Kaa ----- Booming with the Boomers! Summit on the Mature Workforce

Posted In: Career Resources, Employer Resources, Employment News · By: Seniors for Jobs.com · Date: 28 Nov 2007

Article submitted by Frank Lambert

“OLD. SMART. PRODUCTIVE.” That was the attention-grabbing headline, with a picture of three boomers on the front cover of Business Week Magazine in June 2005. It is almost 2008 and I get the impression that no one is listening.

Some would argue that the Boomer Generation always drove the market and established the economic parameters for the past 60 years. Those same people would say that it was time to chill and let someone else do the driving for a change. I would not be one of those people. The sheer numbers of boomers alone warrants an extension of their driver’s license.

On November 21, 2007, Barbara Jaworski organized and chaired the third annual conference on the Mature Workforce at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto. Jaworsky wrote the book KAA- BOOM How to Engage the 50-Plus Worker and Beat the Workforce Crisis, so I was encouraged and anxious to hear how things were progressing.

Linda Sims, Business Editor, CTV, was the Summit moderator and after some brief introductory remarks, the conference heard from Terry Bogyo, Director of Corporate Planning, WorkSafeBC. He presented some rather bleak statistics about the social and health implications of an ageing population. Here are a few examples: “average age of hospital caregivers is around 45…Lab workers 49. 70 percent of the hospital workforce will retire over the next 20 to 25 years.”

One demographic time bomb that Bogyo described was that “by 2010, as many as 60percent of today’s experienced utility workers will retire”. Who is going to fix our Hydro Wires, especially in Ontario and Quebec with our recurring brownouts?

“The Developed World”, Bogyo said, “Is facing an Age Tsunami, a demographic discontinuity or, an inconvenient inevitability. Over the next 25 years, around 70 million people will retire in developed countries …and will be replaced by just five million.” With that eye-opening statistic, it became clear that we must re-engage our boomer labour force, keep them from retiring and re-hire those that had left the workforce.

The rest of the morning sessions continued with an inundation of statistics, trends, legislation and developing strategies to deal with a mature workforce. Susan Williams, Assistant Deputy Minister, Alberta Employment, Immigration and Industry, discussed the strategies in place in Alberta and B.C. Frankly , Alberta’s point of view, with 2 percent un-employment and no debt, is interesting but pretty far removed from the manufacturing heartland that is Ontario.

The Morning session ended with Jim Lahey, Deputy Secretary, Public Service Renewal, Government of Canada. He was quick to point out that the Feds had a strategy in place to retain a skilled workforce but he was short on ideas on how Boomers looking for employment might find a home in the Public Service.

Following a buffet luncheon, Jawarski presented the “Best Employers Awards for 50 plus workers” to a pre-selected group of companies who have exemplified the qualities needed to keep our aging workforce on the job.

The afternoon sessions broke up into smaller groups with varied group of speakers that included , Kari Adams and Louise Greig of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP discussing, “Legal implications of new phased retirement legislation on the employment relationship” and Margaret Maynard of Niagara West Employment & learning Resource Centres, in a talk entitled ,”Retired, Retrained, Rewired”.

The last session brought everyone together for a panel discussion on workforce strategies, led by Sean Slater of Ceridian, and an impressive triumvirate of corporate HR heavyweights including , Susan Rogers of Xerox, Linda Hart of Symcor and Norma Tombari of RBC.

The day ended with a networking session, some Hors d’oeuvres, and a glass of wine.

All in all a very informative day, chocker block full of statistics and worthwhile strategies on dealing with this oncoming crisis. If there were a deficit, I would say it was in any real discussion of recruitment strategies for unemployed boomers. It is one thing to try and engage and encourage the mature workers still working, it is an altogether different thing to find productive work for mature workers who still have plenty to contribute but are sitting on the sidelines.