Older workers add value

As more and more older people remain in the workforce, many younger people are finding themselves in the position of having to manage someone much older than they are.

But Deidre Ross, general manager of direct mail house, Mailshop, says she has discovered some useful management techniques.

"I started off when I was 17 and I've always had to manage older people and when you were young it's quite daunting. You think, 'I can't tell a 40 year old what to do'," says Ross.

Some 25 per cent of the workforce at Mailshop is over 50 and work in accounts, customer service and the handline where mail is folded and labelled.

"The big thing for employers is just respecting people regardless of their age. I know when I was brought up it was banged into me to respect elders. We always addressed them Mrs or Mr. These days children tend to call people by their first names and I wonder if the next generation is not going to have the respect for older generations."

Ross says that when managing older workers, a little decorum goes a long way.

"It's being diplomatic in the way you converse with that age group. It's all about respect."

Ross mentors her younger managers on how to manage the older age groups.

"You've just got to say things in a slightly different way. Younger people are more resilient. You can be a bit more flippant with them and they don't take offence. With older people you've just got to work things a little bit differently."

But older workers aren't some doddering old nits which need to be handled with kid gloves - far from it. These workers have the skills and expertise that their younger counterparts will spend years trying to attain.

"On the whole I've found that the older age group just get on with it. They don't need a lot of managing."

Older workers come from a generation with a different set of values which prove quite useful in the workplace.

"With the older generation, you would never hear them slagging off the company or anything like that. They have a lot of morals, work ethic and loyalty. You're the boss. You look after them. They appreciate that. They let you know they appreciate it."

Another thing which makes older workers easier to manage is their level of maturity.

"We definitely find that the older age group are reliable. They are industry savvy. They have a great work ethic. They have an even temper and can analyse and handle difficult situations better than a younger person. They have a lot more confidence and tend to be quite organised."

Ross says her older workers give Mailshop an overall feeling of family culture and that some people even call the foreman 'father'.

"Right across the company the older age group here are the ones we've had the longest and they're great mentors for the younger people. They tend to give them a push along if they're being a bit slack which some young people can be."

But older workers can have some differences in the way they work which managers need to be aware of. For instance, they might not be your best bet for finding someone to work the overtime.

"They tend to work to the clock. They arrive at 8:30am. They leave at 5pm. They have an exact half an hour for lunch. Their breaks are at a set time and they don't like moving out of that. They like their routine."

They might want to be able to organise their holidays farther out in advance or take their holidays at the same time every year. But you won't have to worry about them taking maternity leave.

Another issue is technology. Ross says the use of technology is one thing which can sometimes challenge older workers.

"We'll get a brand new cell phone and a young person will know how to use that phone in two days where an older person will tend to read the manual and go back and ask somebody else how to change things around."

They may have to read the manual for some things but for other things such as working the handline they are much better than their younger co-workers.

"It's a little bit repetitive but older workers have the patience to do it where young people get bored quickly and want to move on to something else. The older age group will actually do the same job day in and day out and they just have the patience for it."

Ross says she's never had performance or disciplinary issues with her older workforce and they add to the company culture. She says it's important for the different generations to mix.

"If there's a group of you going out for lunch, ask them along. Don't exclude people for age. In the past I've worked at companies where older people have been left out of things and they're often the ones who are the most fun. But you've got to have the maturity as a manager to know the difference between what's a good laugh with a 20-year-old and what's a good laugh with a 55-year-old."

Lance Gray is a researcher at Massey University who has studied the mature workforce and says they tend to fit in quite well.

"We were really surprised by the lack of drama. We thought we would have found a lot more conflict. There was supposed to be some intergenerational conflict. That is what people assumed and expected but on the ground it never appeared to be a big issue at all."

Gray says managers may sometimes overlook the hidden value of older workers.

"A lot of the older workers are slow to show their abilities. They are less confident to put themselves forward, especially if they've been made redundant a couple of times. But we kept on coming across a lot of older workers who were at the forefront of their industry and needed no help from us."

Older workers still seek training and upskilling even though they may not be staying in the workforce for an extended period of time.

"From a purely economic perspective, the return on training for a younger person is much higher than it would be for an older person because you have more years to recoup that investment."

Gray found that older people were conscious of how much training they received and took it as an indicator of how seriously they were being taken at work. He says older workers are extremely reliable and conscientious and the extra training might pay off more than with a younger worker.

"Employers need those older workers with skills to hang around and they do. That's part of the reason employers like having them around because they're not going to jump ship and go somewhere else where the next great opportunity is. They'll stick around with their current employer."