Category: Features

Retaining Older Workers

Talented and creative workers have one unique joker in their deck. If they’re that good, no matter what the conditions are, they can find alternative jobs.

Who is it that we want to retain? It’s those people who have the option to leave–the people who have the option of exiting. Older workers oftentimes fall in this category. We don’t want them to retire because they have the cumulative knowledge, the capacity, and the skills necessary to make an organization succeed.

Shortly after 9/ll the NYC fire department, facing financial difficulties, offered an early retirement program. By solving one problem they created another. Early retirement was picked up by specific individuals who had critical knowledge and experience that was essential to moving the fire department away from its traditional structure to a model of a security-conscience agency. Similarly, in the last number of years organizations have been making similar moves. They are pushing for early retirement on one side while at the same time they desire to retain their best and their brightest.

Recently, my colleague Peter Bamberger and I received funding from Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) to analyze how job and organizational factors affect individual retirement decisions among a national probability sample of 500 older workers.

These workers, initially contacted just before becoming eligible to receive retirement benefits, provided extensive data on the nature of their jobs, their employer’s HR policies and practices, and the extent to which they felt attached and connected with others at work. One year later, when these employees became eligible for retirement we contacted them again. Of the 500 surveyed, less than 50 people left the workforce.

As we continue to follow this sample of older workers, we are going to focus on what aspects of their jobs and overall work environment predict retention. We have to ask ourselves if there is a set of shared factors that inspire older workers to keep punching in.

Some of the qualitative data collected from these and other older workers suggests that social relations with coworkers and patterns of work-based social support play a pivotal role when retirement-eligible workers make the decision to throw in the towel or not. Organizational factors that we’ve seen from our qualitative work suggests that organizations that offer more “senior-friendly” benefits such as drug discount programs, wellness programs and elder-care programs, as well as career development programs geared for older workers are likely to experience high retention rates.

Given that older workers will comprise an increasingly larger portion of American and European labor forces in the coming years it’s crucial that we understand effective organizational factors that can help employers retain retirement-eligible employees.

Picture Credit: Flickr Commons

Tags employyes, fire department, hr policies, leadership retention, nyc fire department, peter bamberger, qualitative work, retaining leaders, retaining older workers, retaining retirement-eligible employees, retention, retirement, retirment, shrm, society for human resource management, talent management

BLG Leadership Insights Features

Negotiating Nothing: India & Pakistan

Post author By blg_admin
Post date February 9, 2010
No Comments on Negotiating Nothing: India & Pakistan

Colonial rule in India ended after 350 years of British occupation. In August of 1947 the cash-strapped British Empire formally left Southeast Asia, which gave way to the emergence of two nations: India and Pakistan. In Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India, Stanley Wolpert assesses both the reasons partition came to pass and the circumstances behind its associated horrors.

Mr. Wolpert attempts to assign responsibility for the horrors of partition and offer a hypothesis for what caused this reaction. Ultimately, his contention is that the majority of the blame for partition and its legacy of hatred, fear, and continued conflict lies primarily on the shoulders of Lord Louis Mountbatten, British India’s last viceroy. Sent to India in March of 1947 with explicit instructions to facilitate a peaceful solution Indian independence, “Dickie” Mountbatten a seasoned commander in Asia and a favorite cousin of King George VI, was more anxious to return to his beloved navy than effectively govern India.

Under the mandate proposed before Mountbatten’s arrival British troops and civilians were scheduled to withdraw fourteen months after Dickies’ arrival, in June 1948, but Mountbatten further shortened this schedule. Less than five months after his arrival, British officers had withdrawn, independence was declared, and the subcontinent forever divided, leaving the newly birthed nations of India and Pakistan to manage the chaos of partition alone.

In 1942, under the Cabinet Mission Plan, there had been some hope of a unified India, with a government consisting of three tiers within similar lines as the borders of India and Pakistan at the time of partition. The Indian Congress rejected the proposed plan and it was never implemented. The plans dismissal further convinced Muslim League leaders that unification was impossible and partition remained the only viable outlet.

In attempt to stymie the bad blood between the two increasingly hostile parties the Birtish Viceroy, Lord Wavell, brought both them both to the bargaining table. The results of his effort led to several lengthy discussions held in 1944 and 1945 between the future Governor–General of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of Muslim Independence League, and Mahatma Gandhi, the spiritual leader of the Indian Congress and national hero. Both men refused to make concessions and the talks failed. Viceroy Wavell wired Secretary Amery to announce the outcome of the summit. He wrote,

“Breakdown reveals complete absence of common ground between Gandhi and Jinnah… Gandhi wants transfer of full power to some nebulous national government and later settlement of Hindu-Moslem differences. His belief in unity of Indian is sincere but he is also profoundly Hindu, and if his interim government materialized he would hope for Hindu domination subject to some degree self determination for Moslem provinces. Jinnah is determined to get division of India into Pakistan and Hindustan cut and dried before the British leave.”

Failing to reach a compromise, Jinnah and Gandhi left the door open for radical members of their parties to deal with partition and ultimately allowed Mountbatten ample time to blow everything up. Mountbatten’s intense hate of Jinnah contrasted by his respect and admiration for Nehru (India’s first Prime Minster) led to the boundary commission drawing lines that were favorable to India, but horrible for Pakistan.

By succumbing to the wishes of radical party members and failing to agree to any new arrangements proposed by British leadership, both Gandhi and Jinnah failed as leaders. Execution should be placed beyond personal desires. Leaders should always strive to act in the best interest of the team. Both leaders failed to execute and lost critical time by over-processing summit talks. Their stalling, delaying, and over-processing directly hindered independence and caused the deaths of millions.

Picture Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zen/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Tags britain, british, dickie mountbatten, ghandi, hindu, india partition, india's last viceroy, indian congress, lord louis mountbatten, mahatma gandhi, muslim, muslim independence league, muslim league, nehru, pakistan, prime minister, shameful flight: the last years of the british empire in india, stanley wolpert

BLG Leadership Insights Features

The Pivot Point: Don’t Drop The Ball

Post author By blg_admin
Post date January 28, 2010
No Comments on The Pivot Point: Don’t Drop The Ball

President Obama and the democrats are facing a fundamental leadership challenge: the challenge of not dropping the ball.

Leadership requires two fundamental skills: the ability to mobilize people and the ability to go the distance. All too often, leaders have a capacity to get people on their side, to rally them around an idea, but lose momentum by forgetting to focus on those key managerial activities that must be sustained to go the distance. Most importantly, these slippages come when leaders fail to realize that while they need not be constantly hands-on, they still have to make sure that they’re involved.

Here’s why leaders drop the ball:

1. They allow too much autonomy: Often leaders give others too much autonomy and walk away from the day-to-day execution. “Do it and come back and tell me when it’s done” is not a mindset that assures sustainability or definite implementation. Leaders must find a way of giving autonomy but defining parameters.

2. They talk things to death: Often too much time is spent processing. It’s one thing to have dialogue, it’s one thing to have numerous discussions. It’s quite another to over-engage and over-analyze. The danger is dropping the ball by processing things to death.

3. They overreact: Often leaders overreact to any situation that doesn’t go exactly as they had hoped. Creating change and putting things in place demands making adjustments. Making adjustments doesn’t mean throwing out the baby with the bath water. It doesn’t mean overreacting.

4. They lose focus on the coalition: Often leaders forget the very coalition mindset, the sense of collective that got people to rally around their ideas, and thus let the coalition mindset slip away. To go the distance, leaders must make sure that the collective doesn’t dissipate.

Often inexperienced leaders spend much of their time making sure that others have rallied around their cause. Those that learn quickly and those that succeed understand that getting people on their side is one thing, but keeping them there is another.

Picture Source: Flickr Commons

Tags autonomy, drop the ball, leader's and autonomy, leadership, mobilize people, momentum, talk things to death

BLG Leadership Insights Features

Make Adjustments but Don’t Overreact

Post author By blg_admin
Post date January 22, 2010
1 Comment on Make Adjustments but Don’t Overreact

Massachusetts is making Obama and his policy makers reevaluate the political landscape. They are going to have to make adjustments and make them soon. Of course, this is a challenge for any leader because adjustments aren’t easy and they can cause overreactions.

It seems obvious—if you have data that indicate an initiative is failing, you should be able to make adjustments. Yet sometimes inertia sets in after an evaluation has been made. You put the initiative in place, it’s moving, sure it needs adjusting and tweaking, but is it worth the effort? You already have some embedded transaction costs. You are already comfortable with the process. You wonder how much risk you’re willing to take, how much adjustment you’re willing to make.