Teong Wan, at age 72, it’s very inspiring to know that you are still part of the workforce. What advice do you have, in terms of ‘active aging’, for both older jobseekers/workers, and hiring companies?
A mindset change and values re-orientation is needed on the part of older workers who are the resource persons on the one hand and employing organizations that use such resources on the other. I think it will be useful for older workers to accept, if not opt for, contracts for service and go for variable remuneration or income instead of requiring fixed base salaries at some point in their career, as part of their career planning. This means considering oneself as an outsource provider, running a business within a business, but with a captive client i.e. your current employer as a business partner of sorts.
Being debt-free at the final phase of one’s career or occupation does not necessarily mean just doing no work and enjoying full-time leisure with friends and family and playing and ferrying grandchildren (who will grow up soon and may not need you as frequently). This is active aging. I would go for effective aging. We can do less work instead of no work, balance it with relaxation, leisure pursuits, helping others in dire need of assistance or contribute to the community to make it better.
Re-orientating values means balancing self-interest with other’s needs to lead a balanced life. Having meaningful work to do, paid or unpaid, in later years helps to maintain one’s self-esteem which is vital for mental health as well as physical health. This is effective aging.
Some may question, “Who wants to employ you at this age?” The internet provides limitless opportunities for creative alternative avenues of low risk work from home or in premises outside. It is not just a source of interesting facts, happenings and trivia.
My website: www.managementwisetraining.com hosts a loose partnership with individual independent service providers as well as sole proprietors embarking on a second career while I am pathing into my fourth career. These are two groups of former associates and clients.
One group has just retired and the other group opted for non-corporate work in mid-career to be self-employed using their previously gained skills and knowledge to work for different organizations, profit and non-profit. They enjoy the autonomy and flexibility of time to balance family and work life and are distanced from organizational politics and jostling for position and power. This career option will phase them smoothly past whatever retirement age is designated, if they have a notional retirement age at all.
Employers on their part will need to embrace the concept of post-retirement career planning as part of their human resource management system and not external to it. Payroll costs can be mitigated with variable payments instead of fixed payrolls and different employment contracts. One shoe-making company helps ex-employees set up retail outlets for the company’s products and helps them manage the outlets as their own businesses.
Although mature workers may have fixed mindsets, they nevertheless have experiences that require little or no training time, except in businesses where technology changes very rapidly and even then these changes do not happen overnight. Work habits and thinking habits can change with a supportive and conducive work environment as most people behave according to the environment created by management. The company-assisted shoe retail outlets are an example of how mindsets can be changed.
What are some HR trends that you foresee for this year 2010?
In the short term, with the economy improving, we can expect to see higher labor mobility, especially in business where expertise is in short supply.
With that will come fixed payroll increases as salaries are upped to attract or retain talent. This is where our past efforts at implementing Flexi-Wages or Restructured Wage Systems may be nullified again. These wage reform exercises advocate low fixed salary increases and higher variable bonuses based on organizational results. The short term need for staff when demand exceeds supply will dislocate such a pay system as it has happened in the past two attempts.
Increased levies for foreign workers will impact on payrolls and business costs. In some industries, there is a limit to mechanization and automation that can be undertaken as the nature of the business itself requires detailed human interface and judgment operationally.
There will be a need to study ways by which older workers past 60 can still be productively employed or self-employed in work that is low risk financially and physically. This will become more urgent as the indigenous population ages. There will be lower participation rates at training courses and even then, attendance will be sporadic, with participants going away to attend to urgent work matters or are called by superiors to attend to such matters. For most people, short term urgency overrides long-term importance.
0 comments:
Post a Comment