"Benefits a hot topic as more older workers stay on the job"/ "Bracing for the boomer brain drain"

Sept. 24, 2016 "Benefits a hot topic as more older workers stay on the job": Today I found this article by Virginia Galt in the Globe and Mail:

There’s a new wrinkle in Canadian workplaces: the rapid growth of the over-65 employee population.

“Better health, the elimination of mandatory retirement and economic necessity mean that many Canadians are working past the traditional retirement age of 65,” human resources firm Aon Hewitt says in a new report on delayed retirement.

This is a welcome development for employers that value the skills, experience and institutional knowledge of their most senior employees, “people who have had relationships with your customers for 30 years,” says Tim Clarke, chief innovations officer in Aon Hewitt’s Canadian health and benefits consulting practice.

However, this trend will also force employers to rethink benefit plan policies to accommodate the needs of these older workers and minimize the risk of age-discrimination complaints, Mr. Clarke said.

The firm recently surveyed 170 employers to find out how many older hands they have on deck. Eight per cent reported that employees aged 65-plus now account for more than 5 per cent of their work forces.

 In five years, however, 45 per cent of employers expect that between 5 and 10 per cent of their employees will fall into that post-65 age category.

The way Toronto-based professional accountant Barry Witkin sees it, if you love what you are doing and have a contribution to make, why quit?

Having wound down his company HR50 Inc., a specialized recruitment firm for the 50-plus age group, Mr. Witkin now works as a business development consultant for his son Andrew’s rapidly growing enterprise, StickerYou Inc., which custom designs stickers, labels, decals and logos for the small-business market.

Mr. Witkin, who just turned 78, attends trade shows across the United States. He was also recently pressed into service making deliveries in the company car – a Kia bedecked in the company’s products – when the young driver returned to school.

“People were looking at the car, looking at the stickers. It was actually a lot of fun,” says Mr. Witkin, who earlier in his career was a partner in the accounting firm BDO Dunwoody.

For Mr. Witkin, work brings a sense of fulfilment. “I will keep working as long as I am enjoying it and my health is fine.”

While Aon Hewitt’s study focuses on what employers should be doing to meet the needs of growing numbers of employees who want to stay beyond 65, human resources firm Morneau Shepell Inc. is looking at what employers can do for the majority who would prefer to retire and do something other than work for the balance of their lives.

“Some people may stick around longer because they are worried that they do not have enough savings for retirement,” with health-related costs a key financial concern for two-thirds of the more than 1,000 working Canadians recently surveyed by Morneau Shepell, Paul Sywulych, vice-president of the firm’s innovation centre, said in an interview.

Morneau Shepell has just launched what it describes as Canada’s first online health and life insurance benefits marketplace for retirees – offering a range of benefits such as travel insurance, dental and medical coverage.

Employers that subscribe to the new plan, called MyFuture, can pick up all of the benefit costs for their retirees, a portion of the costs, or simply give them free access to information on the post-retirement benefits available to them at a range of price points, Mr. Sywulych said.

Whether employees opt for early retirement, typical retirement at the age of 65 or delayed retirement, benefits have become a hot topic in human resources circles.

Mr. Clarke said many employers are ill prepared for the rapid growth of the over-65 employee population. The concept that benefits coverage should end when employees turn 65 is outmoded, he said, adding that employers should revisit their policies.

“Let’s try to get ahead of it rather than waiting until your 68year-old CFO decides to file a human-rights challenge because he doesn’t have long-term-disability benefits.”

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Aug. 6, 2018 "Bracing for the boomer brain drain": Today I found this article by Merge Gupta-Sunderji in the Globe and Mail.   The tips are that the mentors/ people who are retiring need to mentor and teach the young employees who will be replacing them.

Also have a website of all the information and knowledge that the old people know.  That's my favorite part because that's what I do with my blog.  I put all my information there:

Fight corporate amnesia and retain crucial institutional knowledge with these strategies Leadership speaker and consultant, founder of Turning Managers Into Leaders

As the last of the baby boomers move through their 50s and beyond, they’re living longer, healthier lives, and many of them are opting to leave work while they’re still strong and fit, so that they can travel, relax and “do the things we never got around to doing.”

While this choice is certainly terrific for them, it can be terrible for organizations. Why? Because those who elect to take early retirement often take decades of tacit knowledge with them.

This brain drain – the loss of undocumented, intuitive, experiential information about people, business processes and informal procedures can leave huge gaps in an organization’s cumulative intelligence. 

This corporate amnesia can cripple your company, so if you’re a leader, it’s up to you to identify and work to mitigate this possibility. And the time to do it is now, well in advance, and not just in the months and weeks before a key employee is due to leave.

It all starts with identifying your strategically significant people. Not every employee represents a potential brain drain, so identifying your key players will allow you to be more efficient and effective in creating a plan.

Ask yourself: Which of your veterans have been invaluable to your business over the years?

 Which of your senior employees do you see as remarkable role models for your new recruits?

 These are the people that you should focus on when you think about succession strategies and knowledge capture.

And once you’ve identified your vital people, apply these five approaches to secure your organizational memory.

CREATE A WORKPLACE CULTURE THAT VALUES COLLABORATION

If your company culture is one of rivalry and competition your veterans will not share their expertise willingly, so it’s important to create a workplace climate that values collaboration and transparency. 

Establish an environment that encourages open lines of communication between new and experienced employees – inexperienced workers need to seek out more opportunities to learn and knowledgeable employees have to be willing to share what they know. Accomplish this by publicly and frequently acknowledging and rewarding collaborative behaviour.

Brainstorm regularly and encourage contributions from all levels of your organization. Above all, ensure that your managers and supervisors are consistently modelling the collaborative behaviours you desire.

ESTABLISH FORMAL MENTORING FOR KEY POSITIONS

A formal mentoring program is not only a powerful way to prevent corporate amnesia when crucial senior people retire, but it has also proven to be an excellent way to improve overall employee performance. 

Match your high potential younger employees with your identified key players and then let them learn. One of the best ways to gain knowledge is to teach it to others, so to really solidify the knowledge transfer, have the “mentees” periodically present learning sessions to others in the department and in the organization.

EXPAND RELATIONSHIPS

Make it a point to include identified successors in meetings with each of your important clients and vendors, long before your key employees are due to retire. Sudden staff changeovers can be enormously damaging: 

Not only is knowledge about each relationship lost, but trust (and other intangibles) between the original parties is ruined. A longer transition period allows time to both gain an understanding of the old relationship and to build a new one.

INVEST IN KNOWLEDGE-SHARING TECHNOLOGY

Facilitate the transmission and capture of organizational memory by investing in technology designed specifically for this purpose.

There are many commercial knowledge-sharing tools in use today, all designed to enable and expedite communication and knowledge capture through wikis, blogs, online repositories and instant-messaging applications. Investigate the variety of options that already exist and harness technology to speed up your documentation process.

OFFER FLEXIBLE RETIREMENT OPTIONS

Recognize that many boomers are choosing to retire not because they dislike working, but because they have other interests they want to pursue. So give them options that will allow them to do both! If your boomers can be persuaded to work part-time on a consulting basis, you can retain their expertise for longer than you might otherwise.

But beware, keeping your boomers for longer does not mean that you should ignore the first four strategies; your boomers will eventually leave, so you still need to take deliberate steps to retain organizational memory and overcome corporate amnesia.

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/the-globe-and-mail-prairie-edition/20180806/282050507884039

(36) Bracing for the boomer brain drain | LinkedIn