Movement to keep boomers on job

EXCERPT from:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0726biz-boomers0726.html



Movement to keep boomers on job

Jonathan J. Higuera
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 26, 2006 12:00 AM

Retirement planning isn't just for employees.

Companies also are having to get their houses in order to prepare for life after large numbers of workers clock out for the last time.

After grappling with careers filled with meetings, memos and long hours, a large number of people are getting ready to slow things down.

But most employers are either unaware of the issue or are just beginning to adapt to an aging workforce. Relatively few Valley companies are girding for a brain drain expected when baby boomers stop working.

The uneven response around the Valley appears to follow the national response.

The generation born from 1946 to 1964 began turning 60 this year at a rate of 8,000 a day. And that means that, over the next few years, employers will see increasing numbers of them either stop working altogether or start looking for less traditional ways to replace the stimulation of a hectic workday.

Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate that workers age 55 and older will make up 20 percent of the workforce by 2010, compared with 13 percent in 2000 and that the United States will face critical shortages of qualified workers.

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Industries with older workers include energy, health care, aerospace engineering and other high-tech fields.

"When someone hits 55, you don't want them saying their career is over and they are just waiting to retire," said Angelo Kinicki, professor of management at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business , who has written extensively on corporate organizational development. "You want to invest in training for them and find ways to keep them around another 10 years or more."

And boomers, who consider age 60 a good 10 to 15 years away from being old, may be receptive to staying around, but companies will have to find creative ways to work with their older employees.

'Knowledge transfers'
Management at Salt River Project, where the workforce's average age is 46, realized in 2001 that there was a potential crisis. That's when the utility began creating a succession plan.

"We're more than 100 years old, so the impact of the aging workforce on our legacy was a concern," said Kenny Edwards, SRP's manager of learning and development services, part of the human-resources department. "We saw the data. We knew it was coming."

To get ahead of the problem, SRP has developed programs to encourage "knowledge transfer" between key older employees and those identified as possible successors.

"We wanted to create a leadership bench," Edwards explained.

That meant creating executive-development programs, including mentorships between current leaders, not all eligible for retirement yet, and younger potential leaders.

Managers also systematically began interviewing older executives to establish a historical record, capture detailed technical information and pass on company philosophies."

"There is plenty of evidence that the pool of the next generation of workers won't be as large, nor will they have the same kind of skills," Edwards said. "It's a real issue but one that can be managed."

Slow to react
SRP is the exception rather than the norm when it comes to employer response to the expected retirements. National research finds that most companies are just getting to the starting line.

A 2005 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management on the future U.S. labor pool indicated that 77 percent of firms surveyed were either just becoming aware of the issue or were just starting to examine internal policies and management practices with baby-boomer retirements in mind. Only 11 percent had implemented any specific policies or practices to encourage older employees to stay on the job.

"We're kind of at the beginning of this cycle," said Jen Jorgensen of the Society for Human Resource Management, based in Alexandria, Va. "The activity level among employers kind of depends on the average age of its workforce."

For some companies, the solution could be as easy as finding ways to persuade a few of its older, valued employees to stay on the job a little longer. For others, the vacuum created by the retirements could prove difficult to overcome.

"When you talk about a 25 percent drop in highly skilled workers, that's serious," said Cindy Cooke, director of Scottsdale Boomerz, a group that connects older workers with jobs and volunteer opportunities. "You can't just say, 'The labor force is getting tighter.' "

Phased-retirement option
Keeping older workers on board may be more art than science.

Among those Valley companies that are addressing the issue, the most common retention strategies cited actually apply to all workers: providing continuous training and modifying pay scales to ensure competitiveness.

But older workers are asking for one benefit in particular: flexible scheduling, including telecommuting, job sharing or simply part-time hours.

Scottsdale Healthcare, which runs two hospitals, offers eligible older employees the opportunity to cut down to 16 hours a week and maintain coverage under the company's medical and dental plans.

It also provides a phased-retirement program that allows eligible employees to work either full or part time and take up to six months off during the year.

The phased-retirement program allows Sue Stolldorf, a 57-year-old registered nurse, to continue receiving full-time benefits while working only 32 hours a week.

It also allows the hospital to keep a veteran nurse who is able to pass along knowledge and share experience with younger staffers.

"We did this so they wouldn't leave us," said John Donohue, director of employee relations. "All the reports show that baby boomers are not retiring but scaling back. We wanted to be out in front of that."

Flexibility required
That is the type of thinking required of all companies, said John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement and labor research firm.

"The smart employers are starting to recognize they have to change their mind-set toward retirement because of the gap between what they need and the expertise available to them," he said.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, which has a workforce with an average age of 42.3 years, hopes flexible scheduling and an expanded telecommuting program will help stem the tide of retirements. The company also uses succession planning to identify critical positions or employees that may need to be cultivated.

"There's no one silver bullet," said Deanna Salazar, vice president of human resources.

That formula has worked for Emily Schroder, a 69-year-old manager of medical risk assessment for Blue Cross Blue Shield. She first thought she would retire at 65. But, as that birthday came and went, she kept right on working.

"I'm just not ready," she said. "I like what I'm doing, I work for a great company, and I have a great staff."

Retire or reinvent?
But the needs of employers eager to crank up productivity levels can be at odds with employees who would like to continue working but perhaps not at full throttle.

"We want work to fit our lifestyle, not our lifestyle to fit work," said Victoria Trafton, 59, who is in her second career as a business consultant after a marketing career in Silicon Valley.

Matt Thornhill, president of the Boomer Project, a marketing research and consulting company that studies the huge demographic pool of 78 million Americans, said, "Just knowing their age doesn't tell you what life stage they're at. They reinvent themselves every three to five years."

Dennis Keith, 61, a Gilbert resident who retired two years ago after selling his Chicago-based marketing advertising company, reinvented himself by getting back into the workforce on his own terms.

Keith now works for Synergy Business Associates, a Phoenix-based consulting firm that uses experienced, retired or semiretired executives to work on specific client projects. Between projects, Keith takes as much time off as he needs.

"When you've been in business like I have and you've bought and sold businesses, there was an excitement to it," Keith said. "I missed that. I thought it (retirement) was what I wanted, but it got old. I needed more."

Finding fulfillment
Psychological and financial needs may keep the Valley from major labor shortages.

"I call them 'near-retirement experiences,' " said Steve Vernon, a financial author, referring to retirees who end up going back to work because they underestimated how much it would take to live on.

Many of the older workers at General Dynamics, a national defense contractor with operations in the Valley, report that they aren't ready to retire and downsize their lifestyle with lower incomes, said Craig Hadges, vice president and director of human resources.

"We hear about baby boomers retiring, but, on the other hand, we hear about the lack of savings," Hadges said.

And working beyond traditional retirement age may be a good thing for many, said Jo Anne Musolf, president of an executive and business-coaching firm.

"We're in a society where we saw our parents chomping at the bit to retire," she said "So it's a habit that we think we have to retire." But she added that today's 65-year-old has the same outlook on life as a 40-year-old of previous generations.

What she does advise her older clients to think about is what they want to do professionally to feel fulfilled.

"As we age, things that gave us meaning don't give us as much meaning anymore," she said.

For Schroder, of Blue Cross Blue Shield, staying on the job has been a no-brainer. It helps that she works a compressed week of 10-hour days, four days a week, giving her plenty of time to shower attention on her grandchildren.

"I can't imagine getting up in the morning and not having a job to go to because I've done it for so long," she said.