Retaining older workers in construction
An ageing population means that employers must ensure they incentivise older workers to remain in the workforce
Older workers will often have a lot of useful knowledge and experience, and this can be invaluable for younger colleagues, who can then benefit from mentorship and learning opportunities.
Older staff should be properly integrated as part of an intergenerational workforce so that they feel their experience is valued and being used to aid business continuity. There are clear business benefits to harnessing the expertise of older workers.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) published a report, Understanding older workers, in March 2022, which revealed that more than 10.4 million older workers (those aged 50 and over) account for almost one-third (32.6%) of the workforce.
There are more than 1.2 million workers over the age of 65, a figure that has been growing and will continue to grow in the coming years.
The report makes a series of recommendations based on the key issues that employers and policymakers should understand when considering how to recruit and retain older workers.
These include enhancing the flexible working offering, providing early and ongoing support for health and wellbeing, and improving skills and training.
Practical points
- Ensure that your learning and development strategy (if you don’t have one, then considering developing one) takes the learning and development needs of older workers into consideration.
- Don’t make assumptions about the types of training opportunities older workers will be interested in.
- Don’t assume that older workers are no longer interested in growing their careers.
- Harness the expertise of older workers to help the learning needs of younger staff and aid with succession planning.
- Consider reverse mentoring so that older staff can learn the skills of their younger counterparts.
Improving skills and training
The CIPD advises employers to guard against assumptions that older workers are less likely to be interested in training or career progression.
Its report shows that older workers are most likely to disagree that there are good opportunities for progression in their role and are also less likely to take part in formal off-the-job training.
It is a good idea to discuss the possibility of training or reskilling on a regular basis with older workers, either as part of a formal programme or through informal discussions.
Any assumptions about what training or upskilling opportunities older workers may be interested in should be avoided as they may be discriminatory on grounds of age.
A report published earlier this year by training provider Corndel, which surveyed 250 HR decision-makers and 1,000 UK employees, found that 75% of employees over the age of 55 had not received human management training for skills such as empathy, mental health awareness and emotional intelligence in their current roles. And 55% had not received technical training for tools such as ChatGPT.
The report also found that more than half of people over 55 (54%) claimed that professional development was an important factor in their decision to stay with an organisation.
It’s clear that providing proper learning and development opportunities is a key factor in retaining older workers.
Review learning and development strategies
If you have implemented a learning and development strategy, it is worth taking a look at it to ensure that the training and development of older workers is being considered. If you don’t already have a strategy in place, then it is important to consider putting one together.
Having a proper learning and development strategy in place will help people grow their careers and feel fulfilled at work.
Learning and development is about creating the right culture and environment to enable staff to do this. It is also about knowing the current and future capability needs of your organisation and creating a learning culture that drives employee engagement.
It is important that older workers feel valued and they should be included in training opportunities even if their career trajectory is different to that of younger employees
It is important that older workers feel valued and they should be included in training opportunities even if their career trajectory is different to that of younger employees.
Staff should feel that they are able to continue learning irrespective of where they are in their careers, be it at the very beginning or towards the end.
Consider reverse mentoring
Reverse mentoring is a good way of breaking down age barriers to share experience and expertise; older workers can learn to become more digitally literate, while younger workers can benefit from the older workers’ experience and expertise.
Various companies have been using reverse mentoring to enable employees from different generations to support each other’s development.
In order to avoid a digital divide, employers are pairing up social media-savvy millennials and less digitally aware older managers to work on a number of skillsets.
This helps to raise the digital IQ of more senior employees, but it also gives younger employees a feeling of value and purpose within their company.
It is important to run mentoring programmes both ways. Although the workplace is becoming increasingly digitalised, certain corporate, company and market-specific knowledge held by older staff will always be valuable, and it is important for older staff to share this with the younger employees who succeed them.
Laura Welchew is a partner at Trowers & Hamlins.
This article again is predicated on the false belief that older workers tend not to be as digitally savvy as younger workers. I take exception to the comment “older workers can learn to become more digitally literate.” This perception has got to change. Historically, the older worker has experienced more dramatic changes in the transition from full manual processes to digital over their lifetime than the younger generation will ever be exposed to. They have also been instrumental in how software has evolved today via feedback and comments throughout this time. This experience is unprecedented. In my experience, older workers are more capable of adapting to change and embracing new technologies and methods given the right opportunities.
Agreed. Attitude is the most important factor in learning how to use new technology, not age. And adaptability has been key to keeping myself employed over the years.
Absolutely agree, 51 years in this industry and I have sat in front of a laptop taking online course after course, therefore I totally agree with you don’t put us older, silver haired fully experienced trade persons down, me personally I have now retired at Senior Management level, however the people I have left behind are all Collage, University and such like who think a laptop will build a House, School, Hospital, Steel Frame Shed, absolute joke
very well stated but generally not followed.
Decent article
Yep attitude to change important. Why not have a 2 way mentoring system. Ol school experience & new school IT skills.
Both can work as it’s ok having academic achievement but these are nothing without experience.
To add I cannot understand why the CSCS IA cards are to ended in December 2024.
So no value to the experienced Site Managers. Push them in front of a screen to gain an academic certificate for something they have been doing for over 15 years madness.