What Every Company Needs in 2021
As we look back to the decimation of the American workforce by the COVID-19 pandemic, it has impacted every economic, racial, and demographic stratum. 2020 was particularly harsh to working people between the ages of 56-65, representing the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation. While job layoffs, furloughs and hiring freezes have sliced into every age group of workers, Baby Boomers have seen the added impact of almost 30 million Boomers who left the job market in the third quarter of 2020 and retired prematurely, according to a Pew Research study. Labor economist Teresa Ghilarducci reports that the combination of job loss and millions of people being pushed by organizations into retirement before they are ready means that Boomers have lost jobs at a faster rate than their younger cohorts.
The classic American layoff method is to eliminate middle-management positions that are usually held by workers 45+ years old; later, when companies recover and seek to re-build their organizations there is a tendency to “juniorize” the open positions by posting job qualifications with much lower experience and salary, including language such as “cutting edge technology skills” that serves to dissuade older candidates from applying.
To be clear, I am not throwing the penalty flag for ageism in the workplace. This can be viewed as a fundamentally similar problem to sexism or racism when it comes to corporate people practices: many companies can have a blind spot to how the hiring and firing decisions of individual managers conflict with their stated cultural values. It’s hard for any company to get away with institutional bias against a discrete group of workers, and there are EEOC laws and attentive corporate counsel to guard against flagrant fouls. Besides, few are going to feel sorry for the Boomers who have enjoyed a great deal of financial and professional success during the economic expansion of the 1990s through 2008, and again from 2011 through 2019.
My main point is to remind functional leaders and HR executives of the value of a fully diverse workplace, and of the immense value that seasoned workers can bring to organizations with younger management teams that don’t have a history of re-building after an economic downturn. Specifically:
- Boomers know all about transitions. Beginning one’s career in the 1970s and 1980s means that Boomers started in “analog” mode then navigated to “digital” mode with the advent of Microsoft Office productivity tools and data-driven strategies. Being bilingual in both modes makes Boomers exceptional problem solvers, with the ability to bring historical perspective and proven solutions to modern-day issues. Boomers have worked through three economic downturns in the last 20 years; they have experienced every type of downsizing, right-sizing, and re-alignment imaginable, and know how to achieve recovery at a sensible pace.
- Boomers have exemplary work ethic. For better or for worse, Boomers were the first generation to be called “workaholics”. There are multiple root causes for this, including modeling the example set by their Greatest Generation parents, the importance of professional and financial achievement to feed self-esteem, and the need to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of their kids’ college tuition. More importantly, most Boomers are now at the point in their careers where they recognize the personal sacrifices they made in pursuit of increased salary and title, and are able to provide helpful advice to younger workers who may be struggling with work/life balance.
- Boomers are great employees. When Boomers started out, company loyalty was both an advancement strategy and source of personal identity. I joined Procter & Gamble in 1979 and recall the recruitment pitch offering a lifelong career with a paternal company that looked after its employees. P&G was full of highly dedicated workers who converted deep industry knowledge and long customer relationships into market-leading business performance. Some of the people who started the same year as me stayed at P&G their entire careers, and this was once seen as a badge of honor. Today, expectations about company loyalty are exceptionally low (on both sides), and for many younger workers being at the same company for more than 2-3 years is seen as a sign of weakness. For companies for whom employee retention is a chronic problem, Boomers can be exemplars of what company commitment should look like.
- Boomers can mentor younger managers. A concern shared by companies in many industries is that Millennials and Gen Z employees are uninterested in becoming managers, wanting neither the stress nor the additional responsibilities that would detract from their interests outside of work. This is a phenomenon that companies have never faced: when its best and most productive young employees don’t want to be its leaders. During this pandemic when companies have broadly gutted the middle-management level of its organizations, they have depleted not just management numbers, but a significant degree of management quality. These companies will miss the informal, effective transfer of knowledge from experienced managers to newer managers, not to mention the formal mentoring relationships that well-managed companies have baked into their people practice.
Incorporating Boomers into an existing organization will require a new paradigm about workers in their late careers. Fred, a 60 year old marketing executive who interviewed at a global consumer products firm told me that he was willing to reduce his salary by 35% for a position below his director-level responsibilities of the past. “The hiring manager told me that I was the most qualified candidate in terms of marketing, managerial and leadership skills. But I sensed that he was afraid that if he hired me, I would leave after six months if I got a better offer once the economy improved.” He didn’t get the job offer, and believes that the hiring manager never considered the many reasons Fred was willing to demote himself at this stage of his career: he was already financially secure, he didn’t want to relocate, and his primary motivation for working was to get into a team-building situation where he could help others experience the level of success that Fred had enjoyed. In defense of the hiring manager, questions that are related to a candidate’s age are difficult to raise for fear of crossing the line into age discrimination.
Deb Leonard Kosits is an organizational development expert who has built successful teams from Fortune 50 companies to nonprofits across more than a dozen industries. She suggests that a useful strategy for companies who have concerns about the unspoken intentions of a Boomer is to offer a consulting contract. “There are many advantages to the hiring company with this approach, such as limiting cash compensation, creating the opportunity to observe the candidate’s skill set and culture fit before deciding to hire into a permanent position or extend the contract. Separation from a well- articulated contract agreement should be straightforward and fraught with far less drama.” Kosits’ advice to hiring companies is to “know the gaps in your team’s leadership skills and most importantly prioritize the work that needs to be executed, then determine if the situation merits short term contract work or a permanent hire.”
Most people are guesstimating that we are halfway through the pandemic, which means a few more months of budget and hiring freezes before companies can return to pre-2020 staffing levels. This should give HR and Organization Development leaders ample time to develop a thoughtful plan on how to re-build their teams. These plans will surely include the diversity of gender, race, and sexual preference that contribute to a healthy work environment. Adding in the proper balance of seasoned, experienced employees can be the catalyst for generating optimal performance from an organization.
Tim Guen is President of CareerMap and provides frequent insights into career-building during economically challenging times.