If your organization is still wandering around the “train station” of recognition, planning, policies implementation and various other aspects relating to the aging workforce; I regret to tell you the train has long since left the station. The aging workforce has gone from predictions and speculations to reality, cold hard facts and market trends. Almost everywhere you look there is another aspect of this paradigm that is being explained or touted. Consider the impact that email has had on the workforce in the last two decades; that’s the magnitude of what an aging workforce is going to have in the next two decades. Enormous.
This short article can’t begin to address the plethora of different areas that the aging workforce has, and will continue to, impact. Purely from a statistical aspect it is mind blowing. Ten thousand baby boomers reach 65 years of age every day; 20 percent of all employees are above 55 years of age; in just six short years more than 30 percent of the national work force will be between 65 and 74 years of age.