Tim Bentley, NZ Work Research Institute
"It's not something that might happen: it's something that's going to happen," says Professor Tim Bentley, Director of the NZ Work Research Institute.
He's talking about New Zealand's ageing workforce. Since 2001, the percentage of people 65 and over has nearly doubled. As of 2013, 22.1 per cent of those aged 65 and over were in the workforce. By 2031, this number is expected to rise to 31 per cent.
With the rapidly ageing population and the expected eventual reduction of the overall number of people in the workforce, making use of the older sectors is critical. A 2011 Ministry of Social Development report estimated that an increase in workers aged 65+ to 10 per cent by 2051 could generate tax revenue of $1.8 billion in 2051, up from today's $200 million.
Bentley says workplaces will have to adapt to make the work more flexible in order to accommodate New Zealand's changing demographics.
One focus area in particular, he says, is the concept of "gradual retirement".
"A lot of people would retire because the demand of work is so high that they can't imagine keeping it up any longer."
But it doesn't have to be this way: "You can 'graduate' the retirement - that way, you can keep the talent there in the workforce and transfer their skills to the younger generations over time."
In the digital age, opportunities to take advantage of this are abundant.
"Technologically, setting us up to be able to work off-site has implications for the ageing workforce," he says.
"If you've got the opportunity to work at least some of the time remotely, then you can still be around your grandkids, look after your sick relatives, whatever.
"That model will allow you to stay longer in the workforce and work beyond traditional retirement age - everyone wins."
Despite the availability of such opportunities, we are yet to take advantage of them. "Society hasn't caught up with it. Culture hasn't caught up with it," he says. "The idea that you need to be monitoring someone to know they're working - these are things holding back productivity."
The Work Research Institute focuses on people and work. Areas of interest include not only workplace diversity, but a wide range of topics such as employment law, the labour market and workplace well-being and employee performance.
The Institute, in partnership with the Equal Employment Opportunity Trust, conducts a regular "Diversity Survey", polling New Zealand companies on their attitudes toward diversity in the workplace.
In the context of business diversity, much attention has been paid to the fact that "four generations" will simultaneously be a part of the workforce. There are the baby-boomers, born following World War II. There's Generation X, which includes people born from around 1960 to the early 80s. There are the Millennials, born from the mind 1980s to the mid 1990s. Finally, Generation Z is said to have begun anywhere from the mid 1990s to the mid 2000s. Babies being born now will fall into this category.
But in a business context, these categorisations might be of limited value when talking about what age-diversity means for the workforce. "It's lumping people into a whole big group - you're homogenising them," says Emma Edgar of the Equal Employment Opportunity Trust. "It's not helpful. We need to look at who these people really are."
It is an area that hasn't received the attention that other diversity issues have, particularly where employers are concerned. A recent Workplace Diversity survey found that despite age being identified as a top issue, over 60 per cent of organisations have neither a policy or programme in place to manage or support an ageing workforce.
Bentley says, "If you mix their work up, and balance them with younger workers, then you can get the best out of both groups.
"It's great if you can do it, but that intergenerational management is a real issue and I'm not sure anyone knows how to do it well."
Here are three companies that are leveraging the ageing workforce:
Solid Energy, in response to concerns about its skilled mining workforce rapidly being depleted by retirement, has made conscious moves to capture the knowledge of the older agents in the workforce by ensuring all new miners are thrust into a community of older, more seasoned veterans.
Rather than a formal, structured arrangement, Solid Energy has taken care to make the mentoring a cultural direction. This way, it can be sure that the acumen held by the older corners of its mining staff can be absorbed throughout the organisation in preparation for when the older generation moves on.
NZ Steel has seen the shape of its workforce change and is facing it head on, actively having the hard conversations with ageing employees. Discussion of retirement options is encouraged as early as possible.
The company has put in place a number of policies to accommodate the needs of older employees, and initiatives like phased contractual options, flexible hours and part-time work go a long way to keeping their older, more experienced staff engaged in the work force. "The more we capitalise on different experiences, opinions, knowledge ethnicities, genders, and ages, the more enriched we are as an organisation," says Brenden Mannix, NZ Steel's People & External Affairs spokesperson.
Electrix, a large utility company, found some concrete benefits in being proactive in managing its age-diverse labourers. Noticing an increasing number of injuries among older staff, management sought to address this by putting in place a number of temporary gyms in the workplace. They brought in physiotherapists to identify areas of weakness among staff and worked with them to improve their muscle conditioning and overall endurance. The initiative worked - the next year, Electrix saw a dramatic decrease in its ACC levy and ultimately reaped the benefits for its bottomline.