It is no secret [that] the key to a well-oiled and successful business lies with the workers. The best asset of any company is in fact its human resources.
What if I told you that senior workers are the key holders to Australia’s future workforce?
As Australia’s population ages, we can expect fewer people to enter the workforce, according to findings by the Human Rights Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). Recent projections from the Government’s Intergenerational Report indicate the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double over the next 40 years.
At the same time, Australians will live longer, while the workforce participation rate for people aged over 15 is projected to fall.
So what does this mean for us?
All signs point towards a rapidly shrinking pool of skilled and readily available workers for Australian businesses. There will be fewer people of traditional working age compared with the very young and the elderly.
A lower proportion of Australians working will mean lower economic growth.
According to the age discrimination commissioner, Susan Ryan, the economic cost of losing mature aged Australians in the workforce was enormous and that although several hundred age discrimination complaints are made to HREOC every year, many senior workers are reluctant to take action.
“The loss has been estimated at around $10 billion a year and I have no doubt that that’s right,” she said.
The loss of tacit knowledge as senior and experienced workers retire has a great impact on businesses; on our economy and on our nation. It will cost us. Far too often, senior and experienced workers are encouraged to retire early, take voluntary redundancies, or significantly scale down their workload.
Ms Ryan said the first thing to be done was to recognise the problem.
Demographic change is happening and the future of our workforce will need to grow.
Some changes will depend on new government policies. Some will require a shift in attitudes. Most will require both.
We need to consider the value of experienced workers. Senior workers bring to the table unique skill-sets and values. They can save you time and money — you just need to rethink why: the simple matter of high turnover costs from hiring a youthful workforce vs. the benefits of experienced workers who know your business inside and out.
What we can learn from this report is to build a case for future reforms that we’ll need: such as requiring people going into high-care nursing homes to contribute to their capital costs (as they do in low-care homes); tackling the culture of obesity and heavy alcohol use; and investing in training the unemployed to name a few.
For the sake of our future, our nation — we’ve got some work to do.