Australia is facing a unique challenge with its ageing workforce and must work to ensure a good talent pipeline to highly skilled jobs in order to remain competitive says Hays. This warning has come as the recruitment company notes that an ageing workforce and delayed retirement means older workers are staying longer in highly skilled jobs. The danger is that this trend is restricting younger talent from accessing these more challenging roles.

“Over the past decade, successive Australian governments have recognised that increasing the labour force participation rate of older people is a way to help soften the economic impacts of an ageing population,” notes Nick Deligiannis, managing director of Hays in Australia & New Zealand. “While older workers have always been an important part of the Australian workforce, in recent years the importance of this contribution has grown. Research from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the labour force participation rate of Australians aged 55 and over has increased from 25 per cent to 34 per cent over the past 30 years, with most of the increase occurring in the past 10 years.

“It therefore makes sense to retain mature age workers for as long as possible,” he continues, “but we must not do so at the expense of training and developing new entrants to the labour market. If we look to the future, in order to maintain our competitive edge we need to ensure the country has a future pipeline of talent who have the skills and experience necessary to replace our ageing workforce when they do eventually retire. Otherwise there will be a skills vacuum that will take many years and a huge amount of investment to fill.”

Deligiannis believes employers have to strike the right balance between retaining highly-valued, well educated and experienced older workers, and recruiting and developing the next generation of employees. Ultimately, of course, the focus should be on the recruitment, development and training of staff at all levels and of all ages.

“The ongoing training and development of competent people – of all ages – is essential to the future success of businesses,” concludes Nick. “After all, organisations need to ensure their workforce continues to evolve to changing market conditions. And when someone does decide to retire, they need to have suitably trained and experienced professionals to replace them.”

Source; Global Recruitment