Post-recession demographics are not only showing that baby boomers plan on working longer to recoup from the financial collapse. What’s also now clear is the way they intend to work in the future – and that has major consequences for talent managers, who must rethink their policies to support the new workplace realty that is coming.
Assuming boomers want to stay in leadership roles may be the wrong conclusion, says an article by Mike Prokopeak’s in May’s issues of Talent Management magazine. Older workers, like younger workers, want jobs that are more flexible yet still offer income and growth. And as boomers remain engaged at work, the potential consequence is a talent surplus, not a “brain drain”.
“Corporations still have not addressed the problem of how do you let people step down,” says Tamara Erickson, author of Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation. “We don’t have any way to move down in most corporations. Boomers end up feeling they have to retire even if all they’re going to do when they retire is walk across the street and take a less taxing job from another company.”
Creating flexible policies that welcome workers at different career stages can establish a company as a destination for older workers and a “best employer” for the younger generations. What’s needed is a rethinking of the characteristics of work. Traditional full-time 9 to 5 may have made sense in a more predictable industrial era – but not in a global, knowledge economy.
One option mentioned in the article is to move older workers into content expert roles that open up leadership positions to younger workers. Erickson cites the example of a professional services firm that combated boomers’ hesitance to move out of practice leader roles by creating a competition for prized business guru positions that serve as expert internal advisers and consultants. In other words, make “stepping down” an honor.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that there are going to be a lot of people working who are not “employees” in the traditional sense. Companies must offer a portfolio of different arrangements, including part-time and project-based strategies, sabbaticals, and other flexibility practices that allow multiple pathways, control and choice.
Deloitte – long ago on top of this trend – calls it “career customization”. In that organization, people have career “lattices” not “ladders”.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?
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