CLIVE GRAHAM

Ladies and Gentlemen…

Welcome to the VET Connect “Engaging Older Workers Symposium”.

More than four million Australians were born between 1946 and 1961. This baby boom contributed much to the economic growth of Australia from1960 to the present day.

“From Mickey Mouse Club to Frequent Flier [sic] Club, baby-boomers have traditionally led a clubbish life organised around happenings and trends, from the twist to hula hoops to frisbees to disco to aerobics to line dancing. They give the impression that baby-boomerdom itself is a club, an exclusive gang, with everyone else on the outer.” (Davis, Mark, Gangland: Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, p.7, 1997. )

Economically, baby boomers now represent an even bigger future challenge. As they grow older, baby boomers will distort Australia's non-working population, just as they increased its working population over the past 45 years. (http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/babyboomers/).

Among the many government policies proposed to account for this distortion include better superannuation and retirement incentives coupled with encouragement for Australians to stay in work for longer periods of time (Parliament of Australia, 1998, The 'Boomer Bulge': Ageing Policies for the 21st Century, Research paper 4 1998-99, Greg McIntosh http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rp/1998-99/99rp04.htm#policy).

Last year the Superannuation access rules were relaxed so that anybody who wants to continue working in the same job after age 55 is now able to take part of their superannuation as an income stream. Further, the income from the transition to retirement pension will be tax-free after 1 July 2007. Since 2001, while for everyone else the tax-free threshold is $6000, people aged 65 or older can earn $33,600 without having to pay income tax and a single pensioner can earn $20,500 tax-free.

Many of the services and support that exist for the elderly in Australia were developed when life expectancy was much shorter and when people died within a relatively short period of time after becoming eligible for payments such as the Age Pension. Now it is predicted that many baby boomers will live well into their 80s and beyond and, as a consequence, government funded age support will necessarily be reconfigured (http://www.bonza.com.au/).
The idea of staying in the workforce longer comes at a time when there is a skills shortage in Australia.
However, Peter Landis and Noel Jones, co-founders of the skills advertising company “Re Generation” contend that almost two in three baby-boomer employees are dissatisfied with their present jobs, but feel they are too old or lack the skills to find better work. A national Re Generation survey of 860 Australian workers found that more than half those aged between 45 and 64 felt others regarded them as out-of-date with technology.

The survey found about 33 per cent of older workers felt they couldn't get a better job because they lacked the necessary qualifications. A further 30 per cent felt they were too old. About 75 per cent of baby boomers thought raising children went unrecognised as a skill, while 73 per cent felt life experience and volunteer work were undervalued.

Noel Jones says the skills shortage in Australia means it is particularly important to look at an individual's entire experience and any possible skills they might have. "Some people may be retired, but don't necessarily wish to be… The thing is, we need to look at how we utilise skills in this country.'' (The Sunday Telegraph: “Baby boomers looking to move jobs” (undated) by Andrew Chesterton http://www.careerone.com.au/jobs/job-search/job-market-insider/baby-boomers-lack-confidence.)

To-date, Australia, like most developed countries, has a relatively uncoordinated approach to retaining baby boomers in the workplace. There are few workplaces, including the public sector, with Mature Age Policies. There are few opportunities for older workers to re-train to meet constantly changing IT expectations, and there is a lack of Career Counsellors available to Older Workers to tell them what skill shortages there are in the Labour Market in order to re-train for that industry. When it comes to re-training, after 65 a major concern is loss of muscle power even though studies suggest that muscle loss is reversible. In a study of 56-70 year old men who trained over eight weeks, there was marked muscle improvement and even a doubling of muscle development in 90 year olds (http://www.bonza.com.au/).However, there is little recognition in the fitness industry that training older adults is as different as training children even though Fitness Australia, the national registration authority, now has a specialist Older Adults Trainer qualification.

It is interesting that the Harvard School of Public Health—MetLife Foundation Initiative on Retirement and Civic Engagement (Reinventing Aging (2006) http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/chc/reinventingaging/) - suggests that as millions of baby boomers are approaching their early 60s with unprecedented good health, energy and expectations for longevity, traditional phrases like "senior citizen," "old," or "retired" seem outdated. Harvard School of Public Health invited the public to suggest new language to reflect changing societal attitudes toward aging. Among the many suggestions, I like one respondent in particular who wrote:

I am 69 years old. For the last 20 years people I haven't seen in a while say, "Gee you look good." My response has always been there are three stages of life: Youth, Middle Age, and "Gee you look good."

The good luck of the “Gee you look good” generation is that Australia needs your skills. As the Re-generation Groups says:

“With many years of experience we (the over 45’s) should be able to grab new opportunities and reinvent ourselves. There is someone or an organisation out there who can use our talents. There is a skills shortage and we need to be more flexible and faster on our feet, so why not meet the challenge and have a go”.

Indeed this sentiment is echoed in an ABC USA broadcast of January 2006 which said:

Baby boomers have reshaped what it means to grow older. Compared with their parents, boomers are healthier, better educated and living well into their 80s and beyond. The increasing lifespan has given boomers the chance to reinvent themselves and pursue new passions at any age. (Baby boomers Challenge Notion of Retirement. By LISA STARK and MEGAN CARPENTER, ABC NEWS US, http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Business/story?id=1491624, Jan. 10, 2006)

In support of this sentiment, the Harvard School of Public Health - MetLife Foundation Initiative - has released three public service announcements encouraging boomers or “Gee you look good-ers” to "share what they know" by volunteering as mentors to at-risk youth. The ads feature former President Bill Clinton, music impresario Quincy Jones, and former Astronaut-Senator John Glenn. Future ads will feature Candice Bergman and Dionne Warwick.

With recognition of the potential contribution of Older Workers, or Gee You Look Good-ers, to the Australian economy, the overarching objective today of our symposium “Engaging Older Workers” is:

· To determine incentives for older workers to re-train by showing them what skills they have, how valuable these skills are and how to enhance these.

In this pursuit, underpinning objectives might include:

· To investigate how the change in Baby Boomer population shift, attitudes and needs will impact on training providers, their clients and their business;

· To encourage development of a fresh approach to the learning needs of mature aged workers to help employers meet the diminishing labour supply;

· To ensure that mature aged workers do not under-sell their own potential;

· To ascertain how the new $3,000 voucher system can provide mature age workers with the opportunity to up-skill;

· To provide a more global perspective to mature aged workers, especially in regional centres, to create futures, and

· To encourage mature aged workers to side-step applying for the same old positions and to mould their current work experience/skills to different roles.

http://www.bonza.com.au/ is and Australian website dedicated to maintaining the working life, health and well-being of baby boomers. http://www.theregeneration.com.au/ is an Australian employment listing and information site for mature aged workers.
http://www.boomersfitness.com.au is an Australian website dedicated to the physical and mental fitness of baby boomers and their capacity to work.

The outcomes of this workshop will be easy to publicise. Our goal today is to make the outcomes worthy of publication.

 

To commence our Symposium, I am delighted to welcome Professor LOUISE ROLLAND, Professor of Ageing and Work, Faculty of Business and Enterprise, Swinburne University and Head of Swinburne University Centre for Work and Ageing.

Professor Rolland studied fine arts at Swinburne in the early 1970s and began her working career as an artist. She became an active volunteer in the community before undertaking a vocational counselling course. Her career took another twist when her family spent four years in the remote mining town of Newman in the North-West, where she returned to her artistic roots and taught ceramics at TAFE followed by several positions in local and regional community development. On her return to Melbourne she became director of Jobs East, a development network for the eastern region.

In 1999 she left to set up the not-for-profit research organisation, the Australian Employers Convention, now known as Business Work and Ageing.
As the public face of BWA, Professor Rolland is now regarded internationally for her leadership in this field. In 2005, she presented at conferences in Brussels, New York, Rio De Janeiro and more recently in New Zealand. Professor Rolland has advised Australian Federal and State governments in developing policy and programs concerning business work and ageing.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Professor Louise Rolland.