Source: The Toronto Star, Janis Foord Kirk

Published: Saturday, November 11, 2006

The station manager was behind the counter the other day and while paying for my gas I mentioned the sign.

"Why the emphasis on retired people?" I asked.

"I can answer that in one word," he said, without looking up. "Reliability."

Just one manager's story, of course, but it represents a trend that's likely to become common in the years ahead. If Canada's workplace evolves as predicted, so-called "mature workers," over 50, will be valued for their maturity and experience, not just in corner gas stations but in organizations of all kinds.

Necessity in the guise of workplace demographics is the mother of this particular invention. The Canadian workforce is aging. Those at the front-end of the massive baby-boom population turn 60 this year and many are crafting exit strategies to leave the mainstream labour market. Their exodus, left unchecked, will create labour shortfalls numbering in the millions.

To avoid disaster scenarios of this kind, the pundits say, employers will follow the lead of the gas station manager and actively recruit older workers and entice those already on the job to stay, offering things like flexible work schedules, telecommute opportunities and phased retirement programs.

If you're over 50 now, feeling insecure at work or knocking on doors looking for a job, you're no doubt fairly cynical about projections of this kind. You've heard them before, after all, and little has changed.

"There is a lot of education that needs to take place about the value of mature workers, and how to remove the age bias," admits Barbara Jaworski, principle of the Workplace Institute, based in Toronto.

Jaworski is nonetheless encouraged. "There's a growing awareness of the issue and that's the first step," she says. "Consulting firms are talking and hearing about this. Surveys are telling us that HR managers understand it and that CEOs see it as a critical issue.

"Where it really has not sunk in is at the level of operational managers, at the hiring level," she adds. "In some organizations there's a mindset to hire younger workers. And there's a lot of fear: Are they (mature workers) slow? Will they be able to adapt? That's where the education needs to come in."

Such are the topics on the agenda at Jaworski's second annual Mature Workforce Summit, which will take place this year at Toronto's Granite Club on Nov. 14 (for more info go to: http://www.workplaceinstitute.org).

The graying of the Canadian workforce will affect different organizations in different ways.

A recent report, "The Business Case for Workers Age 50+," by the consulting firm Towers Perrin, put it this way: "The impact of changing labour force demographics and the impending boomer retirement wave will vary widely from industry to industry and company to company — even among different job categories and positions within the same company. Some companies may be able to escape the talent crunch if today's 50-plus workers stay in the workforce longer than previous generations. Other companies are already feeling the talent pinch."

Is your organization feeling the talent pinch?

A telltale sign, according to Jaworski, is the relative ease or difficulty of recruiting staff.

"From an operational point of view, if you're wondering why your HR manager is taking a long time to refer the right kind of resumés, if the resumés you receive seem mediocre to you, if you feel like you can't find anybody with real talent, that's a sign."

The remedy, in her view, is comprehensive workforce planning. Not year-over-year budget planning to bring on new staff, but intensive, long-term planning based on an understanding of the actual demographics in your organization.

Here's the step-by-step process Jaworski suggests:

• Review your organization's strategic plan to determine objectives.
• Analyze and chart your current workforce. Look at the employees' skills and competencies, the current demographics, the number of people retiring, your turnover rate.
• Review and chart workforce needs for specific time frames — two, five and ten years — based on the strategic objectives.
• Identify gaps and challenges.
• Develop a plan to close those gaps, including leadership, training timelines, succession planning and decisions about the people you need to attract and those you need to retain.
• Set workforce planning goals.

Planning of this kind, at its best, can help to create and maintain a multi-generational workforce in which older workers, in sharp contrast to the way many are treated now, are respected for their maturity and experience.

"This isn't about being nice to old people," Jaworski says, emphatically. "It's about strategic planning.

"If we want to succeed in business as Canadians, we've got to make sure that we are not limiting ourselves, make sure that our companies have developed strategies to take full advantage of all the skills and talents they need to help the business grow."