企业需注重留住中老年员工

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.

对如何管理千禧一代这个问题的纠结，掩盖了另一个可能更大的问题：如何管理千禧一代的父母。就此而言，令人宽慰的是，包括巴克莱(Barclays)、Boots、英杰华(Aviva)、合作社集团(the Co-op)在内的多家英国企业，已开始衡量他们可能面临的技能缺口，因为退休的人数大大多于加入员工队伍的人数。

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，包括上述企业在内的一些企业确立了一个目标：到2022年，将50岁以上雇员的人数增加12%。就像在其他事情上——从员工健康(健康的劳动者工作更有成效)到环境政策(清洁的工厂更有效率)——一样，企业意识到自身的社会责任，往往是受到根本层面自身利益的驱动。即便自动化可以部分弥补将要来临的技能缺口，如果不学会如何吸引和管理年纪较大的员工，企业就会吃亏。它们无法让一大群有价值、经验丰富的劳动者为自己效力，也不懂得如何搞定那些年级较大的客户。

Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, authors of The 100-Year Life , about the challenges and opportunities presented by increasing longevity, found that, with few exceptions, most companies were doing very little to tackle the problem. “Most have kept with the traditions of recruitment and development that were created more than 50 years ago,” they write.

《百岁人生》(The 100-Year Life)论述预期寿命延长带来的挑战与机会，该书作者琳达•格拉顿(Lynda Gratton)和安德鲁•斯科特(Andrew Scott)发现，除少数企业之外，多数企业都没有采取多少行动来解决这个问题。“多数企业都在延续创建于50多年前的招聘和发展传统，”他们写道。

To profit from the wisdom and experience offered by older workers — and accommodate their needs — companies will have to develop two skills that they are traditionally quite poor at: flexibility and a willingness to deal with complexity.

要获益于年纪较大员工的智慧和经验、并照顾他们的需求，企业得在它们一向不擅长的两项技巧上有所长进：灵活性以及处理复杂性的意愿。

In parallel with the mass-production techniques that underpinned the growth of big business in the 20th century came a standardisation of worker development that served large companies well for decades. In this three-stage life, age was a rough, but reasonable proxy for employee needs. Companies could predict that sometime in their sixties, workers would retire, their departure lubricated by generous pension arrangements.

员工发展的标准化，与支撑了20世纪大企业增长的大规模生产方法一同诞生，并在数十年时间里较好满足了大企业的需求。在这种三阶段人生中，年龄粗略但合理地代表了员工的需求。企业可以预测到，员工在60多岁的时候会退休，优厚的退休金安排让他们高高兴兴地离开。

But staff currently in the workforce — and many older workers who would be willing and able to rejoin it — are increasingly expecting a multi-stage life, where education, work and retirement no longer follow a strictly linear course. Simultaneously, the corporate retirement benefits that once eased the transition to old age have disappeared. Companies, write Ms Gratton and Mr Scott, “will increasingly see offering more diverse employment policies as a major strategic advantage, especially in high-value-added industries where human capital plays a crucial role”.

但目前在职的员工、以及很多愿意也能够归队的年纪较大的劳动者，日益期待的是一种多阶段人生——教育、工作和退休不再严格遵循一条线性的路径。与此同时，一度让人们能安然步入晚年的公司退休福利已经没有了。格拉顿和斯科特写道，企业“将日益把提供更加多元化的雇佣政策视为一项重大战略优势，特别是在人力资本发挥关键作用的高附加值行业”。

Some workers — particularly those in senior roles — will also have to accept that if they are to continue in work, their status will change. The value of part-time and on-demand contributions to the company should increase, while the simplistic idea that people achieve “seniority” through continuous service, followed by abrupt departure, breaks down. Measurement and targets, in other words, are just a start.

一些劳动者(尤其是职位较高者)也将不得不接受这样一个现实：如果他们要继续工作，他们的地位会改变。兼职和随叫随到式服务对企业的价值应该会增加，而以下这种简单化的想法会破灭：员工通过长期工龄获得“资深”地位、随后突然离开。换句话说，衡量标准和目标只是一个开始。