Don’t Give Up on Your Aging Boomers Just Yet

Larry Johnson, Co-author, Generations, Inc.

Meagan Johnson, Co-author, Generations, Inc.

Larry and Meagan Johnson, Co-authors of Generations, Inc. – From Boomers To Linksters, Managing the Friction Between Generations at Work

Three years ago, the Medical Records department at Health Central in Ocoee, Florida, was in trouble. It had poor turnaround time which impacted accounts receivable days and unbilled discharges. Patient and physician satisfaction were poor because the department was not timely in releasing medical records; employee morale was in the dumps extremely; internal customer satisfaction ratings were down; and to make things worse, the department had recently implemented an electronic medical record system, and users had not been trained to use it. With the resignation of the department director, the hospital was looking for a replacement.

That’s when fifty-five year old Kathy Deel, Director of Quality Management, suggested that she could run Medical Records as well as Quality Management. She had successfully combined these two departments at another hospital earlier in her career.

After much discussion, the hospital’s executive committee gave Kathy the go ahead. She told us that the challenge was like a shot of adrenalin for her. Under her leadership, the newly combined department was prospering within a year. Medical record turnaround time was reduced from 4 days to 24 hours, well below the industry benchmark. She focused the staff on eliminating waste and revamping processes, which improved efficiency so much that she did not fill the vacancies that occurred with attrition. She also let some non-performers go and didn’t fill their positions.

Today, the department operates with one-third fewer employees, patient and physician satisfaction is up, and the department is recognized as one of the best medical records units by its electronic medical record vendor. Most of all, says Kathy, the staff members that remained have an attitude of pride and team spirit which was missing before she took over.

The lesson here? Older employees may be the most loyal, knowledgeable, wise, motivated, and the hardest working human resource an organization has.

The good news is many are choosing to stick around. According to a study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, the percentage of workers who expect to retire at age 65 has decreased significantly. In 1991, 50% of workers planned to retire before age 65 compared with 28% in 2010. Additionally, workers are now more than twice as likely to indicate they will retire at age 70 or later than in 1991.

In an interview for the writing of our book, Generations Inc. – From Boomers To Linksters, Managing The Friction Between Generations At Work, MIT researcher David Delong, told us most companies across the United States and around the world have Baby Boomers with “deep knowledge of complex business processes, technical systems, advanced scientific processes, and complicated global management practices that are critical to the futures of their respective businesses. Their departure will likely have a major impact on the ability of these organizations to sustain high levels of performance.” In his book, Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce, Delong points out that between 1969 and 1972, NASA completed six missions to the moon. We could not repeat the same feat today because the people who made it happen have either died or retired, and unfortunately the knowledge they acquired was never passed on.

With Boomers staying longer, there’s still time to utilize their talent and experience, as well as transfer their precious knowledge to younger Gen X and Gen Y employees. But companies would do well to act swiftly. Boomers may be staying longer but they won’t stay forever.

We suggest a practice common in large Japanese companies called sempai kohai.

Sempai means “mentor” or “teacher” and kohai means “mentoree” or “student.”

A sempai is assigned a kohai who is not his subordinate or under his chain of command. This is so the relationship does not carry the burden of managerial accountability. If the sempai was the kohai’s boss, it would be difficult for the kohai to be honest about her needs or show any sign of weakness to the sempai. Also, it would be hard for the sempai to focus on the kohai’s success while also trying to judge her job performance as it fits with the rest of the team. In this system, the sempai functions as a “godfather” to kohai. If the kohai succeeds, the sempai looks good. If the kohai fails, it’s a black mark on the sempai’s reputation. The sempai, therefore, helps the kohai succeed in all areas of work from technical know-how to operational issues to organizational politics, without worrying about having to manage her.

There is a wonderful scene in the movie Tampopo in which a group of Japanese businessmen go to lunch at a fancy French restaurant. As is the custom in Japanese culture, everyone waits for the CEO to order and then they all order the same thing. When the waiter gets to the youngest member of the group, however, he grills the waiter about all the options on the menu, asking which wines go with which entrées, and finally orders a meal three times more expensive than that of the CEO. As he does this, his sempai is kicking him under the table, trying to keep him from killing his career. Wouldn’t you have loved to have a mentor with that level of interest in your success, early in your career?

In addition to this kind of coaching on how to survive politically, the relationship also provides the perfect opportunity for the sempai (Baby Boomer) to pass along the precious technical and organizational knowledge that will be lost the day the sempai retires or dies. And, it gives the sempai a reason to stay and contribute to the organization.

The bottom line is that because of the recent economic crisis, many Baby Boomers are postponing retirement. It’s only smart to take advantage of their experience while you still have it, but it’s also smart to do what you can to capture their knowledge and wisdom before it walks out the door.

Posted by RecruitingTrends.com on August 4, 2010. Filed under Retention, Thought Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry