There, in the TV studio the same morning as me recently, was Dame Carol Black, launching her report, Working for a Healthier Tomorrow, looking fit, as you would expect of a post-retirement age long-distance walker and runner.Black rightly argues that keeping people in work is infinitely better for their health than a sick-note culture that ingrains incapacity. However, on present trends, by 2050 life expectancy for men born after 1985 will be 93. And while not everyone agrees that working longer would be part of the solution to the problem of funding their pensions, it does highlight the fact that health and fitness is now undeniably a business issue. For skills scarsities make it all the more important that older people don't become a massive wasted resource: without them, our...
Life expectancies are increasing. Phrases like “60 is the new 40” are becoming increasingly commonplace, and just about every survey shows people invariably feel younger than their chronological age.So why is the chairman of Directors & Boards, Robert H. Rock, who is also president of the investment company MLR Holdings, suggesting in the pages of his magazine that it may be a good idea for chief executives to step down once they turn 60?After all, even Mr. Rock concedes that “retiring a highly successful C.E.O. at 60 may seem like throwing out a very scarce resource.”Still, he says, “in some highly innovative industries” like investment banking, technology and pharmaceuticals, chief executives frequently retire early.See full...
By the time Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr. retired from Cravath, Swain & Moore in 2002, he was financially set. He was already an author, he already had a distinguished track record in public service and philanthropy and, of course, he was the great-grandson of a toy magnate.So when Fritz Schwarz — the name he greatly prefers — joined the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, he seriously considered volunteering his services. He decided against it, and negotiated a salary, albeit one below what a starting lawyer makes.He never got a raise, and last year, when the Brennan Center ran into a budget crunch, he gave up his pay. But in principle, if no longer in principal, he thinks the salary made sense. “An organization and a person are simply more...
When the AARP announced its seventh annual "Best Employers for Workers over 50" awards on September 25, the corporations at the top of the list didn't get there by offering the traditional fringe benefit trio of health, life and disability insurance.Instead, the AARP recognized companies such as SC Johnson, the Principal Financial Group, Michelin North America and Mercy Health System for providing "forward-looking" benefits packages to workers over 50 that include alternative work schedules, lifelong learning and career training opportunities, and a program that allows today's graying workforce to care for their own aging families. AARP's announcement included a statement from AARP CEO William D. Novelli which helped highlight the obvious: Focusing on an aging employee's personal needs...
Abstract:One consequence of demographic change is substantial shifts in the age distribution of the working age population. As the baby boom generation ages, the usual historical pattern of there being a high ratio of younger workers relative to older workers is increasingly being replaced by a pattern of there being roughly equal percentages of workers of different ages.One might expect that the increasing relative supply of older workers would lower the wagepremium paid for older, more experienced workers.This paper provides strong empirical support for this hypothesis. Econometric estimates imply that the size of one's birth cohort affects wages throughout one's working life, with members of relatively large cohorts (at all stages of their careers) earning a significantly lower wage...
An aging workforce and an emerging “baby boom” retirement wave are driving more companies toward “strategic workforce planning,”The Conference Board reports in a new study, Strategic Workforce Planning: Forecasting Human Capital Needs to Execute Business Strategy. Strategic workforce planning involves analyzing and forecasting the talent that companies need to execute their business strategy.This management process is increasingly used to control labor costs, assess talent needs, make informed business decisions, and to assess human-capital needs and risks as part of overall enterprise risk management. Strategic workforce planning is aimed at helping companies make sure they have the right people in the right place at the right time and at the right price.See full...
Human resources manager Frank Heberer frowned. The internal-mail envelope he’d just torn open with great expectations contained the report he’d labored over for months. It outlined the long-term human resources strategy he believed Medignostics needed to adopt in order to remain competitive in the next 20 years. On the title page was affixed a yellow Post-it, with the words “Not a priority” penned in the ornate handwriting of Erwin Baum, the vice president of HR. Noting the crispness of the binder, Heberer doubted that anyone had read beyond his cover sheet.He felt completely deflated. For the past six months, this had been his pet project. He’ddone all the research, and everything he’d read pointed to a rocky road ahead. The average age of the German population was steadily...
Making the most of our retirement-age population has become a hot issue in Washington, where for the past 75 years federal policy has been designed around easing folks who are past 50 out of the workforce rather than enticing them to stay in it. If you're reaching that age now, however, you're headed for a whole new reality.Everyone knows the fiscal pickle we're in: baby boomers are about to retire and tap Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. To make good on the promises of these programs, the government may have to go much deeper into debt or increase the tax burden up to twofold on those still working. The math is suffocating. Something has to give.Inside the Beltway, one answer is increasingly heard: let's get a continuing economic contribution from folks after their...
Reports of Europe's death are somewhat exaggeratedEuropean countries are buffeted by two global forces: atmospheric pressures that, as it were, change the weather, silently transforming societies and the assumptions of public policy. One is climate change (a change in the weather literally). The other is demography.The two have a lot in common. Both are easily recognised but less easily understood. Both are products of complex forces and unobtrusive influences. Both create huge effects from minuscule changes. A rise in global temperature by one degree or a fall in fertility by one point may sound trivial but, over 100 years, will make the earth unbearably hot, or reshape the size and composition of societies.Yet though every rich country has a climate-change policy, few have a population...
Non-profit organizations could be hard hit by talent shortages exacerbated by the large cohort of baby boomers soon entering the retirement years, but there will be opportunities as well, according to an upcoming report from The Conference Board, the global research and business membership organization."While growth in the nonprofit sector is outpacing growth in the rest of the economy, talent shortages are already affecting critical service sectors, including healthcare and social services, in which nonprofits are heavily represented," says Jill Casner-Lotto, author of the report for The Conference Board. "Also, widespread executive-level and leadership skill shortages currently affecting many nonprofits are predicted to get much worse as the sector expands and experienced executives...
In a new report, The New Demographics: Reshaping the World of Work and Retirement, published by the Social Market Foundation, Lord Andrew Turnbull analyses a number of false assumptions which underlie our thinking about retirement and calls for a radical overhaul of employment and leadership models that will allow people to continue working past normal retirement age.The report argues that current employment models, where a person retires at their most senior position and leaves the organisation completely, lack flexibility and are a result of widespread ageism in the workplace. Leadership models also suffer from a similar inflexibility with companies assuming they should continue to be led by their oldest employees.The New Demographics suggests leadership models are adjusted so that...
Fernando Lorasque tiene 58 años, es jefe de una oficina del Banco Gallego en Lugo, y está deseando retirarse. En cuanto cumpla los 62 se acogerá a la jubilación anticipada con el 100% de su sueldo aunque, si le ofrecieran un buen acuerdo, se marcharía antes a casa. Reconoce que lleva trabajando desde la mayoría de edad y está cansado. Como él, el 67% de los españoles de 50 a 59 años optaría por dejar de trabajar lo antes posible. Muchos más que el 57% que lo haría en Francia, el 43%, en Suecia y Alemania; y el 31% de Holanda. Una actitud muy comprensible pero que preocupa a más de uno si se tiene en cuenta la disminución de la natalidad y que, en las últimas tres décadas, se han duplicado los años de permanencia en la jubilación de (11 a 20 años). Y es que en esta...