Managing Older Workers Needs a Personal Touch

It is not enough to offer training courses to your employees. It is also not enough to offer generic workshops on financial planning to your older workers.  If an individual’s personal circumstances and needs are not heard, understood or appreciated, your employees may feel undervalued.  Each person’s situation and desire for their future will differ significantly. It is a very personal transition, which needs to be handled delicately and sensitively. 

Financial planning is not enough to equip someone for such a shift. It’s important to take a more holistic approach taking in to account elements such as health, partners, family, hobbies, community work and the chance for further work.

Taking the time to really listen to, understand and accommodate the needs of each individual worker and to fully realise what they are facing and establish a positive way to make it work for both them personally, professionally and for the organisation, is win-win opportunity for all.

To expect managers to be able to deliver such a result is tough if not unrealistic.  In order for an older worker to feel comfortable talking and opening up about their very personal circumstances and their deep desires, fears, concerns about moving forwards and how to make it work – they need to work with someone external to their organisation.  Having an external expert who is outside their usual working environment and without any specific bias or agenda is a much more valuable means of helping an individual unpack what their specific needs are and to come up with a creative plan and solution to relay constructively back to the organisation.

It is only when you have this deep knowledge and understanding of an individual that you can come up with a transition plan that harnesses the best for both them personally and the company as a whole.

At the moment there is an unusual relationship between the employer and employee. When it comes to contracts, the financial and legal sides of them have been in place for many, many years. However, the psychological element of the contract is more inconsistent.

How does an employee feel about you, if you promised them a certain type of job, only for it to turn out that they’re not doing the sort of work that they expected to be doing? This isn’t a legal or contractual issue, but it is about why the worker was persuaded to take the job in the first place.

Employers may also get rid of people for different reasons, such as a worker becoming “too old”. However, a new agenda is looming; one in which employers will need to respect their workers – their elder colleagues. Older workers are being given more choice around when they wish to retire and the organisations, has to listen and accommodate them.

Flexibility is crucial for accommodating older colleagues and for most organisations this will be new territory to explore and develop effectively. The personal element is key in creating the right sort of flexible arrangement that works for each individual employee. It is no longer about the masses, the workers or the labour force. It is now about the individual and what they want and how to make it work well for them so that you – the employer, gets what you want from them.

Author: Simon North, co-founder of Position Ignition