企業需注重留住中老年員工

The obsession with how to manage millennials is obscuring another potentially larger problem: how to manage their parents. It is reassuring, then, that a group of UK businesses, including Barclays, Boots, Aviva and the Co-op, have started to measure the size of the skills gap that they could fall into as many more people retire from the workforce than join it.

對如何管理千禧一代這個問題的糾結，掩蓋了另一個可能更大的問題：如何管理千禧一代的父母。就此而言，令人寬慰的是，包括巴克萊(Barclays)、Boots、英傑華(Aviva)、合作社集團(the Co-op)在內的多家英國企業，已開始衡量他們可能面臨的技能缺口，因爲退休的人數大大多於加入員工隊伍的人數。

On Tuesday, these companies and others set a target of increasing the number of over-fifties they employ by 12 per cent by 2022. As in other areas where business awakes to its social responsibility — from staff wellbeing (healthy workers are more productive) to environmental policy (clean factories are more efficient) — an underlying self-interest is driving the concern. Even if automation can cover some of the looming skills deficit, businesses that do not learn how to attract and manage older workers will lose out. They lose access to a valuable pool of experience and lack inside knowledge about how to handle their older customers.

不久前，包括上述企業在內的一些企業確立了一個目標：到2022年，將50歲以上僱員的人數增加12%。就像在其他事情上——從員工健康（健康的勞動者工作更有成效）到環境政策（清潔的工廠更有效率）——一樣，企業意識到自身的社會責任，往往是受到根本層面自身利益的驅動。即便自動化可以部分彌補將要來臨的技能缺口，如果不學會如何吸引和管理年紀較大的員工，企業就會吃虧。它們無法讓一大羣有價值、經驗豐富的勞動者爲自己效力，也不懂得如何搞定那些年級較大的客戶。