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Encouraging retirees to return to the workforce.

Article Excerpt
The aging of the workforce will present employers with many challenges, including how to meet their future labor needs. This study identifies the HR practices that are crucial in influencing retired persons' decision to return to the workforce. Respondents identified receiving recognition for their contributions and being treated with respect as the most important HR practices in influencing their decisions to return. Retired women rated these HR practices as more important than retired men did, indicating that employers may need to work even harder to encourage retired women to return. The findings show retired workers can be attracted back to the workforce with HR practices tailored to their needs and preferences. The key question is, "How prepared and willing are employers to do this?"

In 2005, Home Depot Canada was a winner of the first annual Best Employers Award for 50-Plus Canadians. CARP, Canada's Association for the 50-Plus, selected Home Depot Canada for the award because of its positive policies toward hiring and retaining mature workers. Home Depot Canada aggressively seeks out mature people to hire and provides these employees with ongoing training and performance reviews every six months to support their continued growth. According to the divisional HR manager of Home Depot Canada, mature employees bring knowledge and expertise to the job along with good customer service skills.

Home Depot Canada clearly understands the labor shortage challenges it faces, but how many other employers do? One of the major obstacles facing employers in the 21st century is the aging of the workforce (Drucker, 1999). In a recent survey of over 500 HR managers conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, the aging of the workforce was identified as the number one demographic trend that employers will need to address (Schramm & Burke, 2004); however, only a few employers are actively taking steps to deal with this issue. Many employers have not yet recognized what the aging of the workforce will mean for their organization and what they will have to do to meet their workforce needs (AARP, 2004; US General Accounting Office, 2001).

One way to meet these workforce shortages is to encourage retired people to return to work. Unfortunately, for the past decade, most employers have been encouraging mature employees to retire (Parkinson, 2002; Taylor, 2002).

Are employers now prepared to encourage retirees to return? If so, how will they go about doing this? A 2005 Conference Board survey of employers found that only 8 percent had plans to hire retired employees (The Conference Board of Canada, 2006). The management literature offers little guidance on how to attract retirees back to work, and few organizations have explicit policies promoting the re-entry of retirees. To get mature workers to return, employers will have to show that working is more attractive than leisure (Patrickson, 1998). Hirsch (2003) found that once people retire from the labor force it is difficult to entice them to return. Employers will face quite a challenge in attracting retirees back to the store, factory, or office.

The aging of the workforce will require major innovations in employment practices, including a radical change in HR strategies (Drucker, 1999; Walker, 1998). Employers will need to make special efforts to tailor their HR practices to the needs and preferences of mature workers (Agarwal, 1998). This article reports the findings from a study of retired people and shows HR practices, tailored to mature employees, are most important in influencing their decision to return.

So far, management research and literature has focused primarily on the retention of mature employees. We know far less about how to attract and recruit mature workers. Human resource practices that are successful in retaining mature employees are also quite likely to be effective in attracting mature workers to an organization. A review of the aging workforce literature identified six HR strategies that are especially important in the retention of mature employees:

1. Flexible working options, including adaptable work days and schedules, reduced hours (part-time), job sharing, and unpaid leaves for education and elder or parental care;

2. Training and development practices targeting mature employees for training to upgrade skills, as well as educating managers on the effective utilization of mature employees;

3. Job design practices that provide mature employees with...

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