Valuing Experience

Structuring jobs for older workers

Once organisations can accept that there are other valid ways of working apart from the conventional 40-hour week, the alternatives are numerous. Sometimes organisations structure work in this way to meet the particular needs of a current or recent employee. At other times employers will use it as a deliberate strategy to meet the needs of a particular situation or to attract applicants from the wider labour market.

Possible options

• Part-time or job share
There are many variations of this. Part-time may involve reduced days, reduced hours or splitting customer bases or tasks. Sometimes there are greater costs associated with having work done by part-time or job-share employees. There can be costs in supplying safety gear, in providing furniture and equipment. These need to be put beside the potential savings from retaining staff and helping employees continue to perform. When CentrePort did the sums on the costs of introducing job sharing in frontline wharf roles they were clear that the benefits outweighed the costs.

• Reduced hours
This might involve shorter days or shorter weeks. Common patterns are five six-hour days, or four days a week.

• Part-year or seasonal work
This is a useful strategy for matching staffing levels to busy parts of the year, or times when other staff are more likely to want to take leave. Employers cited numerous examples of older workers who liked to work through the summer if they could take the winter months off to travel or visit family, those who wanted to be able to take ski season off, those who knew that there was certain parts of the year they found more difficult with their health when they preferred not to work. This may suit some older people who have retired, had the break they had long been anticipating, and are now ready to meet a new challenge.

• Extended leave
This is a variation on the previous option. People are employed in conventional arrangements but with the option of ‘buying’ additional annual leave, usually as a trade for salary. The difference with this is that people can then negotiate to take that leave at different times during the year, whilst maintaining a steady income level.

• Casual or relief
The organisations who work this option the most effectively actively work to build an ongoing relationship with the workers. They want them to feel part of the place, that they belong. It is a good option for people who have been permanent employees who know the job and organisation, want to retain some involvement, but no longer want to or need to work on a regular basis. CentrePort’s casual pool is a mixture of retirees and young people looking for a way into a permanent role.

It can also be a good option for older workers who are new to the organisation but want to try out the work, or just work on an occasional basis.

Some companies find it useful to cement the relationship either through guaranteeing a minimum number of hours per week or per month, or combining it with part-time work.

• Project
Rather than employing people on a permanent basis, the employment is project by project. This is particularly suited to people with specialist skills, who also want the independence to chose when they work. Projects may involve working full-time for a period, or a fixed number of hours spread over several months depending on the needs of the project.

• Consultancy
This typically suits the experienced, skilled employee who knows the company well. They come in on an occasional basis to provide advice or assistance. It is a good way to retain access to specialist knowledge that is not easily replaced.

Phased retirement programmes
Some employers have pulled together elements of the above to make up a programme specifically designed to help people in the transition to retirement. For example CentrePort has a policy allowing everyone who has worked for more than 30 to reduce to 24 hours a week while still receiving their full-time employer contribution to their super scheme plus a lump-sum payment upon retirement. They estimate that this will amount to an extra 19 weeks’ pay. They are still eligible to work overtime if they have times when they want to earn extra money. Their strategy has been designed to retain people they may otherwise have lost.

Employers who want to implement these kinds of programmes need to consider:
• Who will be eligible?
• What are the possible arrangements that can be considered?
• How do people apply?
• What level of superannuation contribution is the company prepared to make? Full-time or pro-rata?
• How long can people work the alternative arrangement? Is it open ended or is it for a fixed period of time?

Making it work
Many employers we spoke with had occasional ad-hoc arrangements using some of these alternatives. Often they had been very successful in individual situations. However, they also spoke of the risks of this being left to the grace and favour of individual managers, with the associated risk of resentment by other employees. They warned of managers and staff not knowing what the possibilities are and what they might entail, with the possibility that some employees leave unnecessarily and others enter into unsatisfactory arrangements. They also recounted stories of managers entering into arrangements that were contractually difficult. A more systematic approach would be better. There are a number of steps it is useful for organisations to go through. 

                                                      Putting in place Flexible Work options


Putting in place flexible work options

1. Seek the ‘buy-in’ of the relevant managers
What would help them? What would they find difficult? What would make it easier?

2. Enlist the support of the union
They will often know what employees are interested in and what difficulties many need to be resolved. If there need to be adjustments to contracts, it is better to have them involved early so they can work with you to find solutions.

3. Assess which options might be possible in your organisation
Find out what is currently done or has worked in the past. Identify any constraints on what may be possible, including contracts, work schedules and accommodation. Companies that are administered using a strict head-count system rather than using budgets or full-time-equivalents to determine staff levels may find it difficult to implement some of these options. Identify any options that are not going to be possible.

4. Decide what framework you want to operate from
Is this something that is to be offered to all employees; open to all employees but promoted more strongly to older workers; to specific areas of the organisation; or just to those employees who have reached a specified number of years of experience?

5. Find out what might interest your employees
Of the options that might be possible, check whether they would encourage employees to stay longer with your company. Be careful at this stage to be clear that you are investigating possibilities, not making promises.

6. Learn from experience
If managers and employees already have experience of implementing these options, talk with them about what worked, what was difficult and what is needed to make it successful. If the options are new to your organisation, you may want to trial them first in a few places so you can learn from this experience.

7. Put in place the administrative arrangements needed
The options may require some additional administration or different ways of handling them. Check out what is going to be needed and enlist the support of the people who will be involved in handling the administration. Don’t forget that even though the benefits for the organisation may be considerable, you may be making their job harder.

8. Develop tools and processes that can be used by current employees to negotiate these options
You need employees to actively consider not only which option would suit them personally, but what the impact would be on their work and their customers, their colleagues and their manager. The more you can help employees to assess the possibilities, constraints and possible solutions prior to raising the issue with their manager, the easier it will be to negotiate a successful outcome.

9. Equip managers
Use the lessons learnt to equip managers to negotiate and implement these options successfully. This may include guidelines, case studies, coaching or training.

10. Promote the options to employees
This will be an ongoing process. Successful strategies for doing this include using stories of those who have used the options, including information about the options in career and/or life planning seminars and pamphlets that people can take home and discuss with the partners and families.

11. Keep the relationship strong
The success of arrangements where people are not employed on a permanent and regular basis, is dependent upon the company maintaining a relationship with the employee. They need to feel that they are still part of the place. This might be through including them in training or social events, even if this is not a time they are usually working; keeping them up to date with what is happening through newsletters, e-mail updates or inviting them to briefing sessions; involving them in celebrations and farewells; ensuring they have the opportunity to participate in any consultation processes.

12. Use the options to help you recruit
Many of these options may be attractive to people who had not considered working for your company before. Use them to your advantage.

Your organisation cannot guarantee that it can find a solution that will work for each employee, but it can guarantee to give it serious consideration and where possible find a solution that works for them and for the company.

New Zealand Post is currently working through this process with some of their Post Shop managers in the South Island. They are trialling a range of different arrangements so they can deliberately learn from this experience. In doing so, they are finding that the trials, or ‘case studies’ as they are calling them, are helping to provide evidence that different arrangements can work, as well as building the confidence of managers and employees. Where difficulties or questions have arisen in earlier trials, they are deliberately tested in subsequent trials. Every person participating in the trial is asked to keep a weekly journal of how it is going – what is working, what is difficult, and what documentation or tools would have helped make it easier. To date they have been pleasantly surprised at the results. It has been much easier than anticipated. Some of the interesting lessons they have learnt to date include:
• Interest levels have been high but not as many people as anticipated want to take up the options immediately. All are clear though, that they really value having options when they are ready. It has already encouraged at least one valuable employee to stay who was planning on leaving.
• Knowing that options will be available is helping employees plan.
• The administration of it has been much less difficult than anticipated. Very few new administrative processes or documentation have been identified as needed.
• “It has opened people’s minds – we can do things differently.”

Helping people through transitions
Employers can help and encourage their employees to make sensible decisions and to plan for the future by providing:
• processes that encourage managers and employees to have conversations about the future on a regular basis so that solutions can be found that work for both the company and the employee
• access to health and workplace assessments so that employees can make informed and responsible choices about matching their health and fitness levels appropriately with work patterns
• life and retirement planning advice and information that helps people start preparing well before they need to retire.

Orion use an external company to provide a programme called ‘Re-careering’. This is a development opportunity aimed at older workers “looking to redefine the meaning and place of work in their lives as they move into a new stage of their lives”. Many companies that provide these kinds of options find it useful to extend the invitation to spouses and partners as well.

CentrePort has offered pre-retirement seminars for some time, but takeup was not high for operations people, who have little experience in going to seminars. They have targeted some key people from the wharf to attend and think that their enthusiasm for the seminar will ‘spread the word’ that it is a useful thing to do.

Be careful in assuming what people will find useful. New Zealand Post started this project by assuming that the group of staff they were working with would want access to retirement and life-planning seminars. When they surveyed staff, however, they found that although people did have some interest in these things, it was far from their top priority. They were much more interested in having their work valued and having greater flexibility in the way they worked. New Zealand Post therefore decided to meet the needs of people who did want the retirement and life planning information by developing their intranet to provide links to useful sites, and instead focus on other priorities.