Plugging the Brain Drain

This past week I read a good article in Hemispheres Magazine by Catherine Fredman with this title, Plugging the Brain Drain. You can read the article by going to http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/aug06/executivesecrets.html. Like many others who are writing about the "new retiree", she affirms the value of the older worker in view shortage of laborers among the Gen-Xers. "There are only 46 million Gen-Xers to replace the 76 million Boomers. Though that gap can be filled to some extent by productivity gains, labor-saving technologies, immigration, and offshoring, the issue isn't so much a labor shortage as a talent shortage. 'The problem won't just be a lack of bodies,' writes demographer Ken Dychtwald, a co-author with Tamara J. Erickson and Robert Morison of the recently published Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent. 'Skills, knowledge, experience, and relationships walk out the door every time somebody retires--and they take time and money to replace.'"

One of the things I pick up from reading this article is that more and more people are changing the way they are looking at the older Americans. Fredman makes several references to YourEncore, a company that was created by executives at Proctor & Gamble for the purpose of finding temporary part-time work for retired professionals. YourEncore hires are evaluated after each project, and they rate about a 4.8 on a 5-point scale. Many companies have operated with the assumption that they need to push the older workers out in favor of young, more energetic workers who are quicker to learn and innovative on the job. As reasonable as this sounds in theory, it simply has not proven to be true. Fredman writes, "A 2003 Towers Perrin study of 35,000 workers in the U.S. found that employees older than 50 were more motivated to exceed expectations on the job than were younger workers."

Fredman goes on to say that companies that want to stay competitive are turning to their aging and retired work force. Corporations are beginning to view older workers as assets. Mounting evidence shows that mature workers bring unique capabilities and performance advantages to the job:

• Accumulated wisdom. “Experience counts more than any other factor” in pleasing clients, says Greg Thomopulos, the CEO of Stanley Consultants. “The more experience our members have, the more knowledge they have about what worked and didn’t work in the past. Our clients actually prefer that we assign project managers with many years of experience.”
• Rich relationships. The U.S. economy increasingly is based on service, and much of the service sector is based on rela-tionships. The more seasoned the employee, the richer his Rolodex. “Take a senior banker who is rendering advice to big companies or wealthy individuals,” Van Horn says. “When that person goes, that relationship goes along with him or her.If you’re Company X and you lose that person, you’ve potentially lost a client.”
• Market mirrors. Employees aren’t the only ones who are aging; so are custo-mers. “You’re seeing organizations like Home Depot, Borders, and CVS actively recruiting older workers to match the experiences of their employees with the experiences of their customers,” says Eric Lesser, an associate partner in IBM’s Global Business Services Group.
• Motivation. Ditch the picture of retired boomers heading for the golf course and quilting circle. Recent studies from Merrill Lynch, AARP, and Rutgers University consistently find that 70 per-cent to 80 percent of boomers want to work past the traditional retirement age. Though money is a component in the wish to stay on the job, the overriding factors are intellectual and social. “Work allows people to express and challenge themselves, to make friends and keep friends,” says Dychtwald.
• A lifetime of learning. The myththat older workers are inflexible and uncreative simply doesn’t hold true. Economist David Galenson of the University of Chicago posits two types of creativity: conceptual innovation (new ideas that break the mold) and experimental innovation (new ideas that evolve from current practices). The former springs from unconventional approaches to a problem; the latter comes from a lifetime of observation. Companies need both, says Darren Carroll, the executive director of Eli Lilly’s new-ventures division. “New workers bring fresh perspectives and the latest techniques, but the accretive nature of knowledge, particularly in industries like ours, makes older workers valuable.”

Isn't this a powerful affirmation of all that we have been seeing with the Encore Generation? The secular business sector of America is waking up to this current Age Wave. Where is the church in this discovery process, and what, if anything can we learn from information like this? I would like for some of you who lead among Encore Generation folks to chime in by making some comments related to some of the following questions:

• How should the church in America respond to the realities of older adult capacity in view of its mission?
• How can the professional experience of the older adults in our congregations be leveraged for the expansion of God's Kingdom?
• How can the church help leverage the success of older business professionals for significance in their second half?