Retaining older workers in construction

Older workers will often have a lot of useful knowledge and experience, and this can be invaluable for younger colleagues, who can then benefit from mentorship and learning opportunities. 

Older staff should be properly integrated as part of an intergenerational workforce so that they feel their experience is valued and being used to aid business continuity. There are clear business benefits to harnessing the expertise of older workers.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) published a report, Understanding older workers, in March 2022, which revealed that more than 10.4 million older workers (those aged 50 and over) account for almost one-third (32.6%) of the workforce. 

There are more than 1.2 million workers over the age of 65, a figure that has been growing and will continue to grow in the coming years.

The report makes a series of recommendations based on the key issues that employers and policymakers should understand when considering how to recruit and retain older workers.

These include enhancing the flexible working offering, providing early and ongoing support for health and wellbeing, and improving skills and training.

The CIPD advises employers to guard against assumptions that older workers are less likely to be interested in training or career progression.

Its report shows that older workers are most likely to disagree that there are good opportunities for progression in their role and are also less likely to take part in formal off-the-job training. 

It is a good idea to discuss the possibility of training or reskilling on a regular basis with older workers, either as part of a formal programme or through informal discussions.

Any assumptions about what training or upskilling opportunities older workers may be interested in should be avoided as they may be discriminatory on grounds of age.

A report published earlier this year by training provider Corndel, which surveyed 250 HR decision-makers and 1,000 UK employees, found that 75% of employees over the age of 55 had not received human management training for skills such as empathy, mental health awareness and emotional intelligence in their current roles. And 55% had not received technical training for tools such as ChatGPT.

The report also found that more than half of people over 55 (54%) claimed that professional development was an important factor in their decision to stay with an organisation.

It’s clear that providing proper learning and development opportunities is a key factor in retaining older workers.

If you have implemented a learning and development strategy, it is worth taking a look at it to ensure that the training and development of older workers is being considered. If you don’t already have a strategy in place, then it is important to consider putting one together. 

Having a proper learning and development strategy in place will help people grow their careers and feel fulfilled at work.

Learning and development is about creating the right culture and environment to enable staff to do this. It is also about knowing the current and future capability needs of your organisation and creating a learning culture that drives employee engagement. 

It is important that older workers feel valued and they should be included in training opportunities even if their career trajectory is different to that of younger employees.

Staff should feel that they are able to continue learning irrespective of where they are in their careers, be it at the very beginning or towards the end.

Reverse mentoring is a good way of breaking down age barriers to share experience and expertise; older workers can learn to become more digitally literate, while younger workers can benefit from the older workers’ experience and expertise.

Various companies have been using reverse mentoring to enable employees from different generations to support each other’s development.

In order to avoid a digital divide, employers are pairing up social media-savvy millennials and less digitally aware older managers to work on a number of skillsets.

This helps to raise the digital IQ of more senior employees, but it also gives younger employees a feeling of value and purpose within their company.

It is important to run mentoring programmes both ways. Although the workplace is becoming increasingly digitalised, certain corporate, company and market-specific knowledge held by older staff will always be valuable, and it is important for older staff to share this with the younger employees who succeed them. 

Laura Welchew is a partner at Trowers & Hamlins.