Establishing the Positive Contributory Value of Older Workers: A Positive Psychology Perspective

There is growing evidence that the aging of the global workforce will be the dominant factor for business and organizations in the next two decades. According to renowned management expert Peter Drucker, this is because the rapid growth of the older population and the rapid shrinking of the younger generation will result in a growing scarcity of knowledgeable and competent professionals in our global labor pool. Indeed, many key industries are already experiencing an inability to supply enough technically qualified people to replace those who are retiring. For example, approximately half of the aerospace industry workforce will become eligible to retire in the next ten years, leaving a significant gap in skills for the industry as a whole. More specifically, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been cited as having more than twice as many workers over 60 years of age than under 30 years of age. This jeopardizes the program’s ability to ‘‘hand off’’ leadership roles to the next generation. Higher education faces similar challenges with the retirement of many ‘‘older workers,’’ e.g., full professors who have worked over lifetimes to become experts in their chosen disciplines. Other examples include government, where nearly 65 percent of middle managers are within three years of potential retirement; nursing, with shortages that could lead to the closure of many hospitals just when we need more health care; and the consulting industry, where the loss of older workers is creating a ‘‘brain drain’’ never seen heretofore. Recent data revealed by Deloitte Consulting suggests the number of partners over age 50 has doubled in the last five years. In a grueling profession marked by demanding travel schedules and pensions that vest at 50, many of those partners are heading straight for the exits — leaving a huge experience hole in key positions. Despite these realities, few organizations are currently preparing for the loss of knowledge and experience when workers retire. Nor are they actively seeking to retain these workers. As Greller and Stroh point out in a recent Organizational Dynamics article, this is due primarily to inaccurate perceptions that older workers are of less value than their younger counterparts. We suggest that these flawed perceptions exist in part because organizations have yet to fully understand (or be convinced) of the contributions and value of older workers. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to analyze and explain that which constitutes what we term the positive contributory value of older workers. We take a positive psychology approach to older workers, focusing on leveraging the strengths and talents of older workers for organizational success. We make the argument that organizational leaders have yet to turn their full attention to attract-