Advantages of older workers

When the owner of a German engineering firm near Stuttgart lost six mid-career employees he had trained for ten years to larger companies like Porsche, Daimler and Bosch, he was at first flummoxed about where he could find experienced replacements. But after some research, Otmar Fahrion had more engineers than he could use – excellent ones.

“We…found there was a pool of engineers with the know-how, experience, dedication, flexibility and eagerness right under our noses,” he says. “There were all these engineers with great skills who were pushed off into early retirement after about the age of 50.”

Even moreso than in the U.S., Germany squanders the professional talents and experience of its citizens. A recent survey there found that 60 percent of businesses employ no one older than 50, and only about half of German men between 55 and 64 are employed.

“That older workers are shoved off like they are is a shameful mistake from an economic point of view,” says Fahrion, “especially if you consider how much the state invested in their university educations, and a scandal from a sociological point of view. It’s madness. Almost no one will hire anyone over 50. There is a terrible obsession with youth in our society.”

I have more personal knowledge than I wish I did of how true that is in the U.S. too. Age discrimination in the workplace can begin as young as the mid-thirties. It ramps up by the time workers reach age 45 and accelerates from there. Although discrimination based on age is as illegal in the U.S. as discrimination based on race or gender, it is widely practiced due, probably, to the persistence of myths about what older people are like. Some of those myths are:

• Older people are unproductive, inefficient and inflexible
• Older people take more time off work for health reasons
• It’s not worth training older folks because they will retire soon
• Older employees cost too much and reduce profits

Every one of these statements is wrong. Older folks are equally productive as younger employees and frequently moreso because they have a lot of practice, knowledge and experience younger folks don’t have.

Insurance company data indicates that older workers use less sick leave on average than younger workers, and they are less likely to quit. Employers cite increased health insurance costs as one reason to not employ older workers, but the costs are frequently lower due to fewer dependents.

“They’re not only excellent workers,” Fahrion has discovered of his older engineers. “They have the staying power you don’t always see with younger engineers.”

Fahrion also says his older workers are more flexible, and their time off for health reasons is shorter because, unlike his younger employees who spend weekends hang gliding and mountain biking, they suffer fewer injuries.

These facts have been falling on deaf executive ears for decades as U.S. corporations shed or refuse to hire older workers with near-impunity. But age discrimination, in addition to being vicious and mean, is – from a business point of view – plain, old-fashioned stupid.

Just when science has given us the near-miracle of healthy, vital lives well into our uppermost decades, and just when shifting age demographics put us on the brink of a severe labor shortage, the trend in corporate America is to jettison their most experienced employees. You have to wonder where hiring executives’ minds are because the costs, to them personally, to their corporations and to America in general, are high.

Taxes are lost and therefore schools not built, police not hired and roads not fixed, which may be the least of it. The outlay for public and private support of able-bodied, accomplished people languishing without work is in the billions of dollars now and will increase in coming years if corporations don’t wise up.

We, as a society, can take our pick: consign older folks to the dust heap and take their rent, food and healthcare costs out everyone else’s pockets or, like the savvy Mr. Fahrion of Stuttgart, hire older workers so they can house and feed themselves and continue to contribute to the well-being of everyone with their taxes, creativity and ingenuity.

It looks like an easy choice to me.

Comments

[Denny]

Just found your site, and it's so refreshing to read someone who can write and has something to say! I think our blogs have a lot in common. I'll be back!

[Denny]

By the way, I'm 60. Does that qualify me as an older blogger? Ha!

[Ian]

There is a chain of DIY stores in the UK (B&Q) who have some branches staffed entirely by people _over_ 50.

[Ronni]

That's a great idea, Ian. Do you think that might balances out the Germans? Maybe if we look at this from a wider point of view...

[sylvia]

There's a further issue: people are uncomfortable having employees that are older than them. It is an insecurity thing: how can I be the authority figure if my staff are older than I am?

I saw this most clearly when I had a team of people where two of them were much older than me (one close to my mothers age) ... the amount of comments I received about it was astounding.

I'm glad I found your weblog :)