While the media circus goes around one more time over Australia’s ageing workforce crisis, has anybody managed to remember to do anything about it? David Hovenden reports
While the media circus goes around one more time over Australia’s ageing workforce crisis, has anybody managed to remember to do anything about it? David Hovenden reports
Finding Nemo’ features, apart from the father and son duo of brightly coloured clown fish, a beautiful blue tang called Dory. She is the comedic sidekick, frequently utilised in animated movies such as this. Like all such characters her comedy is generated through her flaws, because they are exaggerated versions of something we can all relate to. In Dory’s case she suffers from short-term memory loss; well she is a fish isn’t she?
As Dory plays her part in the adventure of ‘finding Nemo’, she consistently forgets what she is doing – often with hilarious or extremely life threatening consequences. It would seem reasonable to assume that Dory’s character has been fashioned on Australia’s leaders over the past decade or more.
In recent weeks Australia’s media has been rife with stories surrounding the ever-thorny issue of Australia’s ageing working force. The Prime Minister John Howard has asked his Community Business Partnership panel, which includes Visy Industries chairman Richard Pratt, Gerard Industries chairman and Reserve Bank of Australia board member Robert Gerard, AlintaGas chairman Tony Howarth, Commonwealth Bank director Fergus Ryan and Mission Australia chief executive Patrick McClure, to formulate policies in the area.
Also noteworthy has been the slanging match between the Business Council of Australia and various peak recruitment bodies and leaders who have been blaming each other for the apparent failure of Australian business to recruit mature-aged workers.
The Business Council of Australia (BCA), in its employment guide for business on supporting mature-age employees, laid the blame at recruitment consultants’ feet for ‘ageism’. The BCA argues that while its members might have confidence in their hiring policies’ age equality, the same could not be said for the recruitment agencies they used.
Predictably recruiters hotly rejected the assertion claiming that they simply do what they’re told and follow briefs from their client companies. Tanner Menzies CEO Peter Gleeson, Hamilton James & Bruce CEO Allan Marks, PKL Personnel CEO Phoebe Lane and Adecco CEO Jo-Anne Collier led the pack in asserting that they’d really like to hire more mature-aged workers, but the companies they worked for just wouldn’t let them.
While such debates make for great media stories, they do tend to suffer from Dory syndrome – the real issues are forgotten and the problems continue, just not with the hilarious consequences. Less than half of Australia’s 55 to 64-year-olds are in the workforce, well below many OECD countries.
Walmar Wagner is the secretary of the not for profit association The Executives Co-ordination Group (TECG), which was established last year as a way of supporting unemployed executives who believe that they are not ready to be consigned to the workforce scrap heap just yet.
Wagner, a former CEO himself, believes that the issue of age discrimination is alive and well in Australia whether it’s the fault of recruiters or the businesses they service. Testament to his belief is the rapid expansion of TECG. With the assistance of a little government funding, the organisation has seen its membership grow in the past year to 150 members and is predicted to continue growing exponentially.
According to Wagner, the association is comprised entirely of highly qualified individuals who have the common problem of not being able to get back in to the workforce.
Rather than its membership taking up a full-time interest in gardening, Wagner says that TECG is putting its brimming talent pool to good use and is doing what it can to find both consulting and full-time employment opportunities for its members – as well as providing social, networking and support functions to its members, some of whom are in crisis.
Not unlike Australian Pensioners Insurance, which was established to cater for a group that’s needs were not being met, TECG has aspirations to become, among other things, a job placement agency for executives that have been labelled “past it”, but who still want to contribute to the workforce.
Wagner talks of his own difficulties and in so doing points to the frustration of sending off countless resumes, which match every criteria specified, but being told that he’s too experienced or questioned over what his real aspirations are. “I’m applying for this job,” he says. “That’s the job I want. I’m happy to sit down and just do the job they ask of me, and do it really well.”
The other problem, of course, is how do you encapsulate 20, 30 or 40 years of business experience in a two-page resume?
This is a problem that at least one organisational development consultancy has identified. Incorporate, an organisational strategy consultancy, was so frustrated at normal recruitment practices, it set out to re-engineer the recruitment process.
Incorporate took the radical step of advertising a job and requesting applicants did not send a CV, but rather a 50-word summary as to why they should be considered for the job. The aim was to find a much wider pool of talent rather than someone in the same job at another organisation who was dissatisfied.
Having successfully placed a senior publishing executive at Reed Business Information, managing director Alan Cartwright is sure the idea has legs.
“Relying on resumes is essentially flawed because many people don’t come across well on paper. What we thought was needed was someone with very strong business acumen who could pick up the publishing side if need be,” says Cartwright.
Reed’s managing director Jeremy Knibbs is also sure that move away from traditional recruitment methodologies is the right one.
“What normal searches typically do is match a CV to a role. What you really want to do is match someone to the next step they want to take in a role so that they can be ambitious and grow with you. That was the rationale behind this approach,” says Knibbs.
When the PM gets involved in an issue, you can be relatively sure that a crisis is looming. The problem is that we’ve known for quite some time that Australia has an ageing workforce, yet paradoxically falling numbers of mature-aged workers. When this current market contraction we are in gives way to boom, where is the talent going to come from? Let’s hope somebody remembers to address the problem in a long-term systemic way before we find ourselves in deep water.
Please send your stories, suggestions and thoughts to [email protected].
