Seniors at work, a win-win alternative.

Seniors as mentor for juniors

The belgian business magazine trends.be published recently an article about a survey organized by Acerta Marketing Intelligence, about seniors employees. It appears that the trend about the work of the seniors is progressing on a positive way. Indeed, around 33% of companies are considering to keep the collaboration with their talented senior employees for a longer time and extend their active life. This is a positive sign given by companies, showing a change of mentality and vision. There are of course legal restriction to the extension of professional life, but some possibilities are existing and could be interesting for the economy.

These time, most of countries have to face with the problem of retirement and the payment of pensions. The proportion of retired people compared to active people is increasing and in a few years, the payment of pensions could be an issue. But the increase of retirement age is unacceptable for some politics and for trade unions. They consider that people have merited to stop to work and to let the jobs to the youth. We can agree on such view, but does it mean that everybody is happy to stop working?

The extension of the professional careers could be an advantage for the economy and for the people too. Here are some positive points:

• The freedom to still work. Some people enjoy to work, because they like their job, and they always look for learning and progressing in the live. The age of retirement is something subjective. Age is a question of mind. There are people who are still young in their mind even if they are sixty years old.
• Benefit for the health. Some studies showed that people pursuing a professional or a volunteer activity have a better psychic health. They can still work on a project, concretize a goal. Nicolas Hayek, the founder of Swatch, was used to say that like the artists, the entrepreneurs will never be retired, they just move to another function. Each people has to be the entrepreneur of his life, and should be allowed to continue a professional activity if he is still motivated.
• The flexibility. The Seniors who want to continue to work, would maybe work on a part time basis, which could match with the needs of companies. The companies could contract the seniors for specific projects needing only a part time activity. This flexibility should be a win-win deal. The companies would benefit from the expertise of the seniors following their needs, and the seniors could still contribute to the economical activity and to maintain a positive work-life balance.
• To act as a mentor. The academical background is important to face professional challenges, but the years of experience is also an asset. In a fast moving environment, we have to learn everyday. The seniors could contribute positively to the juniors career development. The juniors learned other things at school or university and will have different approach than the seniors. On the other hand, seniors have a lot of practical experience, giving the advantage to anticipate and to be more pro-active in certain situation. Seniors have more experience and knowledge, juniors have ideas and technical skills. By working together on a project, they can combine their competences and provide innovative and added valued solutions.
• To share enthusiasm. By working with the juniors, the seniors who are still motivated to work, will show their motivation, their enthusiasm, what will be an example for the junior. If work is considered as a constraint, your life will be worse than the hell. First you have to chose the job you like, and to get the change to work with inspiring people.
• A complementary financial revenue. The retirement allowance are lower than the paid salaries during the professional career. If a retired people can earn a complementary revenue, he can still maintain a certain level of life, which is positive for the economy. He can still contract services contributing to his wellness. In Belgium, a important part of the retired people are living under the poverty level.

The possibility to continue to work is an interesting and positive alternative which should be given for those who wants to continue to work. Work should not be seen as an obligation, but also as a right. Work is often seen as a constraint, but our life is full of constraints. The challenge of live is to live with these constraints and to be creative to face them. By learning from the constraints, we are reaching the freedom, the freedom to chose our constraints.

Small could still be beautiful

Silicon Valley, land of innovation

In my previous posting, I was talking about the social economy as an alternative. Of course, to face such complex problem, there is not only one solution, but different ways of alternatives. If I am coming back to this subject, it is because when some indicators are showing that the recession seems to be over, other consequences of the economical crisis are still there, to prompt us to stay moderately optimistic ….or pessimistic. That is what we could see in the news these last days.

Few days ago, there were around seven hundred people losing their job in the Brussels region. A major media distributor felt in bankruptcy and around four hundred people will lose their job. Another pharmaceutical group announced a new restructuring process, by cutting one hundred and seventy jobs. A press group, facing to a decrease of advertising revenues announced also a job cutting of seventy six employees. These tree companies were obliged to axe jobs for different reasons. There are circumstances where we have no choice to cut jobs in order to ensure the company continuity.

Regarding this problematic, I would like to talk about the axed jobs as consequences of merging and acquisitions processes. We can hear very often companies explaining that they acquired other companies or merged with other companies because there are synergies and complementarities between activities. In my mind it should mean that the combination of different activities should provide new opportunities and generate more revenues. It makes sense for small companies who have similar or complementary activities but which can not reach a critical size in their market. But for bigger companies, like international groups, it appears that most of the time, the purpose of such operation is often a financial goal. Most of the time, after such operations, it follows a restructuring wave and a lot of jobs are axed. As already mentioned in other postings, how can this economy survive, when the principle seems to be “do more with less people”? If people are losing their purchasing power, how can we sustain a growing economy? Are merges and acquisitions always necessary to ensure a business? Some years ago, a Belgian fashion designer, Olivier Strelli decided to expand his activities in Japan. After some problems of unfair concurrency and piracy, he decided to stop his activities in this country. Finally, such decisions did not have a negative impact on his business.

It is not forbidden to believe that our economy needs to move to a SME economy, where there is more flexibility in terms of organization, in term of creativity and innovation. I was reading recently in a book written by Philippe Buschini (*) about Personal Branding, a sentence of Nathan Rosenberg saying that “The innovation appears often outside of the existing organizations, partly because the winning organizations are staying in the status quo and are resisting to the ideas which could affect then”. A lot of new high valued activities were created by start up companies, with high potential of development. Let us think for example to the IT industry.

But the interesting point is that in the actual environment, where things becomes more and more complex, these small companies needs to get high value advices and services but on a temporary or part time basis. This could be a real opportunity for other companies and people, to create not only commercial and technical relations, but real business partnerships. This kind of services are already existing, with the field of interim management or project consulting, but we could also consider that people could become partners in several companies, and participate of the development processes for each of then. People would work as freelance, which is still seen as more risky than an employee position, but the advantage could be to gain more experiences by working on different projects and in this way, to ensure their employability.

By thinking about this, it seems that the story is a process of constant renewal. Some small companies grew, became giants and then disappeared. It could be that finally, small could be still beautiful.

(*) Philippe Buschini website: http://www.buschini.com/

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