Older Workers Play Pivotal Role in Today’s Workforce Challenges
Lessons from 100+ NYC’s Small Business Owners
An investigation into the role older workers play in small businesses found that older workers serve as a solution to many of New York City’s pervasive staffing challenges. Successful businesses report overcoming the current shortage of qualified workers in professions including tailoring, carpentry and jewelry manufacturing by focusing on retaining older workers longer and deploying them to train the next generation. Others—like many in the food services industry—report overcoming high worker turnover by hiring and retaining older employees.
The four “Age Smart Industry Guides” contain detailed strategies and solutions from owners of city landmarks and newer enterprises. They are available online at Age Smart Employer. Targeted to key sectors of the local economy like food services, manufacturing and skilled trades, and nonprofit organizations, the guides feature peer-to-peer advice based on interviews with more than 100 business owners from all boroughs and include city landmarks, neighborhood stalwarts and up and coming destinations.
In New York City, 99 percent of all businesses have fewer than 100 employees and routinely find themselves struggling to maintain an adequate workforce. Many of the challenges these businesses face can be addressed by a workforce that optimizes the presence of older and younger employees working side-by-side.
“Employers who hire and retain older workers overcome many of the struggles of small businesses, including staff turnover and escalating costs for recruitment and training,” says Ruth Finkelstein, director of the Age Smart program and an Associate Professor in the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center, located at the Mailman School. “Our research into New York’s small business community confirms that older employees bring more than an economic edge to the workplace. They have advanced technical skills and can serve as mentors to younger employees just gaining familiarity with workplace culture.”
The Age Smart Industry Guides demonstrate that New York City’s signature industries derive economic benefits from hiring older workers and integrating them in age-diverse workplaces. In the food service industry, for example, rates of staff turnover in quick-service restaurants as high as 120 percent annually can be reduced with older workers who remain in jobs as much as three times longer than younger ones.
Similarly in manufacturing, a sector where one skilled worker enters the workforce for every three who retire, efforts to retain employees beyond retirement age create workplace savings and promote expertise in business that require high levels of trained workers including carpenters, jewelers, plumbers, and tailors. In all kinds of businesses, older workers dramatically improve morale, institutional memory, and customer service capacity characteristic of long-standing employees.
“Older employees’ values set the tone for the entire business,” says Richard Aviles, owner of Bridge Cleaners and Tailors, who points to older employees as his business’s greatest asset. “They’re the most popular faces among our customers and among their peers,” he says. “Older workers teach the younger ones about manners and respect that you can’t learn on Google or Facebook, while the younger ones help the older ones embrace new technologies.”
Additional findings published in the Age Smart Industry Guides include these statistics:
• New York City has more than 700,000 workers above age 55.
• Of area non-profit executive directors, 59 percent are 50 or older.
• The mean age of family control in U.S. family-owned businesses is 60.2 years.
• Fewer than half of the owners who expect to retire in five years have a leadership succession plan. Among area nonprofits, 69 percent have no succession plan.
• Workers aged 55-64 remain in their jobs more than three times as long as those aged 25-34 years.
Age Smart Employer is an initiative of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at the Mailman School of Public Health through a partnership with The New York Academy of Medicine. Age Smart Employer receives funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
About Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health
Founded in 1922, Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Mailman School is the third largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health. Its over 450 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy, climate change & health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in public health education with over 1,300 graduate students from more than 40 nations pursuing a variety of master’s and doctoral degree programs. The Mailman School is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers including ICAP (formerly the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs) and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more information, please visit www.mailman.columbia.edu.