More Companies Listen to the Needs of the Aging Workforce, But There is Much Room for Improvement
[20 April 2003 - The Conference Board] Companies will face a severe shortage of badly needed skills in this decade, unless they act now to entice top-performing older employees to delay their retirements, according to a report released today by The Conference Board. �The fierce competition for talent during the 1990s will return with a vengeance once the economy recovers,� says Howard Muson, author of the report, Valuing Experience: How to Retain and Motivate Mature Workers. The findings are based on the responses of 150 senior human resource executives to an online survey � 76 percent from U.S. companies, 24 percent from other industrial nations. The survey participants were about evenly divided between manufacturing/utility firms and service firms. More than 67 percent of the companies represented have worldwide annual sales of $5 billion or more. Seventy-one percent of the survey respondents say that an aging workforce is either a �very important� or �fairly important� business issue in their companies. (Order the "Valuing Experience: How to Motivate and Retain Mature Workers" report.)