Better with Age
Like fine wine, mature-aged employees can be an excellent investment for a company if they share their experience and wisdom with the younger generation. Kristie Thong finds out how HR can utilise the silver workforce with proper training.
There’s no denying it: We are pushing the limits of our life span.With health-care standards on the rise, better nutrition awareness and a higher standard of living, life expectancy is increasing.
An extended life span is not a bad thing, but in the HR space, this constitutes having a larger, albeit older, talent pool.
In response, the Singapore government is stepping up efforts with re-employment legislation to take effect in 2012.
More people will be able to continue working beyond the statutory retirement age of 62, according to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).
The retirement age will rise to 65 in the first stage of the new legislation and then 67.
Older workers will receive increased Workfare Income Supplements from the Government, complementing the CPF (Central Provident Fund) Minimum Sum Draw-Down Age programme, which will be gradually raised from 2012 onwards.
This is designed as an incentive for companies to hire and retrain older workers.
In April 2010, the first phase of the Tripartite Implementation Work Group on the Employability of Older Workers (TIWG) was set up by the Tripartite Committee (Tricom).
Its sole purpose was to complement the re-employment legislation, involving an advertising and publicity campaign to highlight the value of older employees between 55 and 64, as defined by MOM’s guidelines.
The second phase will begin later this year when the government will give companies incentives through its Workfare Income Supplements, along with advice on training mature-aged people to prepare them for the re-employment policies.
So why is there an increasing importance on mature-aged employees?
According to Koh Juan Kiat, executive director of the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF), Singapore faces a rapidly ageing population and workforce.
By 2020, more than one in three Singaporeans will be 50 years and older.
He says a person at 62 can expect to live for another 20 or more years.
“Because of a lower total fertility rate, there will be fewer young people entering the workforce each year,” Koh says.
“The number of new entrants to the workforce is expected to drop to 28,000 from about 41,000 per annum between now and 2012.”
To ensure business growth, employers have no choice but to integrate older workers into their workforce.
And mature-aged employees can often operate in more strategic ways by offering advice and experience, along with skill sets that are different from Generation Y.
Lynne Ng, regional director of Adecco Southeast Asia, says younger workers are very tech-savvy and they look to technology to support their performance at work.
Similarly, Generation Y employees can operate at a fast pace and often want to get things moving quickly.
“Mature workers, while not always as nimble as younger workers in manual labour roles or jobs of a physical nature, often have a lot to offer from a strategic thinking and experience perspective,” Ng says.
Characteristics of mature-aged employees
Before the issue of re-training comes re-hiring. Companies have to be willing to hire or retain people beyond their retirement age – with or without legislation.
There are many advantages to hiring older workers. For example, Koh says, their customer networks. This allows companies to tap their vast connectivity to harness success.
Secondly, Ng says older people often have considerable experience and skills younger workers lack.
“They can act as mentors and help develop younger colleagues by using their extensive experience and wisdom that has been harnessed over several decades in the workplace,” Ng says.
Adecco has been hiring mature-aged workers since it began operating in 1985. As a staffing company, it has no qualms about recommending older employees with the right experience and skills to clients.
KFC Singapore is another company that values the importance of mature-aged employees. About 27% of its 711 full-time staff and 5% of its 1,483 part-timers are older workers.
However, the company considers anyone over the age of 35 as a mature-aged employee.
Similarly, the fast-food chain will be stepping up efforts to hire and re-train older employees with the additional incentives offered by the Singapore government.
“Older workers are generally reliable, competent and dedicated. They need very little supervision and are great colleagues to work with,” says June Koh, senior HR manager of the fast-food restaurant chain in Singapore.
“This sets a fine example for the younger generation to emulate.”
On the flip side, some companies are reluctant to hire mature-aged employees.
KFC’s Koh believes some barriers perceived by these companies include older workers having difficulty communicating effectively because of language barriers or being challenged by multi-tasking.
But more often than not, the pitfalls of having mature-aged employees have to do with different expectations. Ng says older workers may prefer to work on a more flexible basis to balance personal matters, such as family responsibilities.
“They are also more likely to be keen on ensuring they have a comprehensive medical care plan in place,” she says.
“This is understandable because people who are getting older often require more medical treatment.”
Another pitfall is mature-aged workers may not want to work late into the evenings, compared with younger workers who are more willing to do overtime.
Such differences may sometimes be seen as a pitfall for hiring an older worker, but while some companies may be reluctant, they will have to learn how to adapt to a changing world.
HR managers are tasked with the crucial role of ensuring that, while the legislation is abided by, the company’s productivity and overall satisfaction remain intact. Here’s where re-training comes in.
Re-training
KFC’s Koh believes re-training mature-aged employees is important because workers may not suit certain roles when they get older.
Hence, there will be a need to give them new responsibilities or redesign their jobs to increase productivity levels.
But Ng feels there is really no difference in re-training mature-aged employees compared with employees of other age groups.
Re-training is all about continuous updating and building skills that can support the company’s success. Furthermore, says SNEF’s Koh, re-hiring older employees need not always require re-training. Based on a 2009 Retirement and Re-employment Practices Report from MOM, about 48% of private companies in Singapore allowed employees to continue working on their existing contracts beyond their retirement age.
Once HR has ensured that all policies and systems are in place to identify eligible mature-aged employees for the organisation, HR will need to make necessary adjustments and offer training. This ensures older workers remain efficient and productive.
Ng adds that HR managers can provide additional support in the form of flexible time or in various aspects of re-training or updating their skills. “Re-training is necessary when organisations need to re-deploy their older employees to other jobs,” SNEF’s Koh says.
“HR will need to take into account the different learning methods of older workers as well as their previous experiences.”
Re-training is also about being adaptable and making necessary amendments to the internal structure of the company.
Ng emphasises the importance of regularly introducing new team members to departments.
“HR can play an important part in internal communication via newsletters and gatherings to ensure colleagues understand the roles of others that they work with,” she says.
It helps if young and mature-aged employees work closely so they become familiar with each other’s work nuances and expectations of the workplace.
SNEF’s Koh, who is also a Tripartite Committee member, believes younger employees need to recognise that managing older people requires skills and sensitivity. With more Generation X overtaking Baby Boomers in supervisory roles, Koh says having that interpersonal awareness is important because “each generation has different motivations”.
At the same time, older employees will need to be open minded “in terms of adaptability and willingness to accept changes”.
Koh says this means they need to be open to training to ensure they stay relevant in the organisation.
For service-oriented companies, such as KFC, restaurant staff are trained by general managers and not by HR.
These managers may face language barrier problems with older workers and, because they are not as equipped to handle employee welfare, may face “possible resistance to change or new ways of doing things”, says HR manager Koh.
She reveals that KFC has a mentor or “buddy” system where long-serving older employees guide newly hired mature-aged workers.
This eases the level of resistance and builds rapport. The restaurant chain has also incorporated flexible hours, adapting to the needs and expectations of the older population.
Koh says HR needs to remember that mature-aged workers have a slower learning pace, which is often made worse by the fast pace of certain jobs. Hence, employers and HR managers need to adapt to the learning speed of older workers.
Looking forward
Unfortunately, companies in Singapore may not be ready for the re-employment legislation.
With re-employment, training programmes will inevitably need to be implemented to ensure employees are well skilled and competent.
However, companies such as KFC and Adecco do not have specific re-training programmes for their older employees. Koh reveals that KFC uses a standardised training manual for its employee demographic.
But some tweaks are made to the system to enhance the learning effectiveness of the mature-aged employee. For example, KFC sometimes uses pictures for the cash register, instead of words to overcome language barriers.
Similarly, Ng explains that Adecco offers support for mature-aged job seekers such as perfecting their interviewing skills.
But what’s worrying is that not all companies in Singapore are making an effort to come up with re-training programmes for mature-aged workers.
For a country that is facing a rapidly ageing population, it is important to ensure this generation is not being ignored or being made redundant.
As part of the efforts of Tricom, the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) implemented the ADVANTAGE! Scheme in 2006.
Companies registered in Singapore or based locally are eligible for grants of up to S$300,000, supporting various initiatives from job redesign and automation, wage restructuring, employment, re-employment and retention of mature-aged workers.
ADVANTAGE! consists of a job redesign grant, where employers can make changes to their work processes, as well as integrate programmes such as change management, workplace culturalisation and training programmes for mature-aged workers.
Since its launch, SNEF says close to 1,300 companies have signed up for the programme, which translates to a commitment to recruit more than 8,000 mature staff and the re-employment of more than 9,500 older employees.
For many companies, this may be the first step in being proactive towards integrating older employees.
“Employers that successfully manage this intergenerational workforce will reap benefits in terms of productivity and a better work environment for their employees,” SNEF’s Koh says.
Service training gets a star
Some companies value the importance of training its employees because they are aware that investing in
programmes can help build a stronger and better skilled productive team. By Kristie Thong.
Kopi Tiam, a restaurant of Swissôtel The Stamford hotel, values the importance of training its employees more than anything else. It provides its team of 16 service employees with regular in-house training to ensure they are well equipped with the knowledge and skills to serve guests. These training sessions aim to improve several aspects of the employees’ customer service experience, regardless of age, says Magdalene Tai, director of human resources for Swissôtel The Stamford.
One training programme, which Swissôtel uses, is the Singapore Service Star initiative. The training workshops that the Singapore Tourism Board developed for the service sector are “essential in helping [the hotel’s employees] achieve service-related goals”. This accreditation scheme offers training programmes, ranging from leadership seminars to service excellence. In 2009, employees at Kopi Tiam attended a seminar on a successful formula for competitive differentiation.
More importantly, Tai reveals Swissôtel conducts daily training and reinforcement to maintain its corporate quality standards. Employees are reminded of their service expectations through acronyms such as STAR (“smile” and greet before I am greeted, “thank” before I am thanked, “acknowledge” those in waiting and “repeat” names when I can) and CARE (courtesy, appreciation, respect, empathy).
Through the Singapore Service Star’s mystery shopping assessment, Kopi Tiam has seen its training programmes reap rewards. The feedback from customers has been positive and the number of repeat customers has also increased.
However, time management is a major challenge when conducting training for employees. “Each colleague is already challenged with long operational hours at the restaurant,” Tai says. “Conducting training sessions that have a lasting impact often necessitates removing the service staff from at least one day of restaurant operations.”
This places more pressure on the rest of the service staff because they have to take over their colleagues’ duties.
However, Tai says Swissôtel remains committed to each of its workers with Kopi Tiam’s employees having the opportunity to attend courses in wine appreciation and basic food hygiene.
For companies in the service sector, training plays a key role in ensuring stellar performance. But training is undoubtedly essential, regardless of any sector an organisation is in, because a workforce’s skills need to be updated to keep up with changing times.
Inside scoop: The golden rules for productive training
It’s useless for trainers to accumulate a wealth of knowledge if their students can’t utilise it. Jocelyn Lee finds out how a coach can translate information into an effective training programme.
Entering a new age of learning, not only are employees expected to do more, organisational leaders are expected to provide employees with relevant and up-to-date training.
Only by mastering the knowledge to deal with the changes can trainers translate the information into effective lessons.
With the trend of online learning, also known as e-learning, emerging worldwide, leaders have to immerse themselves in the fashionable culture of learning to facilitate their teachings. After all, they will be the ones telling their students to give up their obsolete ways. The question is how trainers can translate knowledge into feasible lessons and fully engage students.
At a SIM University ICT 2010 workshop, David Kennedy, director of the teaching and learning centre of Hong Kong-based Lingnan University, said it was critical for students to make the most of the lecturers’ knowledge.
Quoting author John Biggs, Kennedy, who conducted the workshop, said: “It is not what the teacher does, it is what the student does that is more important.”
Kennedy, who is also an associate professor of Computing and Decision Sciences, talked about building a “blended learning environment” for adult learners.
So what is a blended learning environment?
Although Kennedy was evasive on its definition because he believes there isn’t a distinct one, he did say it is about creating a learning sphere, while making the best of the tools available.
Speaking from a middle managerial point of view, Kennedy believes that one must be very clear in the training objectives when designing a learning ground. The objectives set by leaders worldwide for their training programmes should include team abilities, critical thinking and analytical skills. All of which, according to the professor, are qualities that companies hope employees have, but that are virtually impossible to achieve merely by placing them in training programmes.
What leaders should aim to achieve is to successfully “shift engagement” to their students and enrich them with relevant content in the training course. In the realm of efficacious training, maximising learning tools, especially those of modern technology, can bring success to training sessions.
“If I was in a very impoverished environment, the only tool I might have is a board and a piece of chalk, so I’d make do with that tool,” Kennedy says.
However, in forward-thinking countries such as Singapore or Hong Kong where he is based, the availability of learning tools is not an issue.
For example, multimedia tools such as e-books and laptops are easily accessible in these cities. Leaders should, therefore, be able to use these tools to aid their coaching. The idea, Kennedy says, is teaching one how to fish instead of providing one with the fish.
In a discussion with other SIM University lecturers, there is a consensus that social media is a good teaching tool for trainers to gain optimal attention in classes.
Feedback-enabled networks, such as online forums, short text messaging systems and interactive in-class presentations, are some of the tried-and-tested formulas lecturers cited.
However, leaders must not assume the learning process is automated simply by putting employees through an e-learning experience.
There are two golden rules to designing effective training programmes, explains Kennedy. Trainers must make full use of available teaching tools to engage people into fully grasping the training purpose and then ensure they can apply the knowledge in real-life scenarios.
“I can’t teach you to swim without taking you to the swimming pool,” Kennedy said.
