Leadership Spotlight

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Older Workers Wanted

When four hurricanes battered Florida last year, insurance heavyweight The Hartford scrambled to deploy the hundreds of claims adjusters necessary to respond to thousands of commercial and residential claims. The company's retirement "reactivation" program was a key in managing the chaos, said Hartford CEO Ramani Ayer during the Wharton/AARP conference. The program calls on retirees when they are needed, allowing workers to maintain ties to their employer and supplement their income while taking the burden off of The Hartford during its most critical times. "We had to mobilize claims professionals from all over Florida. We'd had four hurricanes, and we had to be responsive," Ayer said. "We called on our claims professionals who had retired to help us, and it was wonderful for customers to meet and deal with an experienced professional rather than a temp or a junior employee."

Such elastic arrangements are vital to recruiting and retaining mature workers, experts say. At the Hartford, where 12 percent of new hires in 2003 were over 50, the menu of flexible options includes compressed work weeks, temporary part-time, telecommuting, phased-in retirement, phased-in return to work, job sharing and reduced hours.

"Attracting older workers means creating policies and practices that accommodate them—going somewhat further down the path to flexibility than many employers might be comfortable with," says Cappelli. "Older workers do not necessarily want to work the long schedules of their younger counterparts, and they might not be as willing to manifest the 'commitment' and 'rah rah' spirit that some organizations require even of their contractors. But these workers offer skills and competence and are often willing to work for much less money than their younger, more career-minded counterparts."

Businesses seeking older employees should create nontraditional recruitment strategies, such as supplementing standard recruiting packages with material tailored to older workers, posting job announcements with photographs of workers of all ages, and partnering with senior associations to advertise positions. Home Depot, for instance, knew it needed 135,000 new workers this year to fill spots created by expansion and turnover. The company, with 15 percent of its workforce already over age 50, created a partnership with AARP to aggressively recruit more older workers.

Even subtle messages in help-wanted advertising can dissuade mature employees from applying for positions. An ad that stresses "energy" and "fast pace" might appear to target a younger hire, while language such as "experience," "knowledge" and "expertise" would likely have more appeal to an older audience, researchers stress in Public Policy & Aging Report. Identifying a business as an "Equal Opportunity Employer" and adding, "This Company values workers of all ages" can also go a long way.

When designing employee training programs, companies should keep age-related learning styles in mind, said Neil Charness, a Florida State University psychology professor and leading expert on ability and performance of older workers, at the Wharton conference. Self-paced learning is best for older workers, while the young fare better with "discovery" methods that allow them to use their learning speed to make connections. Older workers, who learn more slowly, are better served by procedural methods, which allow them to tap into to their extensive knowledge base, Charness said. And while older workers may take longer to learn new technologies, once they do, they learn similar programs as quickly as younger workers.

It's true that differences exist between younger and more mature employees, Charness said, but perceptions that older workers are less productive and competent are untrue. Verbal ability, which also measures knowledge, increases with age, peaking in the early 70s, while other factors such as spatial ability, working memory, memory and recall, and perceptual speed decline starting in the 20s. But because knowledge is the strongest predictor of productivity, older workers remain as productive as younger workers, Charness said.

"Change is inevitable," Novelli says. "There is a stereotype that older workers can't adapt to change. Older workers don't learn the same way that younger workers do, but the literature shows that they do adapt to change well."

What can mature workers do to overcome these sometimes stubborn stereotypes? Wharton alumni, professors and experts like Novelli say that employees have opportunities, but they also have responsibilities. "Their responsibility is to stay employable," Novelli says. "That is every intelligent worker's obligation. And the way to do that is to prove yourself on the job. Learn new things. Try new things. Take lateral moves. Those are the kind of things that employers tend to value at every level."

"People have to plan financially and career wise," Novelli adds. "They have to do an inventory of skills and interests and ask themselves if they want to change careers and career paths. Today, people are more emboldened to do that than our fathers and mothers were."