KEEP OLDER WORKERS OR FACE SKILLS GAP

Oh don't get me started! South Africa clearly has no intention of waking up until it is far too late, if it isn't too late already. Then they will probably react by having a shower or eating beetroot and garlic!

Jokes aside - not only will we face skills shortages along with the rest of the world, but because of the whole Affirmative Action and BEE compliance regulations that we face - we don't even wait for our skills base to reach retirement age, we force them out to accomodate younger people with little or no skills, just because they are the right colour (sounds strange doesn't it - reverse apartheid if you ask me).

Then, when we feel the pinch, because we do not have the skill anymore, we import skills from India! For goodness sake people - we have a wealth of knowledge and skills right here at home! What on earth are you thinking!!!!!

Keep older workers or face skills gap
26 September 2007 at 11h00

Industrialised nations must convince older workers to stay on the job beyond retirement age or face a skills shortage and higher labour costs, a new study has warned. The study conducted earlier this year for the American Association of Retired People (AARP) by global consultancy Towers Perrin projects that by 2016, 39 percent of the population in the Group of Seven (G7) industrialised nations will be aged 50 or more compared with 30 percent in 1996. At the same time, the percentage of the labour force that falls in the traditional working age, 15-49 years, will have fallen from 51 percent in 1996 to 45 percent in 2016, the study predicted. "Many analysts are predicting growing labour shortages in tomorrow's workforce," the study warned."

Some companies face the near-term risk of losing many qualified, experienced and knowledgeable workers to retirement," it said. The grey-drain, coupled with the danger of insufficient talent to replace older workers going into retirement, could drive up labour costs as employers compete to take on skilled labour. Another issue encouraging employers to woo older workers is the increased longevity in developed nations. Workers who live longer are also likely to have longer retirements, and that raises the question of whether individual, company and government pension funds have the assets to cope. "The average male, age 65, who retired in 2001 will spend 16 to 18 years in retirement, versus 13 to 15 years on average for those who retired in 1980," the study found. "This trend raises significant questions with regard to... whether individuals, employers and governments have sufficient assets to fund such extended retirements," it said.

Employers could sidestep the looming crisis by "encouraging today's 50-plus workers to remain in the workforce longer," the study advised. Indeed, older workers in the G7 countries want to work, on average, an additional five years beyond the traditional retirement age, according to a survey of 8 200 workers in the grouping of countries - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States - conducted for the study. But 60 percent of workers over the age of 50 said they came up against age discrimination in the workplace, and 40 percent perceived their employer as being reticent to take on older workers, the study showed. Governments and workers also have to take part in the process of encouraging older talent to remain in the workforce. France, and to a lesser extent Germany, have social models "in which the government plays a fairly large role in the management of workforce issues", which will make changing workers' perceptions of retirement difficult. "Early indications suggest that there is a growing consensus in Germany around the direction of change," but France "is less far along in the process and the consequences of reform are being hotly debated". Italy, which has a low retirement age, just over 60, and like Japan, a "rapidly ageing population, growing longevity and anaemic birth rate", was urged to step up the rate of policy change and to ease its "rigid labour laws."

But Japan is likely to be the hardest hit by the global greying of the workforce, the study showed. Not only is its workforce shrinking, but 72 percent of Japanese workers are aged between 50 and 64 and the Japanese people are the most long-lived on the planet. Britain, Canada, Germany and the US also have high percentages of workers in the older age category but, contrary to Japan, their workforces are growing. - AFP