Insights

Research shows that people across the world are living longer. That means a workforce that skews older, too, as more adults work past the typical retirement age. But these older workers are facing one issue: ageism in the job market and the workplace. How can we ensure these older workers don't get left behind?

What else matters this week?

#1. Work in the era of no retirement.

The world's overall population is skewing older and older as more adults are living longer. That means an aging workface, with many adults working well past the typical retirement age. In fact, older adults are the fastest-growing part of the American workforce. Two years from now, nearly 25% of the workforce will be 55 and older.

But they're facing a key problem: ageism in the job market and workplace. Older workers do not cost more than younger workers. Older workers are not technology averse. And their longevity adds a lot of value to your workplace.

By recognizing older workers' values, and changing upskilling and learning techniques, companies can create a thriving five-generation workforce. Read more at Harvard Business Review.

Photo: Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels 

#2. Is paternity leave the key to workplace equality?

For decades, mothers have traditionally been the ones who left work to look after children.

But the pandemic has accelerated a new shift: fathers wanting to take more of an active role in family life. Fast-moving changes in the workplace parental leave world have resulted in big shifts for mothers and fathers alike, as well as the co-workers who pick up the slack.

If older, male leaders within an organization look down on younger colleagues taking time off to spend with their families, they might be risking losing those employees to different companies with more forward-thinking policies.

Are we still thinking of fathers as the breadwinners in the family, and the women as breadwinners? Read more here.

Photo: Dominika Roseclay from Pexels

3. After decades of flat pay, some Japanese firms boost salaries to retain top talent

Yokohama-based Lasertec Corp has delivered something unique in Japan over the past five years: big pay raises. The company has boosted employee salaries by a third overall since 2016.

Employees at the company's main unit - many of them engineers – take home on average just under 14 million yen ($121,000) That's more than three times the national average of 4.3 million yen.

In Japan, a growing number of companies are opting for performance-based pay, a change that speaks to a wider shift slowly gaining ground in Japan.

"For companies like us, employees are valuable assets, not costs," said Yutaro Misawa, a senior executive at Lasertec. Read more at Reuters.

Photo：Aleksandar Pasaric from Pexels

4.Machine learning is boosting manufacturing.

Researchers surveyed more than 100 high-performing companies to determine how these companies use machine learning technologies successfully. This first-of-its-kind survey found that the companies seeing the most gains from digital technologies had several things in common:

• Strong governance

• Data availability

• Partnerships

• Employees specifically trained in machine intelligence

Photo：Pixabay

5. The boomerang employees returning to previous employers – with new skills and new experience.

In 2018, Lien Ceulemans left Salesforce and took a new job at Google. In 2021, she returned to Salesforce, becoming a "boomerang" employee.
"The people I used to work with reached out when a role came up," Ceulemans told the Financial Times.

It may seem odd to return to a previous employer, but it's more common than most people think. LinkedIn found that 4.5 per cent of new recruits on its platform were boomerangs last year compared with 3.9 per cent in 2019.
There are advantages to the employee, of course: you're familiar with the workplace culture, and it can be easier to integrate with the company.

Of course, there are also advantages for the employer: you may save money on recruitment and training costs all while increasing productivity. One Cornell study found that boomerangs outperformed new hires, especially in roles that involved "relatively high levels of administrative co-ordination, such as project manager and purchasing agent that encompass planning, goal setting, scheduling, and the application of organisational routines and rules."

Photo：Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels