Why We Should Hire “Older” Workers
Al Bagocius, a member of the “Executive Suite” group on LinkedIn, posted an article by the Harvard Business Review on this. HBR stated: “Our career systems, pay systems, and recruitment and assessment systems are designed against hiring older people.”
According to HBR, many companies believe that older people are “overpaid” and can be “replaced with younger workers” who can do the job just as well. People like Mark Zuckerberg and others publicly state that “younger people are smarter.”
We have an entire media and publishing industry that glorifies youth.
However, scientific evidence disagrees. For most people, “raw mental horsepower” does indeed decline after the age of 30, but knowledge and expertise — the main predictors of job performance — keep increasing even beyond the age of 80.
There is also ample evidence to assume that traits like “drive” and “curiosity” are catalysts for new skill acquisition, even during late adulthood.
When it comes to learning new things, there is just no age limit and the more intellectually engaged people remain when they are older, the more they will contribute to the labour market.”
Other benefits from hiring older workers can be less absence due to sickness or maternity/paternity leave (they’ve brought their children up already). With their pre-existing experience of the employment market, they’re also likely to have “seen it all before” (or at least a great deal of “it”) and be able to apply this to solving problems that may be “new”” to their younger colleagues. They will also have seen more of what can go wrong and suggest ways to avoid repeating the lessons of history).
Mocking older people may be a tradition in the West, but they have a vast storehouse of experience to share. To see this in action, look at how many retired executives join groups advising start-ups on the various facets of building and running a business.
A final thought: in many countries, we’re seeing a “greying” (Ageing) of the population without sufficient numbers of young people coming in to replace them in the economy. One way round this is to encourage young immigrants with the skills needed. Another would be to allow older workers to remain in work.
Read more from the Harvard Business Review in the article entitled, “The Case for Hiring Older Workers” by Josh Bersin and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic @ https://lnkd.in/gsDGfuw
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Leadership, Strategy, Teamwork
No Going Back…
“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalised greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction. We should not long to return, my friends, we are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature."
The above was a putative mural ascribed to a quote by Sonya Renee Taylor. Whether she was indeed the original source or simply borrowed it and commissioned it to be put on a mural, the message is a thought-provoking one. It has been the subject of much comment on social media.
The post-COVID era has provided an opportunity for a revolution in work practices. The infrastructure to support Working from Home (WFH) or “remote working” had been in place for some time (and will only improve as we move forward), but working practices remain stuck in the past, sometimes for sensible reasons, sometimes not. A poll on LinkedIn found that opinion was split almost 40/40 between preference to WFH or at an office.
For those whose work can be done from home, there is every reason to allow this. It saves employees time, as well as the cost and stress of commuting and feeding themselves at work. If transport costs rise, this will inevitably feed into a need to increase salaries to retain commuting staff. It also reduces the need for more office space, meaning a saving in rent costs to employers.
Among the downsides are lack of face-to-face interaction with colleagues, a need to review how performance is measured/appraisals delivered and the issue of how to “onboard” new hires if they can’t come to the office. Alongside this may be an increase in the IT infrastructure and support costs needed to manage an increasingly remote workforce. Employees will also need to find a space at home where they can work without distraction. For a single person or married couple, this is relatively straightforward, but once small children enter the picture, they may find it difficult to understand why mummy/daddy is at home all day but not playing with them.
Just as daily commuting brought its own stresses, so will WFH. As ever, we will need to adapt. The upsides
There remain industries which require workers to be on site such as (to name a few):
- Manufacturing.
- Healthcare (although much of the latter could be delivered remotely in less serious cases by “flying doctors”, reliving the pressure on overstretched hospitals and clinics).
- Supermarkets and stores in general will also need workers.
- Agriculture.
- Transport.
- Tourism and hospitality.
Some employers seem to have addressed the remote issue effectively by allowing staff to WFH a certain number of days/week and providing them with office laptops and mobile phones. The productivity and morale gains seem, at first sight, to outweigh the disadvantages.
With the spectre of another pandemic looming over us, we have seen the costs in terms of too much centralisation and need to be better prepared for the next “wave”, whenever it comes…
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Career, Customer Care, Leadership, Strategy
Payment Terms - Get Them Right
I had a fascinating discussion with one of our business clients. The issue was the meaning of “30 days“ payment terms.
Previous experience suggests that if one says that one’s practice is a 30-day payment period, then the person who is expecting payment should receive it on or before the 30th day after date of the invoice (or max. 30 days after invoice received). When I questioned the client on why their customer were quoting 30 days payments but then stating my client could expect payment after 44 days, the response was “they said management needs time to approve”.
Professionally speaking, when one asks for or states that one will pay within a certain timeframe, the timeframe should include sufficient time for all processes involved in the payment of an invoice to be carried out within the timeframe allotted.
It is not for me to judge, but I would consider it unprofessional to state payment will be made within 30 days but not to mention the fact that it might take an additional 14 days for management to approve the invoice. In this case it would be more professional (and dare I say, more ethical) to say that payment will be made within 60 days.
The reality of the situation, however, is that suppliers are more often than not in a weaker position. One can take the matter before the courts, but the likely outcome, even if you win, is that you will lose that buyer’s business. If it’s a large client who gives you high volumes and values of business, this would be an act of corporate self-destruction. The exception is, if you decide that it is preferable to lose that customer’s business.
I do however believe that a business is absolutely within its rights to:
Stipulate how long it is prepared to wait after the date of an invoice for payment to be received
Chase the Client once the deadline for that invoice has passed
As long as the chaser is polite, it should have the desired effect of reminding the customer (courteously) that they owe money and that payment has taken longer than expected. If one is diligent and can show a “paper trail” of reminders/equests for payment, then this reinforces the validity of the claim if the matter finally does go to arbitration.
Attempts at threats or penalties generally do not work unless one is in the position to make good on them (and to lose the business).
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Customer Care, Financial, Risk
