Older worker retention is essential if the sector is to get close to meeting the government’s new homes target. It’s also an important way for organisations to raise productivity, quality assurance, and safety, writes the head of age-friendly employers at the Centre for Ageing Better, Tracy Riddell.
To meet the government’s housebuilding targets, the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) estimates that the sector requires more than 60,000 new workers each year. Skills England predicts a 26% increase in labour demand among the 30 most important construction job categories over the next decade.
But according to the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research, there are not enough workers to meet demand or boost productivity. As of July 2023, there were more than 140,000 vacancies in the UK construction industry.
The nature of the country’s workforce has changed dramatically over recent decades as 50+ workers have become increasingly significant. The age group now accounts for one in three workers.
The retention of later career workers is vital for the construction industry, contributing to its productivity and tackling the dual challenges of an ageing workforce and flatlining productivity.
But if construction is to harness the full potential of the growing 50+ workforce, the challenges of retaining experience and the extension of working lives in a sector where roles can be physically demanding must be addressed. Almost 600,000 workers in the industry are expected to leave due to retirement, career change, and other factors between now and 2035. It will be impossible for the sector to meet demand while losing so many workers.
A study by the British Standards Institution (BSI) found that fewer than one in five (15%) in construction intend to work beyond the state pension age. This is a much lower figure than in other sectors. The average age of older workers leaving employment in the sector is 52.
For many older workers in construction, their departure is understandable after years of physically demanding jobs such as bricklaying. And poor health has its own impact, with 78,000 construction workers reporting ill health, with conditions such as lung diseases and musculoskeletal disorders.
Failure to retain older workers means skills and knowledge within the sector are lost, restricting the performance levels of employers. Sector leaders, therefore, need to consider career pathways and planning that actively support later-career workers to stay working.
The presence of older workers in a multigenerational workforce may help to positively shape the day-to-day operational performance of employers. They can do this through quality assurance, reduced errors and rework, supervision, mentoring, tacit knowledge transfer, workforce stability, safer site delivery, and managerial practices.
Employers can take steps to improve their retention of older workers. The Centre for Ageing Better established the Age-friendly Employer Pledge, which provides a framework for UK employers that value the importance and value of older workers.
Age-friendly employers create working environments where conversations about age are not the exception, but the rule. But with the scale of the challenge and opportunity so large, the sector also requires help.
The country’s economy and the construction sector both need the government to recognise that a second employment crisis is currently underway, with a growing number of 50+ people out looking for work, and to respond with urgency and scale.
That is why the Centre for Ageing Better is launching a campaign calling on the government to create a headline measure for people aged between 50 and state pension age currently not in employment, training, education, or retirement, similar to NEETs, which it should use to drive a new strategy for longer working lives.
This data should be used to identify where barriers are greatest and where interventions are succeeding to support a more place-based approach to longer working lives.
And we are urging the government to make a meaningful commitment to support older working-age people at the autumn budget. Many older workers leave the construction industry still with much more to give. The business case for employers to focus more on retaining these workers is strong – the beneficial commercial outcomes, such as improved efficiency, reduced waste and more stable delivery, should be strong incentives for action.
If the construction industry can take positive action to challenge ageist stereotypes, thinking more flexibly and laterally about older workers and opening up opportunities, this will benefit individuals and construction companies, and boost productivity in the whole sector.
