As society changes, an ageing workforce is becoming more and more of a consideration for your business. With increases in life expectancy and retirement ages, it’s important that employers know exactly how to care for their ageing workforce now and for the years to come. With age comes valuable experience, however, it can also bring a number of challenges with many employees worrying about their ability to work later in life as well as understanding the pressure of pensions. Let’s take a look at the effects an ageing workforce can have on your business and how you can support your loyal and hardworking team from start to finish.
Top problems faced by your ageing workforce
Although age brings responsibility, expertise and industry knowledge, it can also bring a series of problems. Your ageing workforce requires a different kind of approach to not only keep them productive and valuable while working but to also to ensure that they can smoothly transition to retirement without becoming a financial burden to your business.
Research has shown that many older workers report feeling undervalued and not respected by their managers and or co-workers. In this day and age, trying to manage a multi-generation team where more staff are older can prove difficult. As a manager, you need to be able to adapt to become more flexible in your approach to your ageing workforce in terms of task management and shift patterns.
Your organisation also needs to be prepared for the fact that your ageing workforce may experience ill health, impairment and disabilities. It’s important for you to take this into consideration when looking after your team. Employees often find themselves falling behind and struggling with workflow when managers fail to alter their duties and flexibility based on their age. To make employees feel as comfortable and cared for as possible, you need to consider flexibility and role changes whilst still adhering to laws and health and safety.
How you can take care of your ageing workforce
Being flexible is a huge part of taking care of your ageing workforce. Flexible working, including using different or set work patterns, has been proven to enable older workers to work to a higher pension age. With retirement becoming more of a gradual process, you could take the time to figure out how to be flexible to your long-serving staff members. Altering the shift patterns or cutting back the hours of your ageing workforce is a great way to reduce their responsibilities as well as make sure your team can stay as productive as possible later in life without them needing to leave work completely.
Take the time to plan your ageing workforce’s future with the business. Employers who help their staff to make plans for their future career and retirement at an early stage, including the consideration of flexible retirement options, have the most success in retaining older workers and enabling them to work effectively until they leave the business.
It’s also key to note that you should still be offering your ageing workforce the same opportunities as your younger employees. Training and development isn’t just important for helping your older workers learn new skills and master new technologies, but also for supervisors managing employees of varying ages. Instead of viewing your ageing workforce as a burden, consider their skills, expertise and wisdom in the workplace. Encouraging communication and collaboration among workers and managers through training can help your business benefit from its age diversity greatly.
How Protectus can help your ageing workforce
At Protectus Healthcare, we support businesses in all industries to find a suitable insurance policy that will take care of your top team. When it comes to looking after your ageing workforce, there are many possibilities that can be perused.
An Employee Assistance Programme offers an affordable way to make sure your team can get effective support for both personal and work-related problems, no matter their age. An employee assistance programme, or EAP, will cover problems such as alcohol and substance abuse, bereavement, marital issues, mental health and work-related issues to make sure that your ageing workforce is cared for in all areas of their life.
Keyman insurance is a great policy to have to ensure that valuable members of your ageing workforce are looked after. Keyman insurance policies can be very cost effective and could be one of the best investments your business will make, particularly if you have a member of your ageing workforce that your business relies upon, as this policy will help you keep the wheels of your business turning if something was to happen to them.
At Protectus, we understand how important it is to take care of all members of your workforce, young or old. We’re on hand to offer honest and reliable health insurance advice to make sure that you can continue to take care of your team now and for the future. Get in touch to see how we can help you find the policy that meets the individual needs of your unique workforce. https://www.protectushealthcare.com/