With most of the baby boomer generation on the brink of retirement, organizations are facing the looming threat of a skills gap that could precipitate a global labor shortage. Yet organizations have long held on to outdated biases against more experienced workers.
Now, necessity is driving a paradigm shift, compelling businesses to rethink hiring strategies and embrace this overlooked — and highly skilled — talent pool.
Watch this on-demand webinar to discover:
Don’t miss this chance to gain essential insights and strategies for thriving amid this significant workforce shift.
Experienced workers are crucial in today’s labor market, but they face unique challenges. Speakers emphasized the importance of leveraging their knowledge and adapting compensation models to retain them. Integrating experienced workers into the modern workforce requires addressing ageism and including them in diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies. Organizations must bridge the gap between experienced and younger workers to ensure a smooth transition of knowledge and skills.
SHRM Moderator 00:03
Hello, and thank you for joining us for this presentation, Experience counts: A strategic approach to tackling the labor shortage. This program is part of the SHRM cast series. You can learn about upcoming and on demand events from our e-newsletters and the webcast homepage. SHRM thanks Eightfold AI for sponsoring this program and our series of free webcasts for the HR community. All right, let’s get this program underway. I’m now pleased to turn over the webcast microphone to the Eightfold AI team.
Michael Watson 00:37
Thank you, Connor, we’re excited to be here. My name is Michael Watson. And I am with Eightfold. And I’m joined today by my partner Jenny Neuharth who also goes by JCK in case any of you know her, so I’ll introduce myself real quick. I’ll hand this over to Jenny. And then we will get rolling. So I’m a former practitioner in the HR space, then with eight full for about four and a half years now. But before that, I was a prior customer of theirs and spent the first 25 years of my career on the recruiting side. In fact, I actually used to be a member of a local SHRM affiliation out of San Joaquin, I actually found my old badge here. It was buried in a drawer, but I remember I had that. So it’s good to be back here with you all. There’s any folks from the San Joaquin chapter of SHRM, great to see you all again. And with that being said, I’m going to hand this over to my partner, Jenny Newhart, who will introduce herself and we will get rolling through our agenda.
Jenny Neuharth 01:39
Awesome. Thanks so much, Mike. To everybody who’s here who’s watching right now or On Demand. Thank you so much for joining us. Like Mike mentioned, my name is Jenny Neuharth. Many call me Jcj. And my background, I’m also a former practitioner, went from leading talent acquisition to leading HR to gravitating towards the big hairy change projects, specifically related around technology. And a couple months ago, I joined April AI as a Director of Talent center transformation. And very excited to be here, I’ve been a longtime friend and champion of April products. And with that, we are excited to get right back into the content for today. So I want to just start with kind of laying the stage for what you have in store for the next 45 minutes here. So Mike and I are going to take you through some content related to this topic. And we’re going to hit on several different buckets. The first of those is understanding the current labor market landscape, I truly believe it’s really important to understand where we are where we are so that we can fully understand that problem, then we’re going to go into debunking myths about experienced workers, and then the unique value of experience workers, then we’re going to chat about strategies for how do you how do you integrate these experience workers into your team? And then we’re going to talk about the role of AI in technology. And finally, we’re going to go into questions. And so like Connor had mentioned, you have a Q & A box that’s there. And within your experience, please, if there’s something that you have a question on, or you’re just not quite sure, we really invite you to post those questions. Because chances are, if you’ve got something that’s that’s asking, What if I guarantee you other people in the audience are too and we’re here for you? And we would love to be able to help and answer any of those questions as they come up. So with that, I’m going to pass it right back over to Mr. Watson.
Michael Watson 03:47
Awesome. Thank you. And I think we all know that the labor market has changed significantly. engineer, I’m not sure if you need to hit the button. I’m not seeing a graphic that maybe it’s just on my end. There you go. Right.
Jenny Neuharth 04:06
We even have tech issues sometimes. So thanks for being with us for this.
Michael Watson 04:10
We’ll work through it. So we’d love to start with just talking about baby boomers and really defining that and making sure we’re all on the same page. Right? So these are folks that were born between 46 and 64. You can see that picture there on the right, that’s my parents. If you think back to when, you know, they were in the labor market, they’re the generation before the baby boomers, right. So I think my parents are considered what they call the greatest generation, but my sister falls into that category. And I’m very, very close to being a baby boomer right so even though I’m not in that generation, you know, I’m as someone who’s just turned 50 I’m also starting to think about what’s next for me. I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m starting to have kids go to college and You know, I’m starting to have people that I’m reporting to at work that are 1520 years younger than myself. So, you know, I’m also experiencing some of this change myself. So what better person to bring in and talk about this than someone who’s going through this? So seeing big changes in the labor market, right, and you think back to when my parents were there, right? They came out of the military, they got one job, my dad worked at one job for 45 years, my mom worked another job for 30 years, and then they retired. And unfortunately, those days are long gone, right? I remember, I’ve had four or five different jobs. And every time I’ve moved, I’ve gotten a call from my father, and a lecture on what am I doing? Why am I switching jobs so often? And I’ve had to explain to my dad that day that this is not the same, right, it’s a different world out there. It’s a different market. So that’s really what we’re talking about today as this labor market is changing. You have some folks that are preparing to retire. And then you also have some folks that are looking to extend their careers for a myriad of reasons. So we’ll jump into that as we go along. But just wanted to share a couple personal things about me and to know that, you know, you’re not alone, if you’re on the end of the spectrum. I’m right there with you. We’re going through this and these insights, that we’re sharing our real life insights that I deploy, that my organization deploys. And that we think are really going to help you and your organizations as well. So I’ll hand this back over to my colleague, and we’ll jump into our first poll question.
Jenny Neuharth 06:42
All right, so the first question we have for you is, what is your organization’s current level of readiness and willingness to integrate experienced workers into your workforce? So for those of you who might just be listening in right now, I am sharing a visual of a poll question. And that poll question has four different options, or I’m sorry, has six different options, it looks like. So we have A which is actively seeking to recruit and hire experienced workers considering strategies but have not taken action yet. That is B needs more information on the benefits of integrating experienced workers who got that procedure, facing challenges and overcoming age related biases in hiring. That is interesting but not sure how to effectively integrate experienced workers. And finally, we have currently not considered integrating experienced workers. So if you could please take a couple minutes here. Looks like we have 74 of you have submitted your answer so far, we truly appreciate there’s no wrong answer here, everybody. This is an honest conversation. And so please take a moment and submit your answer. And then we will move on to move on to view the results.
Michael Watson 08:17
This is a no judgment zone here. So there’ll be no judgments passed. Once again, we love your feedback, we really couldn’t do this without you just to understand the trends that are going on in the market. And it’ll help us in the q&a section as well. Right for the folks that maybe aren’t aren’t considering it, maybe we’re going to open your eyes to maybe considering maybe the folks that are can can network with other folks on this call and share some best practices as well. So really appreciate you taking the time to fill this in. There’ll be no judgments cast here, I can assure you. Yeah,
Jenny Neuharth 08:55
That’s one of the things that you get with Mike and I are really anybody from a fold is we are no judgment zone company, we understand that everybody has their own version of where they’re at. And in order to get to where we want to go, we have to be accepting of that and move forward. So we have 124 of you. Let’s see if we can rally to get another eight to 10 of you to submit. So if you haven’t, please take a moment and click that button. We truly appreciate you three more. I think that will be awesome. And if you’re just joining us, this is Jenny Newhart and Michael Watson from equaled AI. And we are taking you on a journey to learn about experience as a strategic approach to tackling the labor shortage and right now we are just in or interacting with a poll. And we are about to move forward here. Thank you all. So let’s look at the answers. Mike. We have 54.1% of you actively seeking to recruit and hire experienced workers. 13.5% Yeah, considering strategies but have not taken significant action again, completely. Okay. 6% need more information on the benefits of integrating experienced workers? Well, guess what you all, you’re in the right place if you are in that 6%, because we’re gonna give you additional information on what that looks like here today. 7.5% are facing challenges and overcoming age related biases in hiring. And 12.8 are interested, interested, but not sure how to effectively integrate experienced workers, and the last 6% are currently not considering integrating experienced workers into their workforce. Mike, I’d love to.
Michael Watson 10:48
Yeah, thank you, Jamie, those are interesting stats, right, it’s good to see that a large percentage over half is really already considering this. And, and for those folks that aren’t quite sure, we’ll definitely get to some of those points. So, you know, going back to that original agenda item, how the labor market is changing, you know, we have a graphic here. And really, there’s two things happening simultaneously, right, we got a wave of baby boomers and early gen x folks that are preparing to retire. While there’s also a large number of Baby Boomers and Gen X ers that are looking to extend their careers for like I mentioned a number of reasons, right? We’re living longer, the cost of living increases, right? We want to keep our benefits and our prescription medications. You know, those are just to name a few. But you know, these things are creating skills and a workforce chasm, if you will, right. And the global workforce shortage, it’s impacting companies around the world, right, not just the US. So for those of you that have an international footprint, you’re experiencing this as well, right. And in our next chart, we’re going to show you just a small example of some of the companies that this is happening to but this is not just a US problem, this really is a global workforce issue that we’re seeing around the world. Jenny, you want to go and take this one? Yeah,
Jenny Neuharth 12:14
we’d love to. So like Mike mentioned, the workforce shortage is truly a global problem. And so many of you, we know, might have some sort of global aspect of the organization. And so for job vacancies, this is a percent change since q4 of 2019, and the source of this is Deloitte insights, we have 33 3% change in job vacancies in the US 9% change in Canada, United Kingdom and singing inverse reaction, they have negative six there, Israel 30%, and Australia 54%. And so, again, this is just helping to understand that this is not just a US problem, but a global growing problem. And so in order to address that problem, we have to think differently. Next here, we have the employment to population ratio ratio. And so what we’re looking at with this, is the employment population seasonally adjusted, based on I just want to say this right, appointment population, seasonally adjusted, based on openings. And so what we’re seeing here is, we have less humans today for the roles that are open than we historically have. So you’re seeing the decrease in the population of humans who are available for a rule juxtaposed by the number of openings, like anything else you want to add on that part. Yeah, I
Michael Watson 13:54
would say obviously, the big spike down was during COVID. But you’ll notice here that we haven’t quite made it back to those pre COVID levels as well. So it’s kind of flatlining there as well. So, you know, that’s, a lot of things go into that, right. A lot of folks during the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic decided, hey, I’m, I’m gonna move away from more of a full time job and move into like, the gig economy. Maybe I’m gonna go ahead and take that early retirement. You know, I realized that family and spending time with my loved ones is really important. And then as the economy still continues to grow, which it is right, our stock market is at an all time high. But you still see a number of ads and Help Wanted posters when you walk through downtown’s and shops, and we’re seeing it in our colleagues on LinkedIn. So there’s this definite gap that we haven’t quite recovered yet. And I think that’s the biggest takeaway here is it’s not you It’s not your organization, right? It’s not the Glassdoor ratings, everybody is going through this. So I don’t want folks on this call on this webinar to think maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s just my organization. It’s not that we’re seeing this trend across the country and across the world.
Jenny Neuharth 15:19
Really, thanks, Mike, for that. And just again, for all of you listening, what we’re looking at with this, with this chart, is we’re trying to share the fact that today, there are less humans to fill the jobs we have than there were historically over time, right. And so because there are less humans to fill the jobs, we have to think differently about how we’re going to do that. And so next, we’d love to take you into our second poll. So again, for those of you who are listening, we love your participation, there is no wrong answer here. The question that we have in front of you is, as an HR or talent leader, what is your main priority in integrating experience, or 55 Plus workers to address labor shortages. And so we have a couple different options here. We’ve got to leverage their experiences to enhance productivity, fill crucial skills gaps in the workforce, see reducing turnover with experienced stable employees, D enhancing team diversity and perspective i.e. streamlining onboarding, with seasonal seasoned professionals. And finally, we are offering mentorship opportunities for younger employees. So for those of you, and let’s see where we’re at, we’ve got 40 submitted, let’s see if we can get that number a little bit more increased. Again, there are no wrong answers here, we are really trying to make sure that Mike and I with our content or meeting you where you’re at, and these polls are a great way to do that. Because we’re able to seek to understand where you and your organization are at in this journey.
Michael Watson 16:57
And Jenny, while folks are filling in this poll, just want to go back and make a quick point on the previous slide, you’re not going to be able to hire your way out of the issues you’re having now you’re gonna have to look internally, you’re gonna have to retrain some folks, you’re gonna have to upskill some folks. And this is where bringing in experienced workers can really help bridge that gap. And if you haven’t considered it, you know, over half of you have but those those other 48%, if you will, that maybe haven’t considered this, and you’re really struggling to fill those open positions, and you’re going to university recruiting events, and you’re looking for folks that are going to be able to contribute, you know, on the on the kind of the start end of their careers, you know, this, there’s a huge number, a huge population of folks here that are willing to come in. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned through the pandemic, experienced workers, we actually picked up pretty well, right, we’re able to figure out zooming in online meetings. You know, I, my my dad’s 87 And he told me last week, he wants a new version of the iPhone and, you know, I’m blown away by my, my, just personally speaking, my parents ability to pick up on new technologies, and you know, they’re constantly FaceTiming and video chatting with the grandkids. So it’s interesting, interesting times, and J looks like we’re about 56% Hopefully 60% here and then.
Jenny Neuharth 18:38
So, here are those answers, and so 21.5% of you 21.5% of the several 100 who are on this call who are engaged are currently leveraging or seeking to leverage experienced workers’ experience to enhance productivity. After that way of 33.3% solid third, filling critical gaps in the workforce. 22.2% reducing turnover with experience and stable employees 12.6 enhancing teen diversity in perspective and 3% streamlining onboarding the seasoned professionals. And finally 7.4% offering mentorship opportunities for younger employees any like things top of mind when you see these results, Mike?
Michael Watson 19:29
Yeah, I think for me, you know, I grew up playing a lot of sports. I grew up coaching my kids sports, I’ve coached the high school level. So you know, that last one for me is 7.4%. I look at that as a coach, right? We say mentoring but you know, it’s coaching, right? And just like I do with our customers, right, because I’m a former customer of Eightfolds. You know, part of this mentoring I do or coaching I do is because I don’t want you to make the mistakes that I’ve made. Learn from my mistakes, right. There’s a reason why Oh, this is real thin up top. And this is kind of great here. Those are called Lessons Learned
Jenny Neuharth 20:04
no judgment on the gray or the way
Michael Watson 20:08
in, whether it’s it’s working with our customers that Eightfold or in your organization’s bringing in some of those more experienced workers, it’s helping bridge that gap and helping coach folks up to not make some of those mistakes and realizing what happens and giving real life examples of where maybe change management didn’t go right or onboarding didn’t go right and, and what you can do to bridge those gaps. So for me, even though it’s only 7.4%, I think there’s a big opportunity there for us to look at that as like, you know, the mentor, the coach to bring in and to bridge those gaps and make sure that you don’t make some of the mistakes that experience workers have in their background.
Jenny Neuharth 20:51
Absolutely. And what I see in these numbers is excitement, because there’s not a one size fits all answer, right, each of you are coming to this conversation from different lenses. And with different areas that you’re potentially focusing on, based on your strategies, we look at talent strategies, they cannot be, and they should not be one size fits all, because they need to be unique to your individual organization. And so seeing the numbers that are kind of spread out makes me really excited about that. So now that we’ve, you know, gone through a couple of these different questions with you and laid the stage, we’d love to go into debunking myths about experienced workers. And so let’s see if I can get this slide to go forward. All right, it doesn’t want to go back. I don’t see the picture. You can see him on your side, cool, because they don’t, they’re not showing on my side. But you know, when we come to the conversation about experienced workers, it’s important to note that all of us have what I refer to as a design bias or an unconscious bias about who fits or who doesn’t within an organization. And these have been developed through our lived experiences, and sharpened over time. And sometimes we’re not fully aware that those exist, but some of the primary myths about experienced workers can often fall into some of these buckets. And we’re going to share a couple of those for you today. So reliability. So older workers are very, so historically, we may have said, you know that older workers are not reliable, they’ve got too much going on in their life, what have you, right. But the data shows us that older workers are very reliable, they aced stress management, and are every bit as productive as their younger colleagues in terms of knowledge and expertise. So again, what Mike had mentioned earlier, you know, we have that designed by us that says, well, the older worker doesn’t understand how to use the new AI and the new tech that’s out there today. Well, again, the data shows us that that unconscious bias or that design bias is actually not true. deep industry knowledge and life experience, make older and experienced workers pivotal players in decision making, and problem solving, which is an important thing that we have in the world today. Right? We’ve got to be able to solve problems and make decisions about how we’re moving forward with them. And then the last one here is low turnover. So research shows that over 55 workers’ commitment and low turnover can boost team morale, and underpin a strong community culture.
Michael Watson 23:31
Yeah, I would love to maybe. Yeah, I would love to, you know, when I look at reliability, you know, once again, I’m going to use myself as the example here, right? Got a mortgage. Got a kid going to college out of state. I Have a daughter in high school. You know, I My wife’s a first grade teacher. Right. So the reliability piece is also on the personal side, right? I have a lot of people that are relying on me personally in my life. I didn’t have that when I was 25 or 30. Right. I didn’t have a mortgage yet. I didn’t buy my first house until I was 32. Right hadn’t really paid my fair share of taxes yet. Right. You know, I might have been inclined to just write off a job because maybe I didn’t like the way someone said something to me. Fast forward to today. Right? I have a lot of responsibility, right? I need to be reliable, reliable to my family. I need to be reliable to my co-workers. Right. And it’s a symbiotic relationship. That makes me show up every day. That makes me want to be a great employee. So you know, when I think about that reliability piece I think the older that I now speak personally, the older that I get in age, and in my career, it seems to make me more reliable, right, I want to be there more, because I have more things riding on my shoulders that I have to deliver for, for my family. So, you know, when I think about that reliability piece, it’s really kind of two ways it’s unreliable to Eightfold. They know like, if I’m going to be on calls, they know I’m very rarely ever called out. And so that that reliability piece goes both ways, the knowledge and experience piece of it. Once again, I think that goes both ways. You know, I, one thing I’m stressing to my sons, he gets ready to leave for college, even when you’re not in college, and you get to be my age where I’ve been out of college for 30 years now. I’m constantly reading, constantly reading books. I constantly, you know, actually wrote three books last year. I’m constantly watching video vignettes, learning audio books, you know, I have a subscription to Audible. So, you know, I, you know, learning is a lifelong journey. And I think once again, the I think the older you get, the more you realize that, you know, when I when I told my son that the reason I love reading, is because I in a day or two or maybe three days for a little bit longer of a book, I can pick up those insights that it took somebody else a lifetime to learn. And once I’ve kind of explained that to my son and my children, right, they kind of saw one like, Well, that makes a lot of sense. It’s like, Why do I have to go through 50 years of hard knocks, where I could pick up this book, or this novel, or this white paper or watch a video and learn something that it took that person a long time to do. So I think you’re getting that with a more experienced workforce, right? You’re getting that knowledge and that thirst for knowledge, and that experience of all those things that they’ve done throughout their career beyond just a formal education. Once again, I come from a family where there was no formal education, both my parents were in the military, my dad dropped out of high school at 16 to join the Navy, and my mom was in two branches of the military, right, the Air Force, and the Marines. So, you know, to me, you don’t have to go to a formal four year university to be considered knowledgeable or have experience, right? It’s how much do you really want that as a person, and there’s lots of resources out there. And then low turnover, right? Research shows that over 55 workers are committed and low turnover boosts team morale, once again, it’s, and I see this with my teams. I’ve been through three kinds of downturns in the economy, right? I’ve been through 911. I’ve been through a few things. So you know, understanding and being able to talk to your teams about how to handle these situations, I think is really key.
Jenny Neuharth 27:56
Absolutely. And the last thing, and then we’ll move forward. But I think one of the pieces that came from the pandemic is the realization that good is not one size fits all for human beings. And historically, we had again, this design bias that says, When you get to your mid 50s, you’re going to work on putting up that hat hanging up that hat. And for some people, you might not financially be able to retire, right, you might have to work longer, and some people actually want to write and so being able to, again, check those biases that say that somebody who’s older is not going to fit and reconsider them as you know, as as we move forward with a team. But the next piece here is, again, experienced workers can help fill skills gaps. So the US needs a 25% increase in the labor force participation by those over 55 to maintain current levels. And I apologize, Mike, I think this is supposed to be your slide. But I just get so excited when I see some of these statistics. Let me turn it back over to you.
Michael Watson 29:01
No, no, I think the biggest takeaway from this slide is how do we go out engaging those folks that are maybe on the sidelines or considering retirement? Right, what What channels do we reach out to them through? Right if we need a 25% increase in those and what we know is those over 50 to 55 make up about 25% of the workforce now. So you know, there’s a substantial increase we need to make there. And I think that’s where a few sourcing efforts and outreach efforts that your organizations can tap into this.
Jenny Neuharth 29:39
Absolutely, absolutely.
Michael Watson 29:46
For our next poll,
Jenny Neuharth 29:47
absolutely.
Michael Watson 29:55
All right. So what is your organization’s biggest challenge in integrating experienced workers into the workforce? We have a few options here: Option A overcoming age-related biases in hiring practices. B is creating inclusive training and development opportunities. C, promoting a culture that values age diversity, D, implementing policies to prevent age discrimination, i.e. retaining experienced workers and leveraging their knowledge. F balancing the needs for a multi generational workforce. And finally, G currently not addressing ageism or integrating experienced workers. So a lot of options on this, I’ll continue to kind of slowly scroll up and down. So you don’t forget some of the options like I probably would forget that you can see here, quite a few options for you to choose from, and maybe what we can do, Jenny, while folks are filling out this survey here, it looks like we did get a question come in that we maybe can handle real quick. And I’ll pose this to you, you know, how does technology help organizations overcome some of these skills gaps? You know, how do you know which gaps exist in your organization?
Jenny Neuharth 31:20
Oh, great question. So whoever submitted that one, bravo. So when it comes to leveraging technology to understand and overcome skills gaps, one of the first things that I always challenge customers and companies out there to, to answer is, do you have a system that can connect the dots of the skills that you have today, so that you can connect them to where you what you need, right? Because if I don’t have awareness of the skills that I have, within my organization, today, it’s really difficult to do any sort of planning. Now historical systems of record are not always, where skills live, right skills are within the human. And, and the other piece is when we’re looking at some of the older workforce, if you’ve got somebody who’s been in your organization for 30 plus years, who was hired at a college, or directly into that role, you might not have anything hard, like like a resume, to be able to storytel Even the initial skills of a human brought to the table. And so having awareness again, what are the individual Lego blocks that come from a skill standpoint, for that human, and being able to first understand that human as a whole, from a skill standpoint is really important, as we continue and that’s what technology can help us do? It can help us overcome some of our design biases or unconscious biases, about who fits by looking not and not at the age of somebody or, or, you know, basic identifiable characteristics, but actually looking at the skills that are good about humans. Mike, what do you think of that?
Michael Watson 32:54
Before we go to the results here? You know, think about this, right? What if a blockbuster knew what new skills were coming down the road? Would they have let Netflix take such a leap and to the point where they were obsolete. And I can go down and down? Rino Blackberry, how many of us had a Blackberry? And I was, you know, texting friends to send a message on my Blackberry. And then all of a sudden, they were obsolete, right? Those are just two examples of customers or not customers. But organizations where they didn’t understand the skills gaps. They didn’t understand what the skills were going to be in the future. And because of that, they were relegated to the dustbin of companies that could have been right. And one of the things that we try to work with our customers on is to prevent that from happening. So with that being said, let’s go ahead and jump into the results here, Jenny. So it looks like once again, what the question was, what is your organization’s biggest challenge in integrating and experiencing workers into the workforce? You know, 13.2% is overcoming age related biases and hiring practices. 9.1% is creating inclusive training and development opportunities coming in at 12.4% is promoting a culture that values age diversity, at 3.3% is implementing policies to prevent age discrimination. And then we come in at 28.1% retaining experienced workers and leveraging their knowledge. That’s good to know as someone who’s approaching that, that age. Coming in at 28.1%. Again, the tide here is balancing the needs of a multi generational workforce, which is great to hear. And then 5.8% of you responded with currently not addressing ageism or integrating experienced workers. So some interesting insights here you all share, I really appreciate it.
Jenny Neuharth 34:53
Perfect. So no, you’re good. Awesome. So what When we look at DNI efforts, DEI strategies typically will include gender, people of color, LGBTQ plus an early career. But what about people who are older? What about ageism? So the data shows us that only 8% of companies today include age in their DNI strategies. And only 21% of companies offer semi-retirement benefits. So these stats are coming from some of the resources that are within the platform, I believe they are in the bottom left, there are two different things that come from our organization a fold AI. And this is the longer more meaty data filled story of integrating older experienced workers into your career force. So make sure that you download these and take a look at them. There’s an executive brief, which is just more of a shortened version. I might drop pencils and pens here because I talk with my hands. And then there’s a longer one as well. And so let’s see ageism is often overlooked. I know that, for me, I was watching one of my friends, Steve Jewel, do a presentation on ageism recently, and he’s an older recruiter. And it really gave me this aha moment. Like, I feel like you know, what I, I don’t know that we really have categorized just being an area that we need to focus on. And when we look at, you know, DNI strategies, one of the things that we have to do is understand where’s the Delta? Right, like, where is there some sort of gap, or organization that we need to improve on? And the ages and pieces then a little bit under the radar for a lot of companies?
Michael Watson 36:42
Yeah, I think when looking back on my career, the last time this was really important was during Y2K, we had all these systems that were built in COBOL. And then all these COBOL programmers have resigned. Right? So then you had all these organizations that were really concerned about their systems crashing in the year 2000, which I can’t believe was 24 years ago. Now, it seems like just yesterday. But we had to bring back a lot of those folks. Right. So it seems like this was the last time that you know, we were actively going after some of these experienced workers, because they had that knowledge of these older systems that were still running, that we were just really deathly afraid of them crashing during that turnover. So those were interesting times to say the least.
Jenny Neuharth 37:31
This next piece, unique value of experienced workers. When I hit on this, when I was looking through some of the research here, this is a piece that really stood out to me, and I don’t like to read off slides, because it’s not as engaging. But this one I put intentionally on here, because I think there’s a lot of power in what it says. So in the age of artificial intelligence and automation, the uniquely human power skills that experienced workers excel are more valuable than ever, their ability to lead, effectively communicate and navigate the human side of work is becoming increasingly important. Mike, how does that resonate with you?
Michael Watson 38:11
Yeah, you know, there’s, there’s an old saying, “Do a lot of fishing with my father. And many times, he would catch 10 fish to my one. And I would wonder, like, what’s going on here, right, and he’d say, Son, it’s all about time on the water. And it took me years to understand what that meant. And what that meant was, he’d been out there a million times, he knew exactly what to do in this situation, and these weather conditions, and that watercolor, and you can apply that to anything, whether I’m a truck driver, whether I’m a programmer, the more time you spend in that seat, the more experiences you have, the more you’ve gone through this. And I think that’s where these power skills come into play, right? Our ability to lead, communicate and navigate the human side of work. It only comes with time in the sea or time on the water, right? There’s, there’s nothing, there’s no course I can take you through to help replicate that you have to have done it. And I think that’s where, you know, tapping into the experience worker becomes so critical is tapping into that time in the seat, there is no replacement for experience. Right. You know, my sister’s a flight attendant for Delta. I’d much rather have a pilot with 20 years experience than one that just graduated flight school, no offense. I want my pilots up there to know what it’s like to experience turbulence and fly through a storm and how to deal with these other situations that only come a time in the seat. So I think when we talk about these power skills, it’s not just knowing where a b and c is. It’s knowing how to deal with all the different situations that might occur during your normal role?
Jenny Neuharth 40:05
Absolutely. And to that point, what am I talking about here, as experience can’t be simulated or fast tracked, right? That’s one of those unique power skills. As we zoom into the future shaped by AI, and technology, one thing becomes clear, the real heroes are still human. And again, because humans are so uniquely different, and nuance is a thing where there isn’t one size fits all that looks good, that ability to ask the right sharp questions, to engage that human side is even more needed in the world today than it ever has been. And while technical skills can often be taught, how our skills, right, are usually developed over time. And they’re priceless. When we look at what we have in the workforce. I know we’re, we’re talking a little much here. So we’re gonna fly through some of these last slides as well. So adaptability and tech savviness. And, again, really encourage you to download the resources that came from our organization, a full AI there in the bottom left of your experience today, whether you’re watching this on demand, or you’re watching this live, but adaptability and tech savviness is one of the areas that was really dug into. And so experienced workers take remote work in stride, adapting quickly to technology, virtual communication and new work formats. I know for me, I had myself a little bit of a design bias, I thought that people would have had older, you know, communities based on my experience, my parents and grandparents, that there would have been that hesitation. But again, the data shows that’s not the case. And also, when it comes to remote work, experienced workers are not just surviving, you’re actually thriving in it. And so that’s exciting for me to see, I have a for you, Mike.
Michael Watson 41:56
Yeah, you know, I think, you know, because I don’t have I’m not starting a family, right, I’m on the kind of the tail end of that, where it’s kind of getting out of the house, I know, personally, I can actually give more time to work, right, I’m not having to cut out and pick up kids from school and arrange daycare and having to cover for that. So, you know, there’s a lot of things that that once again, that a lot of benefits that come with experience workers, right, they just don’t have some of those challenges, that someone would have maybe starting out their career starting out with a family, and not saying they’re bad, right, we all have to go through it. But once again, you know, tapping into this, folks that have already gone through it and can really focus more of their time and their efforts on the tasks to be completed, I think is a real benefit to your organization. So if it’s something you haven’t considered, really, really kind of take hold of some of these things that we’re talking about, and go back and share them with your organization and see if there’s something that you can do to make an impact in this area.
Jenny Neuharth 43:06
Absolutely. And the thing that we just want to leave you with for this part here is with years of experience under experienced workers belts, they’re uniquely equipped to lead virtual teams, their communication, leadership and problem solving skills. Those are pieces that are absolutely vital when we’re looking at how you manage a team, especially when we get remote, right. So knowing how to foster a sense of unity, across the screens, and maintain productivity, being able to assess or identify those signals, because those have been gleaned from years and years of experience, right? Going into this pandemic. They’re often the data that shows us more tune to being able to build that connectivity. And, team fact, behind a screen than their younger, younger counterparts. And so here, we’re just gonna go quick. And I know that we’re coming up to questions, we want to make sure to, to answer some of the awesome questions that are coming to the box. If you haven’t taken a moment, please take a moment to submit your questions that Mike and I can address here just in a moment. And so we wanted to leave you with five different strategies for integrating experienced workers. So you’ve learned a lot today about what’s the current state, right, we know that population is declining. And so just to fill the existing jobs today, based on again, the population chunks across the different organizations, or the different generations, in order to just meet the jobs that are open today, we have to see an increase in 25% of going into the experienced workers. And so and that’s just again to maintain what we’ve got. And so as we move forward into this, there are five different strategies we wanted to share for integrating experienced workers. The first is To put the unbeatable competitive advantage of experience to work, higher for potential, not for age, promote lifelong learning and upskilling. Make age a key consideration, potentially in your DEI programs, is that there today doesn’t need to be fair. That’s an answer for you to take back to your organization and ask, or a question. offer flexible work environments for mutual success. So again, humans are not one size fits all their needs are not one size fits all what good looks like for them is not one size fits all. And being able to understand that human what their good books like, and then being able to build strategies that are going to work for them is really important. Mike and I are going to,
Michael Watson 45:49
I think you touched on all the right notes here, right experiences aren’t just about how many years someone’s worked, right. It’s about the challenges they faced, right. Some of those examples I gave you. Whether you know, they both come with those challenges, the insights that gained was the wisdom they bring into the role. And I think actually, this slide ties in well, just some of the questions I’m starting to see pop up in the chat. So we’ll definitely get to those here shortly. I know some of you have posted some of those. But yeah, I think this is exactly it right is, you know, put this make this a competitive advantage to you. If your competitors aren’t willing to do this. Maybe that’s where you beat them. Right. And once again, we have to create products and services that serve all people, right? Not just younger generations, or folks in mid career, right? It’s, you know, I think about this, my parents are on Facebook, my dad’s on Instagram, right, approaching 90, they’re still using a lot of these consumer products that are out there. So, you know, once again, if you’re not considering those types of folks, when you’re building your products, you could be missing out on huge revenue, swaths and profit margins and just market share. So I think there’s a lot to glean from this. So, Jenny, maybe it’s, it’d be a good time for us to maybe jump into the q&a session and address a few of these questions. So
Jenny Neuharth 47:27
Again, thank you so much for submitting those questions. Mike, do you want to drive and pick some of those out?
Michael Watson 47:33
I’ll be the moderator here. And I’ll hand this over to you. And then of course, we’ll have some color commentary. So it looks like the first question we have from members of the audience is, how can you encourage managers to understand that applicants who are more experienced aren’t a bad thing or quote to experience for the role?
Jenny Neuharth 47:54
How can you help them understand there’s a couple of ways if you have the ability to build connections and to work one on one with that hiring manager? That’s definitely a good start. But the other is, does your technology today offer a way that you can anonymize for PII and different demographic insights? What that human is? And so when we present a slate of candidates to the hiring manager, can we take off age, can we take off, you know, the college, they went to their background and just focus on the skills. Often that part when we’re able to present a slate of candidates that is based on skills, it allows us to think very differently about who we’re going to shortlist or bring to the table. And so I would say, you know, work with us hiring managers as a first. And it’s an important piece about being able to educate them, what unconscious bias looks like, knowing that like we all have it, it’s not just like one person versus the other. But we all have, again, this model of what good looks like for a specific role. And then being able to leverage technologies that are going to help you be able to operationalize, knowing that humans are biased when it comes to decision making. Right. So, Mike, what do you think?
Michael Watson 49:12
Yeah, you know, one of the things I did in a previous life on the TA side was I redesigned our interview questions, right? And we went to more of what we call results based selection. So we brought in some of our best producers in those roles, understood what made them successful, and we built our interview questions around that round results based. So imagine this, it doesn’t matter if I’m talking to someone who’s 25 or 30, or I’m talking to someone who’s 55 or 60. It’s more about, Hey, how did you go about building this? What were your steps? How did you deal with the stakeholders? And have these folks walk you through these results based selection questions? Oh, you know, I had to buy consensus and there was some pushback here. Here’s how I dealt with it and really document that. Well, from a recruiter perspective. I wore the recruiter hat for 25 years. So when you’re presenting these folks, to these hiring managers, you can say, hey, don’t let’s not focus on how many years experience they have, let’s focus on, this is the business problem we need solved here at work. And here’s how this candidate went about solving a very, very similar problem in their organization, and walked them through those concrete steps. I think if you focus on that, then all of a sudden, you’re going to find out that there’s a lot more buy in to talk to these folks to interview these folks. Because you’re not making it just about a laundry list of bullet points to match from right, you’re really making this about, hey, this is our business challenge. I’ve interviewed on a results based process around how we solve these challenges. And here’s how the candidate has responded to this. So it could be someone that you’re hiring fresh out of college and is new in their career, or it really is that experienced person that’s gone through those challenges as sophomores in the past and can talk to them articulately. You know, I think that’s one way to hopefully get your managers to understand that maybe that two experience buckets in the past is maybe changing. And you can change some mindsets there as well.
Jenny Neuharth 51:26
Yeah, one last thing that I just want to share is, again, you have those resources that are in the bottom left aspect of your screen, download them, being able to educate that hiring manager that there are less humans out there today to fill the role. So we have to think differently about how we’re going to fill them. And perhaps your organization will take on ageism as one of the DNI priorities. Because then you can say, hey, guess what? I get that we may not have historically done this before. But here’s the data that supports why this is important. And oh, by the way, our organization is committed to being able to embrace older, more seasoned workers as a part of our talent strategy. Those are all different levers that can help in, you know, in this journey. Mike, what’s our next question? That
Michael Watson 52:13
There were no more great questions. So we’ll kind of go through a speed round. So the next one is any suggestions on places to recruit experienced workers other than the typical job boards? Jenny, your thoughts first?
Jenny Neuharth 52:28
So success leaves clues? Does your current talent acquisition process have an ability to drill down on the source of your hire? And if you don’t? How do you get that? Because it’s really important to understand that user behavior, and I’m gonna get a little technical for a second here, I apologize for all those of you that are listening, but user behavior, meaning the humans who are engaging with your job applications, it shifts, right. And so having real time awareness, to where are you getting the older workers in your current state is important if that’s a strategy, because the ones I understand, Okay, I’m getting more of those workers here or there, or what have you, I can reverse engineer to put more resources to that specific thing. Conversely, you might have one of your channels from a talent attraction strategy aspect, that is not getting any experienced workers. And if you’ve thought, you know, this is important to us, maybe you turn that channel off for a specific role. And so there’s all these different pieces that you can do. But I think the first step is being able to understand that, again, success leaves clues, and look at the data within your organization. To see where you’ve gotten that before, you also might have experienced workers that exist in your existing applicant pool historically, right? Because we know that historical biases have prevented us from being able to hire these individuals. One of the cool things that we have with the technology that Mike and I support is it will take your existing applicant pool of the 1000s, if not millions of candidates that are in there, and update based on skills so that you have real time awareness and understanding of the people who have applied to you before. So that bucket again of candidates is also a great, great place to start. But there is not like a one size fits all answer on this. The important thing is choosing to begin and you’re gonna Shakira try everything and test right to see what’s going to work and sharpen your strategy based on that.
Michael Watson 54:24
All right, I’m gonna keep this short because we are running out of time. So the person that asked that question, you know, I’m starting to get AARP notices in the mail. Right? Maybe you go to the AARP and see if they have job boards or see if you can advertise on their websites. You know, the other thing that popped out to me were senior centers, right, find your local senior centers close to your organization’s at some job postings. They’re calling to reach out to them, you know, nothing replaces that phone, pick up the phone, talk to the person that’s running that senior center down there. Talk to them about what you’re trying to hire for, right that they’re having these folks come in all day long. And maybe those can be a couple of buckets that you can tap into as well. Next question here and Jenny, we got to be quick organizations adapting the compensation models to attract more experienced workers, such as being willing to pay more for experience. A long answer. So I was gonna say we
Jenny Neuharth 55:22
might use this maybe Alonzo, whoever asked that question, feel free to add me on LinkedIn. And we can have a side conversation about this because there’s a longer answer to that specific topic. And part of it has to do with the fact that actually experienced workers are often not the ones that are paid as much isn’t right. And so being able to get in check your biases about, like, what does an experienced worker need? A lot of us contribute age with pay? And that isn’t, unfortunately, historically how it’s gone. So being able to understand what are the skills today? What are the skills cost out there, regardless of the person being young, old, whatever, being able to understand what those skills are valued at? And then what good is for that candidate is going to help you be able to answer that
Michael Watson 56:07
question. Yeah, and I’d say remember that not all these hires have to be full time hires, you might be able to bring on someone on a contract for maybe the person is only looking to work 20 hours a week. So you can pay them a little bit more, it still fits within your budget, right? So the experienced worker is getting what they want, the hours they want, the pay they want, it’s still fitting within your budget. So it’s not always full time employment, right? These can be gig opportunities. These can be short term contracts. But there’s a lot of different ways to kind of work through that. Couple more. Listen, probably the last one. How do you overcome biases in the hiring process? When management is adamant about knowing graduation year and prefers recent grads? You know, I’ll start here with this. This is a cultural shift. And it’s not going to be easy. I wish I could sit here and tell you Yeah, do this overnight, and it’s going to be fixed, right? You know, partner with your CHRO partner with the CEO, have them understand the benefits of this. Because in many of the organizations, it’s a cultural shift. And unfortunately, it’s not going to be as easy as well just do it and see how it works out. It’s unfortunately not going to work with Jenny, I’ll hand this over to you for the last few comments. And then we’ll hand this back over to our friend Connor.
Jenny Neuharth 57:28
Yeah, I think. Again, last piece, everybody has unconscious biases, we know that we understand that, being able to choose to begin on this topic. This is not something that’s project based, where you’re just going to decide that you’re to start hiring older workers, and then you’re going to do it for a while and stop. This is something that needs to be program based. You choose to begin, you’re not sure what the model is going to look like. But once you begin, you’re able to sharpen based on what works, what doesn’t, what do we change, you’re able to build your internal change management strategies to change, you have to sell typically to the humans within your organization. Right. And so I think for everybody who’s listening today, again, you have a lot of choices that you have available to you about how to spend your time. And I’m really glad that you chose to spend this last hour with Mike and I to discuss this topic, which is an important one. And I hope that you all add us on LinkedIn, we’d love to continue the conversation. And a huge thank you to SHRM as well for seeing the value in this topic, and making it readily available to you. So thank you.
Michael Watson 58:40
Thank you, sir. Honor back to you.
SHRM Moderator 58:45
Thank you. This webcast is sponsored by Eightfold AI. Eightfoldl AI delivers the talent intelligence platform, the most effective way for companies to retain top performers and rescale the workforce, recruit top talent efficiently and reach diversity goals. Eightfold is a deep-learning artificial intelligence platform that empowers enterprises to turn talent management into a competitive advantage. For more information, please visit www.eightfold.ai. Before we sign off, we want to thank our presenters, Michael Watson and Ginny Neuharth with Eightfold AI for the information they provided today. And we also want to thank everyone who tuned in for being with us, and for choosing SHRM for HR webcasts. That concludes this program.
Michael Watson 59:34
Thank you.
