The statistics show that the rate of unemployment among older workers is far less than that of a general workforce. This is because most entrepreneurs and professionals from top managerial positions understand the secret behind hiring an older worker in an organization.
From our general understanding, we are aware that older employees are very talented when it comes to service delivery since they have long term experience compared to young employees.
Hiring them is easy, and it can be a cost-effective way of bringing leadership, maturity, and expertise into an organization. Hiring one older employee into a department can bring a huge positive change in departmental culture and environment.
In this article, we have provided a list of some of the best incentives for adding older employees to your organization.
So, go ahead and consider these 10 good reasons to hire older workers:
1. Reduced Labor Costs
An older employee is more beneficial to an organization if you want to cut the cost of production by lowering the labor cost. Lots of older employees have their insurance and medical plans from previous employers, along with other benefits and possible income from various other sources. This makes them flexible and more willing to accept less in return for learning, adventure and socialization that comes with delivering their skill and experience to the organization. Older employees are aware of what they are up to in an organization, rather than just collecting paychecks.
As an entrepreneur or manager you should take your time to weigh and balance between turnover and maturity and experience. Hiring young employees to permanent positions could give you less turnover, but they may lack maturity and experience, which can cause a serious deficiency in the performance of your business. While with older employees, you can benefit from long term managerial, technical or functional experience and maturity, which helps to buttress your business operations when it comes to decision making and problem-solving.
2. Budget Flexibility
If an employer has an employment freeze, hiring temporary older employees often comes from a different company budget than hiring permanents that sometimes avoids the company policy restrictions aimed at permanent hires. Older employees are often available at reasonable salary while most youths look for long term paying jobs. When an employee intends to cut expenses of paying more salary or reducing the cost of production by reducing the number of long term employees, the best choice may well be to hire older workers since they are available any time at the offered salary.
3. Positive Attitude
Mature employees are always happy to have a good attitude, and appreciation for their job, while most of the young employees don’t appreciate their jobs, especially their monthly pay and position. You will find that frequently young employees are unhappy, and have negative attitudes toward their jobs.
4. Punctuality
You can hardly find an older worker with frequent absenteeism from their duties. Older workers are very punctual, and this seems to be given. They can’t wait to be in their workplace on a daily basis.
5. Commitment/Dedication
Older workers are very dedicated and have a better commitment to providing quality work, which in turn results in significant utilization of resources and more savings for an organization.
An older worker can take their time in finding common petty mistakes such as pricing or accounting errors that could lead to high production cost and correct them using relevant measures.
6. Little or No Training Necessary
Having an older employer can be a very great benefit to an organization. This is because they are mature in job skills following long term training attended and experience gained. With them, you don’t need to spend much in training since many of them have developed an expertise and can be of help to an organization when you need to train young employees ‘how it is done.’ Older employees are able to handle various projects and assignments from previous experience. For them, they don’t require many rules and regulations to get the work done since they are well informed of the guidelines.
7. Possess Superior Customer Service Skills
As an employer, you should learn that an older person who has experience working with different companies has gained more experience in etiquette. Most of the older workers possess a high standard of etiquette. Most clients are people of their age, and so they understand one another better. This is the reason why they should be given a chance to face clients. Many older clients are not working just for money, but they are there to interact with more people as they give them the services they want. They are interested in making and nurturing good relationships between the organization and the potential clients.
8. Flexibility
Older workers can be hired when the need for a specific project arises, and released after the completion of the project. This helps employers cut some cost of hiring new permanent employees, with additional costs like insurance, among other salary add-ons—hiring temporary older workers generally requires an employer to pay only salary with little or no benefits.
9. They Often Have Better People Skills
Older people have encountered different people with diverse characters and behavior during their previous experiences. With this in mind, they cannot be surprised upon meeting people of different behaviors since they are aware of various ways to deal with them. They happen to have good communication skills, even when solving critical issues. Being part of diverse industries for a very long time, they know what to say and how to handle issues during corporate meetings.
These people understand more about handling young employees and making sure that they provide them with relevant skills and business ethics. More so, older employees understand more about issues outside the business, such as politics or culture. They are able to solve problems that link business towards political issues and are able to explain more about the reasons why these factors relate to the workplace.
10. More Eager to Learn New Skills
Older workers seem to believe that learning continues throughout life, and that is what made them join an organization for work instead of having a rest to enjoy their retirement benefits. These people are eager to learn new things; that is the reason why they also strive for more knowledge and skill than younger people.
Need Help Hiring Older Workers?
If you look to hire older, more mature workers for your organization, Flexicrew can help. If you have other particular hiring needs, contact us Today!