HR Talk: Time to recovery-proof your organization
By Judith Tavano, SPHR / Northwest Arkansas Human Resources Association
Picture this in a day in the not-too-distant future. You’re driving to work and listening to the radio. The newscaster announces, “The great recession is over. “
You are elated. You arrive at work thinking, “No more hiring freezes. No more unmanageable budget cuts. No more…”
Wait! What’s that thunderous sound you hear as you enter your office?
It’s your experienced older workforce heading to any exit they can find. The economy has recovered, and the pent-up demand to retire is giving way.
According a 2009 Pew Research Center study, the nearly four-in-ten adults who are working past the median retirement age of 62 say they have delayed retirement because of the recession. Among workers ages 50 to 61, 63 percent say they might have to push back their expected retirement date because of current economic conditions.
As older adults are staying in the labor force longer, younger adults are staying out of it longer – either by choice or the result of hiring freezes. While these trends started taking shape nearly two decades ago when boomers were at the height of their careers and Gen-Xers were just beginning theirs, both trends intensified during the current recession and are expected to continue through recovery.
Older workers will still leave in record numbers (because the age swell of older workers is the largest bulk of the workforce), but there will be fewer behind them to step into their roles. The American workplace has changed. Institutional knowledge has aged, succession planning has stagnated, and training and development has been chilled.
How will HR professionals bridge the gap? By planning for recovery now. Here are three steps to recovery-proof your organization. It’s a strategy whose time has come.
1. Aggregate the knowledge. Develop a program to capture institutional knowledge. Pass it on. Share it. Encourage workers (even the hold-on-to-it-forever boomers) to give their knowledge to the next generation.
2. Find the stars. Identify high-profile, younger employees and get them on a fast track to leadership.
3. Fill in the gaps. Assess the knowledge and capabilities pool of both younger and older workers. Discover what they need to know and from where and from whom they need to learn it.
Judith Tavano, SPHR, is the Northwest Arkansas adjunct instructor, Human Resource Development, and HR training and development specialist at the University of Arkansas, and a member of NOARK. E-mail Judith at jtavano@uark.edu or info@noark.org.
