The silver workforce can be a major boon for organisations if utilised properly. Three HR leaders tell Lee Xieli how they encourage the longevity of mature workers in their organisations.
■ Steven Gross
Vice president of human resources
Unilever South East Asia & Australasia
In terms of best practices, when it comes to utilising the mature workforce in the company better, I would focus on four areas. The first would be on employee vitality programmes such as providing employees access to health and wellness programmes to help them stay healthy and fresh throughout their career.
The second focus would be on implementing flexible working policies which allow older employees to tailor their working hours that can make their jobs more manageable and also allow an easier transition towards their retirement.
The third area I would focus on would be creating knowledge transfer or mentoring programmes where the company can ensure their older employees transfer knowledge to the younger employees. This ensures critical knowledge is not lost from the workforce when an organisation’s mature workers do eventually retire.
Finally, I would retain a pool of older talent to fill any short term organisation needs, thereby giving the organisation the flexibility and older employees the option to continue to work on a more flexible basis. The opportunity for these employees to continue to upgrade and ensure their skills are relevant to the business is, of course, important but this is one practice which I would expect to be a core policy in any good company.
■ Lek Siok King
Regional HR leader
General Electric Southeast Asia
We have a lot of people in our shared services and finance [departments] who have been around for 20 to 25 years. Encouraging mature workers to stay beyond retirement age really depends on the situation. We will always look at how valuable this group of people are but we do not want to keep them for the sake of keeping them around.
For all staff levels, you need to pick the right people to stay. For [retiring] professionals, if the skills are really unique, typically the company will make an exception to extend the employment. One possible way to lengthen their employment service is through contract [work]. But if we decide to keep you in our payroll, we would not convert you to a contract-basis as we do not want to reduce your salary. You may be 64 now but you still have certain valuable skills.
At the end of the day, it is a meritocratic organisation. We want people who can deliver.
■ Yvonne Oo
SVP of human resources
The Ascott Group
When hiring, we go by the merits, competence, skill sets, attitude and the energy that we need. If mature workers have the right customer-oriented and hungry-to-serve mindset, we do not turn them away. In fact, in the service industry, some of the mature people are very service-oriented, which we like and welcome.
We have not deliberately scouted for mature workers but we are definitely not adverse to hiring senior citizens. In fact, we continue to employ mature workers even after they reached retirement age because some of these mature workers are very valuable.
We value people who have many years of experience. Having gone through a lot in their lives, they are a lot more flexible when you assign certain work to them or change certain policies. They won’t be the first to debate with you.
We do not pay them lower as they have even more experience. In fact we have to pay them more unless it is not a good fit at all. Sometimes, they [mature employees] are more expensive as they become older and wiser so we pay them competitive market rates. There’s no discrimination at all.
At this point, we don’t have any specific focus programmes for mature workers as we treat everyone equally. Maybe going forward, if we have a large enough pool [of mature workers].
