Strategy and succession

Research indicates that employers rarely use the management of retirement and pensions to achieve strategic goals. In fact many find it difficult to see the link, resulting in lost opportunities and often the loss of irreplaceable experience and skills.

We believe that in future the most successful companies will be those that take a long-term strategic view about the role of mature workers within the workforce and society as a whole.  They will be those who:

- view "work" as a series of transitional periods during which they and their workers jointly design the best ways of working to suit their mutual needs at particular times during their working life.

- introduce flexible working conditions enabling all workers to engage in appropriate contracts that reflect their individual needs for work/life balance at any point in their working life.

- invest in ongoing support and training in order to assist their employees in planning for longer working lives through financial planning, skills maintenance, and individual one-to-one support.

- ensure timely and appropriate succession planning in order to avoid the loss of key skills whilst creating development opportunities for younger employees.

In doing so employers adopt a shared responsibility with their mature workers for changing behaviours, attitudes, and thereby cultural perceptions, about the abilities, rights and responsibilities of older workers.