Engaging the Older Workforce

I received the following statistics from a colleague with whom I am hoping to collaborate on a study on the state of older work-force in Malaysia :

• Population growth rate of 2.6% per annum
• Median age increased from 21.9 years old in 1991 to 23.6 years in 2000.
2000 1991
<15 years old 33.3% 36.7%
> 65 years old 3.9% 3.7%
• Increased life expectancy to 74 years; 71.5 years for men and 76.2 for women
• Malaysians aged >60years expected to be 3.3 million in 2020 versus only 1.4 million in 2000


The startling figure of 3.3 million Malaysians above the age of 60 in 2020 with a median life expectancy of 74 years is a demographic nightmare...at least that's what it will be if we do nothing about it.

Lets say that a man retires from work at the age of 55 and lives to say, the age of 70. This means, he has another 15 years of life to manage. If he, like a lot of people I know of, live to the age of 80, he will have 25 years of post-retirement life to look forward to….hopefully. A woman, will have a few years longer than that as they generally tend to outlive the men.

And, at the age of 55 a working man and woman is not an invalid! They are actually very productive and some say probably at the peak of their work-life in terms of cascading their knowledge and teaching others. They would generally still have another 6 to10 good working years left. In my work with retiring professionals for example, I often hear them say that they want to and are able to work for another 10 years and the thought of retiring is just so alien to them and makes them uncomfortable. What more, they want to contribute. A particularly spirited gentleman told me that he is hoping to quickly land a job upon his impending retirement as he ‘needs to get this monkey’ off his back. The ‘monkey’ being the notion of being jobless. He says he doesn’t need the money. He needs the ‘job.

As our standard of living improves and our birth-rates fall, we too, like many developed nations will have a huge grey population to content with. Their needs and expectations will be hugely different from the younger population but yet, we don't seem to have the policies and the infrastructure to manage this. It seems to me that like everything else, we are waiting for a crisis to happen before we do something about it. More than 10 years ago, I wrote in a local newspaper how an underclass of Malaysian Indians are taking shape. I also said that if nothing is done to help them, they will turn out to be disruptive to the development of the nation. Similarly, if we do not prepare ourselves for this aging population, we have the recipe for a demographic crisis. Unfortunately, we as a nation do not have a good track record in anticipating and managing demographic shifts.

Coming back to the issue of older work-force, I would propose the following steps to ensure that an organization benefits from this valuable human asset:

Step 1 : Take a complete audit of those who will be retiring in 3, 5 and 7 years time. Their skill sets, tacit & explicit knowledge and insights into organizational processes must be determined.

Step 2 : Engage thought leaders to develop and institute a culture that respects this older workforce.

Step 3 : Develop a mechanism to instill a coaching/mentoring culture spearheaded by a respected member of this group. Each retiring individual must be assigned a coaching responsibility.

Step 3 : Develop and deliver Retirement Management program to empower them to continue contributing to the organization, their careers and society. This will also create a sense of trust and belonging on the younger workforce as they can see that the organization respects and cares about their older co-workers. This is a great retention strategy by it self.

Step 4 : Develop a post-retirement ‘retention’ strategy. A retiring individual will be a great asset when it comes to filling certain seasonal positions.

Step 5 : Develop a synergy with the industry so that experienced individuals can be provided with a certain amount of mobility in pursuing their post-retirement engagements.

All our investments in people development and an immeasurable amount of knowledge and skills walk out of the gate each time an employee retires. It's time to stop this and benefit from them. We will be doing a big favour for them too.