relationship internal to company and things external to it too. These relationships may never be repaired.

Conflict is a part of working life in any economy. But when it comes to the treatment of the older or senior worker, there is no need to go there if you approach this segment of the workforce in an appropriate way. An appropriate way is predicated on a presumption that is honest. Time it right, where relationships are based on respect and trust, and you can’t lose.

The processes that underpin every working day are similarly light and warm. If you have that type of underpinning culture and climate, then senior individuals are able to reflect on the choices and options that they have at this late stage of their working life. It can become a normal process if you ask these employees simple questions: what is on your mind? Have you thought about what it is that you want to be doing here? How are your levels of energy? How interested are you in the work that you’re doing?

Having a recognition of boredom and exhaustion are not unusual at this stage in life. The most important thing is to give the mature individual the sense that what they do is important and what they could do and want to do in future is important also. And they have a choice. They have the choice of continuing to work and engage, as well as the choice to leave on terms that are acceptable both to their team and their leader as well as their own personal desire. You can see by streamlining your support to these people, it leads to a natural ending. You can see also the benefits above in terms of sustaining attention, performance and focus on the right things in the business.

In the last twenty years, the focus for organisations has tended to be more on sourcing new people and identifying talent. The war for talent has been ongoing for 15 years and has increased leaders’ tendency to pay attention to filling the talent pool - for 15 years too. We are now at a point where the employment mix will be weighted increasingly towards the older worker and the attention of employers will be focused on achieving a healthy balance in this employment profile.

We know that aging is an irreversible process. We can see the changing mix our employees relative to a few years ago. We know that the sustainability of your business requires careful planning and an acceptance that there will be a mix of older workers working for longer, whilst at the same time checking that they are OK about it. That is to say, OK in terms of their energy, their boredom, and their exhaustion levels. That requires paying more attention to that area of employment than has been the case previously. That means streamlining the support for the older worker. Behaviour doesn’t cost anything. Motivation is inherent in an individual’s behaviour.

by Simon North, co-Founder of Position Ignition, a career consulting and career management company

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