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Posts Tagged SageCo Talk

Solutions for mature age workforce participation

Posted by Catriona in Commentary, Research on March 13th, 2012

The Australian Human Resources Institute have just released a their  pulse survey findings about mature age workforce participation. It’s a neat snapshot of the sentiments of 1212 AHRI members. No surprises, but it confirms Sageco’s findings over the last seven years.

Here are some of the key points with our ideas for solutions:

  • Just under half the respondents said the departure of older workers from their workplace has caused a loss of key knowledge or skills.
  • Approximately 20% report that the departure of older workers has caused the organisation to be less competitive.
  • More than 80% would like to see steps taken to retain older workers.

(Sageco’s Exchange program provides a strong framework for transferring knowledge between workforce generations and developing older workers as knowledge coaches. It distils the critical knowledge requirements, bolsters natural knowledge sharing and enables the intentional transfer of knowledge before older workers choose to retire. In fact, older workers may choose to continue working albeit differently – with a key component of their role as a knowledge coach.)

  • Over two thirds or respondents believe the retention of older workers would benefit productivity.
  • More than 75% see retaining older workers as a necessary precaution against the sudden loss of essential knowledge and skills.

(Sageco’s Envisage program is a visible, tangible way to support mature workers making work and retirement decisions. If you seriously want to retain mature workers, you need to support them as they plan for their career, their finances, health and relationships. Help them answer the question, “If not retirement, then what else?” Help your mature workers create a positive and productive future.)

Thank you to AHRI for providing the snapshot about this much discussed issue. This data cannot be ignored. Compare the cost of proactive investment in your current mature employees to the cost of recruiting, replacing, losing knowledge and losing competitiveness. Take action now.

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Managing outplacement – more than ticking boxes

Posted by Catriona in Commentary, Musings on March 5th, 2012

Envisage - create your career

Envisage - create your career

Since the eighties, restructures, redundancies, downsizing and outplacement have all been an unfortunate part of business. Maybe after thirty years, it’s time to make managing outplacement a core skill. We’ve all heard about bad outplacement: poor communication, knee-jerk reactions, low quality programs and an HR manager ticking boxes and hoping it will all go away soon. Employer of choice is so important. It drives investment in HR programs. Why, oh why, would you risk it all with a poorly managed outplacement program? Seriously, one disgruntled ex-employee on twitter has the power to undo a tonne of good.

Leon Gettler’s latest article in Business Spectator includes some blunt perspectives. What struck me most is the lack of monitoring of outplacement outcomes by HR managers.

“There is never a monitoring factor. It’s simply hand over the bucks and we feel really good and we can tell our shareholders that we have been good corporate citizens. There is never any follow-up, ever. The HR people are not financially accountable at all. All that money goes out for a feel-good purpose, but they don’t care a rats whether the person has a new job.”

Sageco has been running outplacement and career transition programs for years in addition to our suite of mature age workforce solutions. We believe career transition can be one of the most positive, life changing experiences for employees facing redundancy.

Here’s our tick-a-box approach for easy to implement, worry free outplacement:

  • oversight by Sageco MD Alison Monroe who managed the largest single outplacement project for the Sydney 2000 Games
  • a dedicated project manager providing guidance, monitoring, reporting and evaluation support for HR
  • high quality, holistic resources via individual, group and online solutions
  • superb, experienced coaches who’ve seen it all
  • options for all budgets, locations and volumes of candidates

The Sageco Envisage program can be tailored, ensures a high duty of care and builds the capability of HR to manage redundancies successfully.

Duty of care. Tick. Employer of choice. Tick. Ex-employees who sing your praises despite experiencing a redundancy. Tick.

Get your outplacement program sorted now.

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Alumni – A nice thing to do for older people?

Posted by Catriona in Commentary, Media on February 23rd, 2012

As mature age workforce specialists, we are often quizzed about alumni programs for organisations. Most of the questions are about how to engage retired ex-employees  into such a program. We don’t really ‘do’ alumni programs, but the solutions we have for mature workers would definitely contribute to an alumni initiative.

Here are some of the questions we ask:

  • What’s the business imperative for setting up an alumni? Is it a potential talent pool or living, walking knowledge base? (If it’s just about doing a nice thing for older people then it’s dooooooomed.)
  • How are you engaging your mature workers now? How do you support their decisions about work and retirement? Maybe you could start with pre-retirees for the alumni. (There’s often quite a pause before people answer that question – if they can.)
  • Do you have a transparent and defined process for re-engaging or re-employing  people who have retired? (The answers here are more miss than hit.)

The Washington Post Capital Business recent article on a graying workforce cites some good examples of how organisations are engaging retired workers.

The Agriculture Department is working with the National Older Worker Career Center to encourage people 55 and older — many of them retired federal employees — to come back to work on a specific project or be a temporary or part-time worker.

Joel Reaser, senior vice president at the Arlington-based center, said the program benefits older people who don’t want a full-time job but still have experience and knowledge as well as a government agency that’s facing an impending wave of retirements.

The effort is “not just a nice thing to do for old people,” said Reaser. “It’s absolutely critical that all employers, including the federal government, learn how to … retain [employees] further into their lives, extending their work lives and finding creative ways to bring them back.”

We couldn’t agree more.

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A privileged perspective – knowledge exchange

Posted by Catriona in Musings, What we're up to on February 15th, 2012

Michael Hollingworth

Facilitator and coach

This week Sageco facilitator and coach, Michael Hollingworth shares what it’s like facilitating the ‘sages’ in the Sageco Exchange program.

At Sageco, the men and women we call ‘sages’ are the experts and most senior executives in organisations, who have spent a lifetime – or at least a very long time (measured in decades) – learning, leading and applying their knowledge in the specialist areas they direct.

Facilitating them in the process of capturing and transferring their expert knowledge is an unusual and fascinating privilege. Their stories are unique, and in telling them you get some glimpses (often totally unexpected) into the complexities of how our very complex society works.

Stories are told in every technical and management realm:

  • How to locate an inexplicable leak causing lower pressure in some small corner of a city’s huge water mains network.
  • What can be done to ensure safety and balance the clearly conflicting demands of a railway line and its road overpass, built in unavoidably unstable terrain.
  • The secret skills of negotiation that keep a large public utility operating and profitable, while avoiding strikes and meeting the increasing pay needs and conditions of its workers.

All those involved in capturing their stories and handing on the skills of the sages learn and grow: the people who will take over their work from the sages, colleagues from other areas linked to their output, administrators who keep the workforce operating. Often the sages themselves learn all over again lessons they had forgotten – or knew by intuition or implicitly.
And perhaps the most satisfying aspect is to see the sages thanked and acknowledged by colleagues who understand, often for the first time, how much they contribute to keeping the wheels turning.

For over seven years the Sageco Exchange program has been used by organisations as a catalyst for knowledge transfer. Contact Sageco to find out more.

 

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What’s your attitude to older workers?

Posted by Catriona in Commentary, Media on February 6th, 2012

Last week’s survey results featured in the Financial Services Council paper on ‘Attitudes to Older Workers’ spurned commentary in a number of mainstream newspapers and industry mags. Adele Horin wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald, the editor in the Australian commented – though not directly about the research, and Human Capital took the story up. The research paper is excellent and there are some pearls of quotes that we’ll tuck away. OK – I’ll share one with you now.

“…In the resources sector, we’ve had to be quite creative in actually keeping older people on-board. We see them as a wonderful source of experience and knowledge. The labour demands in our sector are massive – and the skilled talent pool is actually drying up…” Senior HR Director, Resources Sector.

The topic of discrimination is of course very serious. But it intrigues me that over the eight years that Sageco has focussed on mature age workforce solutions, we struggle to find anything new under the sun. Except, of course, the fabulous new Age Discrimination Commissioner, Susan Ryan.

So, I asked myself the question, “What’s my attitude to workers (putting age aside)?”. Here’s my list as someone who has recruited and employed people for my various teams over the last 20 years.

I want ‘workers’ for my team who:

  1. Keep themselves current - with skills, news, styles, professional associations and good coffee.
  2. Keep themselves connected - team members who connect me with other great people. Is there a better way to network?
  3. Keep managing their career - workers who grow their own career, invest in it and keep moving forward. The ones who can’t imagine not having a career in some way, shape or form.
  4. Keep curious - I love workers who ask questions, challenge the norm and always want to find a better way.
  5. Are confidently competent. Fullstop. I’ve come to believe that the description ‘highly competent’ is one to strive for. The cost of incompetence and a manager’s inability to deal with it is astounding.

Hand on my heart, I can say that I’ve employed 24 year olds and 67 year olds who get big ticks against all five characteristics. If you’re a ‘mature worker’ , this is a gentle nudge to check yourself against this list. How do you fare?

To employers – maybe you need to write your own list. And seriously ask yourself: What does age have to do with it?

PS Want to found out how over 10 000 mature age workers have started to Envisage their own future and move beyond the attitudes they face? Come and try in February and March.

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