Small medium-sized enterprises may be risking the fulfillment of their full potential as a business being unprepared to adapt to the changes in the labour market caused by an aging population.
The CIPD which is the professional body for HR and people development and the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives have released a study which shows that almost half of SME’s have no measures at all to ensure they have access to a sufficient amount of skilled and diverse people of all ages.
The report is titled ‘Age diversity in SMEs: reaping the benefits’ assessed the opinions of almost 600 senior decision makers in SMEs across the UK. The findings were that generally small businesses recognise the different skills that workers of different ages bring. The study showed that small businesses believe that a age diverse workforce definitely is a benefit to business.
An age diverse workforce they say improves sharing of knowledge, and also has better problem solving skills and enhanced customer service skills. Older workers were seen very positively as members of the workforce the survey revealed – almost 90 per cent of SMEs said they have a valuable contribution to make.
Although there are clear benefits to an age diverse workforce, the research also shows that small businesses are not doing as much as they could do to attract, recruit and support workers of diverse ages. The SMEs surveyed believe that training older employees is a good return on their investment, but that in order to attract older workers they need to improve their offering to make sure that they can support older employees.
The survey further shows the difficulties in an age diverse workforce. The main challenges outlined were misunderstandings between different age groups, age stereotyping and a lack of common interests. Moreover, it was stated that almost half of SMEs believe that young managers find it difficult to to manage older workers.
It is hoped however, that this study is the start of changing practice and ensuring an age diverse workforce across all SME’s despite these difficulties.
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