As the workforce shrinks due to the retirement of America’s largest base of knowledge workers, Baby Boomers, employers will have to find creative and non-traditional ways to attract and retain talent from the generations not yet ready for retirement.
After being surveyed by “Simply Hired”, the following segments of the workforce said:
- Working Mothers value most flextime schedules (43%) over childcare services (18%), telecommuting (18%), parental leave/child sick time (14%), and compressed workweeks or job-sharing (7%). They also told of their openness to changing jobs for a better opportunity or better pay (51%), while better benefits and flexibility was also important (38%).
- New Graduates said that what is most important to them in their first job is opportunity to learn and develop (40%), with a distant second (25%) being salary and benefits, and not far behind (17%) is work/life balance.
- Mature Workers, defined as being over 55 years of age, said that retirement has been delayed (57%) or had to somewhat re-evaluate retirement (21%) due to the economy. Shockingly, (31%) said they plan on retiring after 70, while another (27%) will retire between 66 and 70. According to a 2009 report by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, concerns about financial security is the main reason workers are postponing retirement altogether (89%), and (44%) plan on working part-time while in retirement.
