Managing Change In The Work Place Management Essay

Managing Change In The Work Place Management Essay

Significant affect with the global economy in recession, unemployment is up, retirement savings drastically depleted and employers face a much different challenge today to all intents and purposes to large numbers of older workers staying in the workforce.

Globally as an alternative rather forceful war for talent capacity as was previously expected, employers will need to be more focus on capitalize on contributions of young workers while containing labor costs with innovative ideas and flexibility. More researchers and evidence does indicate that older workers, which defined as people aged sixty-five years and over are less confident of their learning abilities and may not be productive be as some younger workers based on the job. Besides, older workers do seem to be less efficient in obtaining complex or demanding skills, and on average, they are not as fast in terms of reaction time or in solving problems.

In this project, I have chosen People's Bank in Sri Lanka that is been in banking industry for forty-nine years of service. There are 266 branches and 283-service centre's are online and interconnected which maintains more than 13 million customer accounts. People's bank was inaugurated on 01st July 1961 with opening of the first branch in duke street, Colombo. Presently, total numbers of employees have reached 5000 with huge population participation of older workers in the banking organization.

Importance of Study

Nevertheless, research designate; once trained that older workers actually learn more than the younger workforce do and they are better at relocating what they have learned on the job with some aging intellectual abilities and expert knowledge. Age always improves the ability to acquire the skills, knowledge or behavior necessary to perform a job at a given level of training. Most organizations in government sector and people's bank in Sri Lanka, researchers have found majority of people in the organization is particularly age forty-five and over, and productivity goes down with the age. Even though, older workers are at a disadvantage in relates to older workers have more trouble with the physical demand of the job that may not be able to do physical labor. On the other hand, they can be a major asset for the organization in service based or knowledge based industries. However, older workers do formulate certain challenges to employers such as; limited physical ability and high rates of disability and sickness, create productivity issues and conflict with other employees as value of relationships are more important to older workers, skill ability is diminishing and with acquiring new ones.

Literature Review

Huge proportion of older workers increases nowadays as 'rising trend among to extend their lives, demographic changes and also, changes arise in worker and workplace that effect their productivity, health and safety' for example; occupational diseases or workplace injuries. In evaluation, older workers can vary widely with productivity performance across all age groups, diminishing skills to acquire new advanced methods and technology, attitudes and high rates of illness and disability". Besides, incentives to continue working also differ from retirement benefits, health condition and health insurance programs, workers compensation and personal considerations towards their families while economic incentives influence to take return to work decisions even when old workers is in poor health or has a disability. These implications are likely to have a major profound impact, on their compensation procedures. "What are the implications of Washington's aging workforce; for its Workers Compensation programs? What are the increased costs likely to be?" "What are society's responses to older workers needs in future workplaces?"

This review focused on workers aged 45 and over; and the implications of their increasing

Labor force participation on workers compensation. Washington's men and women over age 55

particularly; those over 65 show current and forecast 'labor force participation rates greater; than their share of the civilian non-institutional population'. Washington's predictable demographic changes will likely be momentous for workers compensation costs; 'however, even with large shifts', the net effect may be mitigated by a proportional increase in younger workers.

(Washington Office of Financial Management, 2005)

Figure 1. Global Population of Ageing workers

HR Challenges of having old workers

HR professionals continue to face major staffing involvedness due to ageing problem in people's bank, Sri Lanka. Older workers with skills and lifetime experience started retiring and HR face foremost challenges in replacing them with skills and knowledgeable experienced workers such as old workers. In addition, another challenge is many old age employees do not have a balance of work and family concerns. HR professionals facing growing pressures to facilitate with family-friendly policies and benefits.

Pay and work load of old workers

In contrast, older workers are paid less than the younger workers are in public sector, people's bank. Predominantly, there is a strong decrease in public sector old workers wages. When, comparing to workers age 65 year and over earnings are 1/3 of age 55-60 year group earnings. Most of the old workers are full-time employer than part time employers. Among men there are two third of workers are full-time old age workers and only one third of part-time workers. Part-time old workers percentage is the lowest in 60-64 age groups and full-time workers percentage is high in age 75-79 age group. Most workers exit from full-time employment to complete retirement directly. Sample shown below is individuals who held stable jobs in their early fifties the percentage is 89 percent in comparison to workers who did not work part-time any longer had retired overnight, since they did not work part-time before retirement and they completed transition in a very short time period. Also, number of employment hours old workers do is reduced by age. Average of 47 hours of work provided for early sixties to 36 hours for the 72-75 age groups of workers.

Figure 2. Labor force participation of old workers in people's bank 2008-2011

Advances in technology

New technology is a turning point for older workforce at people's bank. Majority is used to the manual traditional system of work. Many of them experience age related physiological changes for instance, dexterity and flexibility, vision, hearing make a huge impact on vital usage of computer. However, in affect with the competitiveness and efficiency, bank has introduced new effective technological systems for all age group of employees. Older workers are incompetent fearful and unaccomplished as they cannot adopt with new technology by gaining new skills and knowledge in comparison to younger work population. Consequently, young workforce overwhelmingly adopt to new technological innovation when older age labor stand back at new technology advances by being on training programs, opportunities. Old workers struggle to update their skills and knowledge and they feel burned out after 30years and more on the job. Older employees of 45 years and over need refresh training programs in information technology.

Mass Retirement

Many old workers due to skills and expectations do not match the opportunities available in the bank. Therefore, they have not given opportunities to do because it requires high quality services for them to obtain the requisite skills and dispositions in jobs. Ill health, disability and reaching of mandatory retirement age are the key reasons for the mass retirement. Most old workers find health reasons are very important to retire while 40 percent of them retire after reaching the mandatory retirement age. In addition, family obligations, disliked work, work and travel stress is important factors of affecting the retirement decision.

Figure 3. Labor force participation by age and gender in people's bank 2008-2011

Balancing work and family

People's bank data records have shown balancing the demands of family and work is a important challenge to HR professionals. Balancing work and family has always been a reason that it greater tension and anxiety for many older employees. Both men and women, majority age group of 45 years and over place more stress on workforce to balance work and family since many employees refuse or less willingness to accept transfers or relocations to different branch or in the same city of the country by sacrificing their family and leisure time. Therefore, HR professionals in people bank, Sri Lanka facing a rising difficulty to assist with family-friendly policies and benefits to their employees.

Possible strategies to overcome challenges

Peoples bank of Sri Lanka faced with incompatible challenges associated with ageing on employees. To maximize the productivity of the old workers need to introduce various valuable ways they can archive and motivate.

Planning

Firstly, need to observe how the changing age profile may affect the future recruitment and workforce management by taking into consideration of departmental strategies in line with the main belief of the positive ageing strategy values and workforce capability tactics.

Recruitment and retention

This involves in introducing new career development schemes to attract or retain workers of all ages and newly introducing a retirement savings allowance of five percent superannuation scheme to all staff members.

Flexible working arrangement

Need to capitalize on incorporating working conditions for older workers in collective agreements such as offering speculative wages to old workers reduced hours of working, provide the accessibility to work from home, making job sharing and part-time positions available, cross-training, downshifting and work-life balance programme.

Career planning and development

Introduce new schemes such as retaining the old employees as mentors or counselors after the retirement; propose retirement seminars and comparable services to workers including career planning, financial planning, budgeting seminars and pioneer experienced old employees to the bank.

Health issues

Mainly, chronic illnesses to some extent relate to ageing. Occupational health and safety is an important factor of all departments of the bank. Bringing in organization sponsored health management scheme, for instance banning smoking on organization premises, offering a comprehensive health risk appraisal and incentive for completing it, sponsoring fitness events and challenges with teams collected and increasing healthful choice snacks in food machines.

Conclusion

We have seen large quantity of old workers in peoples bank labor force. If not managed effectively, employers with aging workforce may find major challenges in effect to the people's bank productivity and profitability. When taking all things to consideration, HR professionals can help their organization address to these challenges through being thoughtful and visualizing well glowing executed programs that promote personal well-being in numerous aspects as mentioned above. These programs require greater focus and concentration than they do financial investments and businesses.