Well – our family is hooked. We’ve been tuning into The Voice over the last few weeks and cheering our favourites on. For the uninitiated, The Voice is a singing competition. What makes is different is four judges/coaches, all noteworthy recording artists, choose teams of contestants through a blind audition process.

In the final battle round this week, a 67 year old Steve Clisby and 44 year old Mitchell Anderson sang ‘Walkin’ in Memphis’. Remember, this is a show dominated by young and youngish performers who are hoping to ‘make it’. Sound like some workplaces you know?

The response was euphoric. And it got me thinking about assumptions we make about older workers.

1 Age is no barrier. How inspirational to see a 67 year old in a singing competition. Steve is a class act with years of experience under his belt. It’s not about his age; it’s about his attitude.

2 You deserve to be heard. Joel, one of the coaches, commented, that he was moved to tears, because he recognised how hard these singers had worked over the years – playing in bars where people weren’t really listening. He said, ” You deserve to be heard a lot earlier than tonight.” Which workers aren’t being heard in your workplace? I guarantee that you have older workers who deserve to be heard.  There was a permeating sense of respect for these two performers and they were definitely ‘heard’.

3 The merits of blind auditions. Competitors make it into this competition through blind auditions. I wonder if Steve and Mitchell would have made it otherwise; they’re not your usual candidates. They were judged on their voice – alone. If we judged our job applicants on results and competency alone, how diverse would our workforce be? There is no room for prejudice and discrimination when your applicants are singing to the back of your chair.

I could go on. Meanwhile, you might be interested in this article by Martha Stewart in a similar vein – It’s never too late to bloom.

And listen up Australian employers. If you want to tap into the rich advantage of older workers, how about becoming a Corporate Champion? A program funded by DEEWR, delivered by Sageco.

Envisage – create your career

Sometimes we only have career conversations when we’re in transition. Conversations triggered by redundancy, changing location, leaving a bad boss, retirement or itchy feet. The challenge with these conversations is that there is usually time pressure and some degree of emotion lurking in the background.

We often muse at Sageco how our working lives would be changed if career conversations were just as much a part of the employment fabric as performance reviews? Imagine looking forward to a regular conversation with your manager or mentor about what you envisage for your career. How might this enrich your work? How could it prepare you better for when transition triggers strike?

We have borrowed this from Kaye Avery – an experienced career coach in New Zealand who has worked with us from time to time. She credits the 5 Ps to Dr Kris Magnusson of Canada.

If you’re a manager, maybe you could try structuring some career conversations with your team members around the five Ps. (And don’t discount your mature workers. At 55, you could have a whole other career ahead of you. Just ask Ita Buttrose!)

1. Pride: The employee describes what they are most proud of and recalls what made the experience so motivating and successful.
2. Passion: Values, beliefs and interests present in that and other experiences are identifed .
3. Purpose: Other possible projects or assignments are explored which might also involve similar interests and values that would bring meaningful focus.
4. Performance: Develop, in collaboration, work strategies and resources required that will enable similar successes.
5. Poise: Manage expectations, trust and reinforce the idea that, with practice, success is achievable.

Envisage – create your career

In our “Envisage – create your future” seminar, we include relationships as one of the palette colours. We colour it red – the colour of a love heart. But red is also the colour of a warning and potentially a red rag to a bull; an irritant.

In Envisage, we talk about relationships in the context of transition. Who is counting on you? How do you keep your relationships healthy through the transition of retirement or career change? How will you maintain your networks? Who do you need to care for? How healthy are your relationships?

I got to thinking that looking at some of these questions in preparation for Christmas and other festive celebrations might be handy. The intensity of family Christmas celebrations can sometimes get the better of us. I’ve adapted our healthy relationship checklist for Christmas.

Pick someone with whom your relationship is not the best it could be. At your family festive gathering ie just for one day, can you:

• Have realistic expectations of the other person?
• Be a kind ear – listen and talk?
• Be flexible?
• Be dependable?
• Be true to yourself?
• Make time for them?
• Share some humour and warmth?

Go on….it might be the best gift you could give.

Want to join the discussion? Join our LinkedIn group.

Wishing you a wonder filled festive season – the Sageco team

As I dip in and out of TV and radio coverage and check results on my iPhone app, there are snippets this week that make me think about the value of mature workers.

Liesel Jones

After coming fifth in her fourth 100m breastroke final, Liesel said in an interview:

“My focus has totally changed at these Games. For me it was all about the changing of the guard and handing over to the younger swimmers. It’s a pretty tough Games in terms of just learning things,” Jones said. “Smooth sailing doesn’t make a skilful sailor. So I think I have got all the skills for life now. I would rather have a tough experience than an easy one because you don’t learn much about yourself then.”

In her fourth Olympic Games with an impressive collection of medals, Liesel doesn’t need to prove she is a champion. One can only guess the impact her presence and fight has on the younger members of the swimming team and the other athletes. She used the criticism of her pre-Games fitness to spur herself on.

What was your attitude to Liesl pre-Games? What’s your attitude to mature workers in your team? Are you assuming they’re ‘past it’? How are you supporting them to continue the ‘fight’ – to be productive, to do their best and to inspire other workforce generations?

Lauren Jackson

Lauren Jackson is also at her fourth Olympics as the captain of the Opals – Australia’s women’s basketball team. She’s often described as the best woman basketballer in the world. And yet she is so understated. This Olympics, she could become the highest scoring female basketballer – she just needs 41 points to do so. Her response to this, “I’m just older.” It’s not a focus for her. She has said many times that her personal goal is to help her team win.

Who are the Lauren Jackson’s in your team? The understated, experienced professionals who just want their team to win? Are you treating them like gold?

Bruce McAvaney

When I worked at the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, Bruce McAvaney graciously agreed to speak at one of our all staff meetings. He was amazing. He recounted his personal highlights from every modern Olympic Games. We were enthralled; he had 1500 Olympic tragics in the palm of his hand. Oh – how I  miss his commentary at the London Olympic Games. Due to the complicated and expensive tussle of Olympic media rights, we miss out on the calibre of Bruce on the television coverage. There is a veritable chasm between his commentary prowess and the current Channel Nine crop (talented and hard working though they may be). Why? Because he’s passionate, extremely knowledgeable and experienced. Bring on digital streaming rights; I for one will tune into Channel Bruce 2016.

Who in your team has the knowledge and experience that can’t be replicated? How big is the chasm between them and the other hard working and talented people you have? How will you transfer that knowledge in some way to mitigate risk? How can you use the ‘Bruce’s’ in your team to coach your up and coming team members? And how can you creatively retain ‘Bruce’ beyond a traditional retirement date?

1. The more we know about ourselves, the more power we have to behave better. Humility is underrated. We each have an infinite capacity for self-deception — countless unconscious ways we protect ourselves from pain, uncertainty, and responsibility — often at the expense of others and of ourselves. Endless introspection can turn into self-indulgence, but deepening self-awareness is essential to freeing ourselves from our reactive, habitual behaviors.

2. Notice the good. We each carry an evolutionary predisposition to dwell on what’s wrong in our lives. The antidote is to deliberately take time out each day to notice what’s going right, and to feel grateful for what you’ve got. It’s probably a lot.

3. Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.

4. Never seek your value at the expense of someone else’s. When we’re feeling devalued, our reactive instinct is to do anything to restore what we’ve lost. Devaluing the person who made you feel bad will only prompt more of the same in return.

5. Do the most important thing first in the morning and you’ll never have an unproductive day. Most of us have the highest energy early in the day, and the fewest distractions. By focusing for a designated period of time, without interruption, on the highest value task for no more than 90 minutes, it’s possible to get an extraordinary amount of work accomplished in a short time.

6. It’s possible to be excellent at anything, but nothing valuable comes easy and discomfort is part of growth. Getting better at something depends far less on inborn talent than it does the willingness to practice the activity over and over, and to seek out regular feedback, the more precise the better.

7. The more behaviors you intentionally make automatic in your life, the more you’ll get done. If you have to think about doing something each time you do it, you probably won’t do it for very long. The trick is to get more things done using less energy and conscious self-control. How often do you forget to brush your teeth?

8. Slow down. Speed is the enemy of nearly everything in life that really matters. It’s addictive and it undermines quality, compassion, depth, creativity, appreciation and real relationship.

9. The feeling of having enough is magical. It rarely depends on how much you’ve got. More is rarely better. Too much of anything eventually becomes toxic.

10. Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, and don’t expect anything in return. Your values are one of the only possessions you have that no one can take away from you. Doing the right thing may not always get you what you think you want in the moment, but it will almost always leave you feeling better about yourself in the long run. When in doubt, default to calm and kind.

11. Add more value in the world than you’re using up. We spend down the earth’s resources every day. Life’s primary challenge is to put more back into the world than we take out.

12. Savor every moment — even the difficult ones. It all goes so fast.

So many of Tony’s points strongly resonate. In particular No.9. Having just returned from a 7 day fundraising trek (for Good Beginnings Australia) through the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, followed by a volunteering stint at the Children of Vietnam orphanage in Da Nang, it has awarded me a fresh perspective and renewed clarity on ‘whats most important’. I perhaps should also turn my attention to No.8!

Which of the 12 do you identify with?

Read Tony’s blog post here.

We love the  Deloitte report produced November last year – Building the Lucky Country: Where is your next worker? It’s divided into digestible chapters covering the levers for population, participation and productivity - the three ‘P’ supply-side contributors to economic growth as outlined by Ken Henry, former secretary of the Australian Treasury. This is a must read for anyone producing a business case for responding to the demographic cliff and subsequent skill shortages.

If mature age solutions is high on your radar, then flick straight to page 22 – Lever 5: Your next worker is retired – or about to retire. You have all you need to build your business case for interventions that will help you retain deep industry knowledge, market experience and technical expertise. What are you actively doing to encourage mature age workers to remain productively employed for as long as they wish?

Here are the pearls we gleaned (nothing terribly new BUT oh, so well packaged and eloquently expressed):

• By 2050, more than 1 in 5 Australians will be 65 or older (versus less than 1 in 7 in 2010)
• There is little scope to increase the already high workforce participation of those aged 15-54. By contrast, the population aged 55 – 70 is a massive untapped source of productive capacity. There will be over 5 miillion Australians in this age bracket in 2030. Based on current participation rates for those over 55, only 1.73 million people would still be in the workforce in that year.
• Financial rewards alone do not necessarily lead to improved performance. Some of the most important motivators are having a meaninful purpose, the ability to develop mastery of a skill and the permission to be self-directed (autonomy). Other motivators lie in an organisation’s ability to engage retirees to be self directed, to create purpose at work for themselves and others and to allow them to continue to develop mastery in a skill they are truly passionate about.

Each lever in the report has a green box for reflecting on the business opportunities with great questions like:

• What percentage of your workforce will retire in the next five years?
• What alternative jobs or flexible arrangements with more work-life balance can your organisation offer to encourage retiring workers to keep working?
• Have you considered providing personal financial advice to your employees in this stage of their life, within the package of benefits provided by the organisastion?
• How are you supporting and encouraging your retiring workers to pass on knowledge in critical competencies to other employees?

Thanks to Deloitte for a great paper. If you want to do something about it, Sageco can help you navigate the ageing workforce puzzle.

Here are our suggestions for actions and a more thoughtful approach:

• Don’t treat ‘mature age workers’ as an homogeneous group; within this demographic there is a raft of diverse needs and ambitions. Are they long term unemployed? Are they wanting to ‘downsize’ their work responsibilities? Do they want a more flexible role? Do they want a complete career change? Are they seeking a portfolio of a career? Do they need less physical load in their role? Do they simply need more time to address caring responsibilities? Are they experts in their field whom you need to retain for their knowledge?
• As an employer, how can you redesign roles that suit the needs and ambitions of the mature age worker you want to retain or employ?
• As an employer, how are you supporting your current mature age workers to make decisions about their future work and retirement plans? Unless we challenge the assumption of retirement and create options for work beyond the traditional age of retirement, we won’t be successful in increasing workforce participation for this demographic. Take a look at Envisage for instance!
• As a mature age worker, what are you doing to stay connected and current and marketable to future employers? There is plenty of free and low cost help available to help you shape your approach to your career.
• As a manager, what deeply held stereotypes do you adhere to when thinking about employing or retaining a mature worker? What are you doing about shifting those and what will you miss out on if you don’t?

By all means, reward employers who employ mature age workers. But if they haven’t done some of the groundwork as mentioned above, it could be $1000 bucks down the drain.

Here are some of the better articles we’ve read lately – enjoy.

Adage - Mature workers feeling the love in Swan’s budget for battlers (an excellent breakdown of what the government is offering)

The Advertiser – Older workers not the retiring type (a positive article on working longer)

Human Capital Magazine – Mature age workers – added extras at no extra cost! (the argument for employing mature age workers)

Saipan Tribune (US) – Age, appearance and attitude (tackling some elephants in the room)

On-Line Opinion – Hiring older Australians – Lessons from Singapore (a compelling argument for how the money might have been better spent with better returns)

In response to the Final Report of the Advisory Panel on the Economic Potential of Senior Australians (also entitled ‘Turning Grey into Gold’), the Government has pledged $10M over 4 years for new ‘Jobs Bonuses’ to help tackle age discrimination and encourage 10,000 businesses to employ 50+ workers. In return, the business will receive a $1000 bonus if the employees stays on board for a minimum of 3 months.

Which all sounds well and good. In principle. We are keen to read the fine print which will reveal how employers will find out about (and access) funding,  how much paperwork (and time) will be involved, and the criteria for eligibility (any mature worker 50+ or restricted to long term unemployed?)

As Sageco we would not seek financial incentive to hire mature workers. It simply makes good business sense. Why wouldn’t we want experienced, knowledgeable, sometimes quirky people over 50 joining our team and adding to our deep smarts?

So on the topic of hiring mature workers, here are Sageco’s 5 top tips for making sure you can not only find the goodies but also keep them on board:

1. Look in the right places. There are a wealth of fabulous candidates sitting on the databases of some of the niche job boards such as Adage and on the books of boutique recruitment firms like 2discover and 360hr. Mature workers are fed up of being overlooked and ignored by the ‘big guys’ so gravitate towards more mature age friendly employment providers.

2.Review your employer brand. When you take a look at your own careers page on your website, what do you see? Fresh faced young Grads smiling back at you? Or a page that represents a diverse workforce and therefore will also attract a diverse set of applicants? How is the language sitting? Age neutral? Steering clear of ‘fast paced’ and ‘dynamic’ that covertly indicates ‘youth’?

3. Assess your hiring process. Two candidates are on the short list, both with the skills and qualifications you are seeking. Candidate A is 27 and Candidate B is 57. “A” has been with their current employer for 18 months and is seeking a change. They are abreast of current interview techniques and psychometric testing. “B” has recently left their company after 26 years. They haven’t been for an interview in all that time and have never experienced modern testing methods. Who is set up to win? Think about levelling the playing field and adapting your processes accordingly to give everyone a fair shot at the goal.

4. Be flexible. Our research shows that over 2/3 of mature workers would continue working longer, if they could work differently. Funnily enough, ‘differently’ means different things to different people! So have the conversation. Find out what flexibility means to your new hire. It could mean full time hours over a 4 day week or later start/finishing times. Flexibility is a no-brainer. It engages, retains and enhances productivity.

5. Prepare for the future. We love this quote “Plan for the future, because that’s where you are going to spend the rest of your life”. Wise words from Mark Twain. So, it goes without saying that if you support your mature employees to think about, plan, prepare and take action regarding their ‘late career’ and future retirement, then they will give you their loyalty and commitment. And you will benefit from them being ‘fit for work’ health-wise and taking ownership of their work and life decisions.

The full paper detailing the Government response to the EPSA report can be found here

We would love to hear your thoughts…

Beginning not an end

Whatever your religious beliefs or persuasions, it’s well accepted that the egg is a symbol of new life or a new beginning. And eggs are hard to avoid at Easter time. The shops are full of them.

This is our Envisage egg. Envisage is all about creating the future from what otherwise might be considered ‘the end’. We’re adamant that late career, retirement or redundancy is not the end. Envisage provides a framework to turn ‘the end’ into the beginning of something new.

As you indulge in an Easter egg or two, think about the future you want to create and what framework you need for support.

Enjoy the Easter holiday break!