Employers aren’t ready for boomer exodus

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Many employers apparently believe the strong work ethic generally assigned to baby boomers is going to keep them in the harness well past traditional retirement age. Either that, or many employers just aren’t thinking through their workforce planning very strategically.

An exhaustive study of corporations and their attitudes toward baby boomers from SHRM suggests one, or both, of these might be the case. Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Aging Workforce Survey offers striking insight into the lack of insight demonstrated by employers when it comes to preparing for the loss of these experienced, hard-working professionals.

The survey found that, while a majority of companies have looked down the workforce road a year or two ahead and have made some plans for replacing retiring employees, only about one in five has taken the trouble to plan six to 10 years out. And those could be years of drastic change.

“A minority of HR professionals said their organization has analyzed the impact of older workers leaving the organization (17 percent), identified future workforce needs (21 percent) or identified potential skills gaps (20 percent) in the next six to 10 years,” SHRM reported.

A Transamerica study of baby boomers and employers found that many boomers want to keep working but at a different pace. The same survey indicated that the majority of employers aren’t prepared to accommodate such notions. Further, should the economy continue to improve or even remain stable over the next five years, more boomers might recover the financial value they lost in the recession and decide to retire.

SHRM started with a softball question: How many companies track the number of employees planning to retire in the next two years? Shockingly, only “one-half of survey respondents said they track the percentage of their workers eligible to retire within the next one to two years, and they reported that 10 percent of employees would be eligible within two years.”

Among SHRM’s further findings: About half those surveyed “did not think the potential loss of talent during the next one to two years would have an impact on their industry or organization. But one-third thought it would be a problem or a crisis for their industry and organization in the next six to 10 years.”

Additionally, about a third of companies represented in the study were completely unprepared for the loss of the baby boomers.

SHRM found that less than half the companies weren’t paying close attention to the potential wave of upcoming retirements, as evidenced by the percent of those that were actively identifying their upcoming skill gaps and were taking steps to plug those gaps.

“To prepare for potential skills gaps resulting from the loss of older work­ers, respondents said their organization would be most likely to increase train­ing and/or cross-training efforts (42 percent) and develop succession plans (33 percent). However, one-third (34 percent) of respon­dents reported their organization had not taken any steps to prepare for poten­tial skills gaps as a result of the loss of older workers,” SHRM said in its executive summary.

On the other hand, about half of those surveyed have been getting ready for the transition, and those companies could be expected to outperform the ones who continue to ignore what’s coming.

“Of those who said their organization had taken a specific step(s) to prepare for potential skills gaps as a result of the loss of older workers, about half (47 percent) reported that offering flexible work arrangements to attract a broader range of applicants (e.g. job-sharing, telework) was ‘very effective.’ More than one-half (54 percent) of respon­dents said their organization had implemented training and/or cross-training programs to transfer knowledge from older workers to younger workers,  one-third (33 percent) implemented mentoring programs, and one-quarter (26 percent) imple­mented job shadowing.”

However, one in five “did not use any strategies to transfer knowledge from older work­ers to younger workers.”

Source: Benefits Pro