Weathering the Storm
The state’s workforce will look quite different in the not-too-distant future. Now is the time to start planning for it.
BY SARA GILBERT
Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on changes affecting the state’sworkforce. In part one, we examined the changes and the factors behind them. In this one, we explore strategies to address them.
Tom Norman calls it “the perfect storm of workforce unavailability.”
Fewer young people are entering the job market than ever before, says Norman, the director of Continuing Professional Education Programs at the University of Minnesota’s College of Continuing Education, and most of them have elevated expectations for job satisfaction and compensation. Meanwhile, the average age of the current workforce is hovering around 50 and the number of workers eligible to retire grows exponentially every year. In fact, within the next 30 years, the population over age 65 will grow by 125 percent, while the population under age 65 will see only a 10 percent increase. And State of Minnesota research notes that labor force growth will shrink to 6 percent between 2010 and 2020 and then to 3 percent between 2020 and 2030.
How will companies deal with the shortage? Offshore outsourcing and technical/productivity enhancements will ease some of the burden. But they can’t take up all the slack. In short, it’s time to plan. “With those issues, and with the understanding of how critical the workforce is to a business’ success, now is the time for companies to think about how they’re going to have the right skills at the right time, and for the right price,” Norman says. “Without a plan in place, they will be at a disadvantage.”
Ideally, that plan should already be in place. “It’s not too early at all to be planning for this,” he says. “Actually, that boat has already sailed. The time to act on it is now.”
The first consideration, says John Connelly, MTI’s director of product development, is for companies to streamline their operations and look for ways to squeeze maximum productivity out of their employees. “Every position should be as productive as possible,” he says. “Businesses need to be able to get the most out of the workers that they do have.”
Beyond that, however, there are two other potential solutions to the quandary: 1) older workers and 2) Minnesota’s growing and diverse immigrant workforce. While both offer a way out of the workforce dilemma, they also present unique challenges.
Working with the Older Worker
A key point to note about older workers is that many of them intend to stay at their jobs longer than their predecessors from previous generations. Recent AARP research indicates that nearly 80 percent of baby boomers plan to keep working during their retirement years. On one hand, it seems like an ideal answer: a ready supply of willing employees. And numerous studies have pointed out that older workers tend to be reliable, willing to work part-time or on a temporary basis, and eager to learn new skills. But employers also will need to sort out a range of issues related to them.
The first step is to make sure that those workers know they’re still wanted. “If you want to delay retirement, you have to make sure that those people know you want them to stay,” Norman says. “You have to understand why people came to the company, why they stay and what makes them leave. You have to know what their hopes are, what they want to achieve.”
And what makes them tick? According to an AARP survey, older workers want to know that their opinions are valued and want opportunities to learn new skills. In addition, recent research by The Concours Group, a Kingwood, Texas-based consulting firm, points out several defining characteristics of older workers: They tend to trust authority figures, respect rules, and remain loyal to organizations. They also have experience and wisdom that comes from years in the trenches. “That wisdom is valuable,” says Andi Lassiter, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Minnesota State University, Mankato, who has been studying the importance of training for older workers.
“One of the biggest reasons people give for leaving a job is the feeling that they’re not growing,” Lassiter adds. “If they see an opportunity for growth and development, they might be more willing to stay.”
While training is important (particularly for older employees who might not be up to speed on the latest versions of computer software), you might have to rethink your training techniques. “Older workers retain information differently,” Lassiter says. “They learn better in short segments that include a lot of practice instead of just throwing a lot of information out and expecting them to remember it.”
A U.S. Department of Labor study also found that it takes older people longer to learn new skills—but that given additional time, they can learn to perform new tasks with fewer mistakes than younger workers. And a survey that Lassiter and a student collected from a sample of full-time workers over the age of 50 in southern Minnesota also showed that older workers appreciate more hands-on instruction. “They don’t want to take notes and they don’t want to take home a video to watch,” she says. “They want somebody there with them.”
The AARP research also notes that flexible and/or parttime schedules are a key need for many older employees. “Older workers retain information differently.They learn better in short segments that include a lot of practice instead of just throwing a lot of information out and expecting them to remember it.”
How can you accommodate that? One option is flex time. Another is the compressed week, in which an employees works, say four 10-hour days. Job sharing is another approach to try. And, given the wisdom that Lassiter describes, short-term consulting arrangements might offer a win-win situation.
Healthy and Happy
One of the issues associated with older workers is health care. Historically, health care needs increase as workers age—and considering that health insurance is currently among the top three biggest expenses for companies, that could have a significant financial impact on companies trying to keep older employees. But that doesn’t have to be a reason not to retain retirement-age employees. In fact, Strategic Health Management (SHM), a concept that first emerged as part of the “workplace wellness” trend in the 1980s, can help retain both old and young workers.
“It’s about transforming the workplace culture to one that supports health and well being,” says Rosie Ward, a health management consultant with Minneapolis-based RJF Agencies. “But it’s bigger than just staying healthy. It’s also about whether or not workers are engaged. If they are, then retention will be better.”
The theory is that healthier employees will not only cost a company less in health care expenses, but that theywill also be happier and thus more likely to continue their employment. That works for both older and younger employees. Strategic Health Management encourages younger members of the workforce to maintain their health and start healthy habits at a younger age; that attention to theirwell being may keep them more engaged and less likely to hop around to other jobs, Ward explains. And for older workers, SHM provides the impetus for them to stay current with preventative exams and understand their own health risk factors. “It gives them the support they need as well as strategies that will help them stay healthy,” Ward says.
Acknowledging the different needs of aging employees helps too. Adjust the lighting to older eyes, for example, and pay attention to communication needs, such as better enunciation when speaking and larger typefaces in printed materials.
“We need to be thinking about what needs to be changed,” Connelly says. “We need think about change in the benefits packages, about change in the compensation packages, and about change in time requirements and flexibility. That’s the sort of thing that will make the more mature worker more likely to want to stay employed.”
Cultural Connections
While population figures have been declining in some other parts of the world, the United States is still at least breaking even, if not growing slightly. That, Norman says, is at least partly thanks to immigration. And immigration, he adds, may also be at least partially responsible for the fact that the economy has been able to remain strong in the face of aworkforce shortage. “You can debate the politics of it, but the number of both legal and illegal immigrants are helping keep the economy strong and the workforce filled,” he says.
The numbers in Minnesota alone are staggering: Between 1990 and 2000, the state’s foreign-born population grew from 110,000 to almost 250,000. By 2030, the state demographers office predicts that one in every five Minnesotans will be Hispanic or of color. The reality is that in the not-too-distant future, immigrants will in many places be the majority of job candidates. “All you have to do is go into any grade school and look around,” Norman says. “That’s where you’ll see what the new workforce is going to look like.”
The new arrivals can be a blessing for employers. Immigrants can be enthusiastic and industrious—and they often have substantial job skills. At the same time, however, working with them can be a challenging task, one that that requires flexibility, innovation, and a willingness to change established ways of operating.
In Willmar, whereDouglas Allen is the president of Ridgewater College, the nonwhite population is already close to 20 percent—and Allen says that the college has been working with area businesses to respond to that change. “We play a fundamental role in the community to be responsive to the needs of business and industry,” he says.
Case in point: A few years back, local health care professionals came to Ridgewater several years ago to talk about how to handle the changing population, both in terms of giving them care and incorporating them into the workforce. Out of that dialogue came a couple of programs, including a simulation lab that helps teach new nurses, as well as all hospital employees, about “cultural competence—the ability to understand and serve people with different cultural backgrounds,” Allen says.
The success of the simulation lab has spawned cultural competence training sessions for other businesses and industries in and around Willmar. Such efforts to increase sensitivity are necessary, Norman believes, as the workforce becomes more diverse. “When you have half a dozen languages being spoken on the shop floor and several major religions represented, you need to create a management team that is familiar with and supportive of each of those different needs. You need to be able to make reasonable accommodations.”
While cultural sensitivity is essential, the language barrier can’t be neglected. Language-based communication problems can drain away productivity and lead to a variety of other problems. An employee who doesn’t fully understand English and who must operate machinery will pose a serious safety risk. In that sense, OSHA is your friend. the organization offers ESL education services, many of which are specifically designed for Spanish-speaking workers.
MTI’s Training Within Industry (TWI) offerings can also help; TWI is a time-rested way to standardize training processes and teach supervisors how to improve their ability to efficiently teach new operations to workers.
Several Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system institutions offer “Occupational English” programs that provide job-specific English language and skill-building training to help companies increase overall communication and improve job performance for employees whose first language is not English. Go to the MNSCU Web site for information on them.
Many of those schools also offer specialized training for specialized industries. Another example: Ridgewater, which is a MnSCU college, worked with Jennie-O Foods, a large local employer, to create an icon-based training system. Instead of lengthy written instructions, it used graphics and animation to teach employees, many of them immigrants, about proper work and safety procedures.
The Power of Now
These sorts of small steps are exactly what need to be happening right now, from integrating immigrants to retaining potential retirees. But Norman is not alone in his concern that even baby steps aren’t happening as much as they should be.
“I know that a lot of companies are thinking about the future, they are aware of what’s coming,” he says. “But it seems like for the most part, it’s still much more thinking versus doing. Not many are taking action to the degree that maybe they should be.”
Connelly hopes that thinking about the situation now can lead to solutions for the future. “Right now, we’re thinking about these questions and considerations,” he says. “Those thoughts are what will soon become strategies.”