SENIOR EXECUTIVES in European, American and Asian companies have admitted for the first time that older workers are the key to fixing the skills gap, according to a study by Stepstone, an online recruitment firm.

Colin Tenwick, chief executive of Stepstone, said, however, that its 2008 Total Talent report also revealed that few of those same executives had yet done anything to persuade employees to stay on beyond retirement or to recruit other experienced staff.

He said: “We are reaching a tipping point. We are seeing a fundamental shift in thinking across business. There is such an enormous white-collar and professional skills shortage that attitudes are having to change. Businesses are realising that they have to hold on to older, skilled workers.”

As the number of young adults drops in the West, and lifespans increase, the limitations of today’s strategy of importing foreign labour are showing, said Tenwick. Persuading older workers to stay on and luring others back from retirement is now imperative, he said.

But while Tenwick is convinced business is beginning to see the light, others are less sure. Last month, the Croner employment consultancy suggested that a year after the introduction of laws banning discrimination on the grounds of age, this prejudice is poised to overtake sex discrimination as the greatest workplace grievance. Croner found that a fifth of British workers felt they had been discriminated against on the grounds of age.

In September, research from the Employers Forum on Age suggested that ageism remained deep-rooted in the workplace. Six out of ten people were said to have witnessed ageism at work in the previous 12 months. The Employers Forum on Age said that 200 claims a month were now being lodged with the Tribunals Service.

So is business torn between realising that older workers are the answer and an emotional rejection of the inevitable? Off the record, there are senior recruitment and HR executives who admit that the prospect of legions of older workers fills them with horror.

“The people who want to stay beyond retirement are not always the ones you want to stay,” said one. “Often it’s the less motivated and talented whose retirement you were looking forward to. But this isn’t a politically correct thing to say.” Might this attitude go some way to explaining why so few firms are courting older workers?

Last year, Aon Consulting claimed that three-quarters of British workers expected to work past retirement age because they had to or wanted to.

Jon Beaumont at Aon offers a mixed assessment of that prospect. On the plus side, he said that his customers – particularly in service industries – often preferred to deal with older employees. He also said older staff were more loyal and reliable than younger workers (despite all the worries about failing health, older employees take less sick leave than younger ones).

However, Beaumont also believes that an ageing workforce presents challenges. “Aon’s survey showed that 53% of people would work beyond 65 because they had to – their pension would be inadequate to retire,” he said. “About 25% would work on because they wanted to. The question is, will the hearts of those forced to continue working really be in it?”

Some companies believe they are already ahead of the curve on the age issue. Jed Kendrick, managing director of the pest-control group Rentokil UK, said that in the past two years his company had turned to retired staff to meet customer demand – which grows in the summer months due to problems with bees, wasps and ants.

“Customers seem to find mature staff particularly reassuring,” he said. “We have more than a dozen retired technicians who still have the skills and attitudes we want – and of course a lot of experience – and who still want to work, though not full-time.”

Kendrick argues that Britain’s schools and hospitals are already showing the strain of catering for an influx of young workers from eastern Europe. He thinks that ageist attitudes are changing – not least because older people make up an increasingly large portion of the population.

Nationwide building society is a pioneer in the retention and recruitment of older workers. It raised its age for compulsory retirement from 60 to 70 in 2001, and then again to 75 in 2004, ahead of the 2006 age-discrimination legislation.

“Changing demographics meant there was a clear business case for change,” said Nationwide’s head of human resources, John Wrighthouse, who added that customers were more satisfied with the service they got from older staff, older workers stayed longer and recruiting and retaining more older workers met the company’s fairness and diversity policies.

Nationwide’s policy change has certainly appealed to employees, with 347 of the 19,000 staff now over 60 – including a manager of 74. Nationwide ran a final-salary pension scheme until recently, so Whitehouse believes that people are working on because they want to and not just because they need the money.

However, the reality is that Nationwide is among a minority of companies going all out to attract older people. Tenwick thinks it is time the majority woke up to the pending crisis. In fact, he thinks the recruitment of older workers is now so critical that it merits the introduction of positive discrimination.

“There’s so much prejudice that I would argue for positive discrimination – for example, giving older workers more rights on part-time working. It has to be understood that these days older workers may also be caring for even older relatives.

“Positive discrimination is controversial, but we have to consider the major talent shortfall facing us over the next 20 years.” Time, he warns, is not on our side.

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