It is common sense that older people have longer years in the workplace and therefore have more experience than their younger colleagues. However, for some reason, employing organisations appear to find it difficult to choose to capitalise on that experience, when it comes to retaining and valuing older workers. So, let’s take a look at a few of the attributes that older workers have to offer.

First of all, older people are statistically more likely to have worked longer in an organisation than their younger colleagues. Staying with the same employer (although not necessarily in the same job) is something which has become less usual in the UK in recent years, but it used to be the norm. “A job for life” was not a throwaway line; it was the real expectation for generations of employees. So, leaders need to bear that cultural change in mind. It takes time for people to notice, appreciate, understand and then respond to a changing work climate. Telling them there is no such thing as a job for life isn’t enough. The effective leader will note an employee’s loyalty over the years and recognise its value. Older people with long work track records will have a detailed knowledge of the history of their workplace. They may not realise the level or value of this knowledge.

An effective leader will recognise how to tap into this, to find out how to capture the germ of a profitable idea.  They will also avoid wheel-reinvention.  They may even uncover where previous leadership teams have buried their “skeletons”. This latter can be particularly helpful in assessing business risk and avoiding employment lawsuits. Better to face an issue than to try to hide it; the truth will out, as the saying goes. All the better to be seen by your workforce to address issues and seek the truth actively. This sends a clear signal that transparency and truth are prized. This can often have a significant contribution to ensuring a workplace is happier and more productive.

Older workers also have “seen it all before”. Although that phrase is often synonymous with cynicism, it actually is a potential resource of knowledge. These workers will know who tried what, what wasn’t tried, what has worked elsewhere. They are people who probably live locally to their work and are part of the community … they are a font of potential knowledge which often remains untapped. What stops managers and leaders tapping into this knowledge? Sometimes it is pride, sometimes it is distrust based on the apparent cynicism, sometimes it is pure laziness. What stops managers and leaders is, therefore, their failure to invest their own time to listen, and to learn. That failure costs organisations dear.

A role which older workers often fulfil in workplaces (whether they seek it or not) is as the office elder – the wise advisor. This is the plus side of having “seen it all before”. Older people have done just that – they have seen similar situations, they have faced similar challenges, and they had developed strategies and responses which can be helpful to their younger colleagues. Sometimes, of course, those responses have been shaped by stress-avoidance. However, in the main, their experience of similar situations means they can advise younger colleagues how to keep calm, how to make their point a different way, how to build positive working relationships. So many of the leadership gurus who publish online quote or cite learned colleagues and older teachers (Goldsmith cites Drucker, Covey cites Frankl, for example). Older workers can fulfil this function in their workplace.  If you recognise them as doing this – and even equip them with more training to do this formally, you can have effective and experienced in-house coaching. It can be as simple as that. And the potential benefits are many and varied. Here are a few:

• better staff retention (all ages) through a happier workplace;
• better skills transfer and knowledge retention;
• positive inter-generational working to make the most of everyone’s skills;
• more ambassadors in the community for the employing organisation (67% workers in empowered workplaces are proactive ambassadors for their employer).

That’s not a bad list of benefits from simply acknowledging that older workers have seen and done lots – and making use of it.

In many industrial sectors, skills which were taught in workplaces are not taught with the same intensity, as technology has taken over and skills have had to be amended. However, these “old” skills are now coming back into demand. There are several reasons for this: the rise in artisan/niche businesses; the ongoing need for high quality practical skills which technology cannot replicate; ironically, the increased demand by the growing older population for things to be done “properly” (ie using the skills they recognise as valid). For instance, the belated search for sustainability has led to a welcome renewed focus on these “traditional” skills, in tandem with cutting-edge technology, to reduce our dependency on dwindling natural resources. In practice, this results in older workers being re-hired, to return their “traditional” skills to the workplace when those skills were difficult to find in younger workers. Skills scarcity is starting to focus the attention of astute leaders. It should. As the workforce ages, unless there is effective skills transfer within organisations, these “traditional” skills will disappear.

In addition, as the community ages, organisations’ customer base attaches increased importance to having something in common with their service suppliers, retailers and so on. Although reverse-ageism is not great, it is an uncomfortable truth that there can be a degree of chauvinism among older people about young workers, new into the workplace and yet to acquire significant skills and expertise. A way to counteract this is to challenge it if it occurs in the workplace, and use inter-generational working and knowledge-transfer to improve the levels of mutual understanding and respect. However, beyond the workplace, older customers will value being able to deal with someone who has shared similar life experiences.

There is also the simple factor of the benefits of a thriving and diverse workplace. Difference brings interest, stimulation, innovation, opportunity. This applies to any difference, whether that be age, heritage, faith or any of the other ways in which people choose to describe and categorise themselves. That diversity brings a rich range of resources to the workplace. It is an effective leader who recognises the benefits of tapping into those rich resources, for the benefits of their workforce, and for their customers.

It is important to remember that age, as with other comparative measures, means different things to different people. Many of the points I have made here could equally apply to a workforce from different ethnic backgrounds, or with different physical or intellectual capabilities, or of different genders. Wait a minute … isn’t that simply an everyday workplace these days? So why bother employing anyone over 50? Why even ask that question? The question that we should be asking is, ”Who’s the best person to employ for that job/task/team/organisation?” Age shouldn’t be an issue. Leaders have enough to cope with – why add to it by inventing more things to stress about?!

You may find that some of the issues I have discussed here sound familiar. If you have experience of the benefits of older workers, I would love to hear from you in the comments below. However, you may have found that some of these issues rang true for your own organisation. If this is the case, please get in touch and we can have a conversation about how you can make the changes you want.