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This is the second of two articles that explores the evolving demographic composition of our society while noting potential opportunities and pitfalls that could impact hearing health care professionals in meeting both the needs of our aging society. Please refer to yesterdays Blog for part one.

Part one of this article discussed the various “age boom” demographics comprising our population and the need for hearing health care professionals to recognize baby boomers as a target market and perhaps change their focus in service provision.

There is an essential need for competent succession planning within our industry. Ken Dychtwald, who has studied the anticipated impact of baby boomers on our current and future workforce, stated, “To prepare for the coming shortage of skills and talents, organizations must learn how to use the skills and energy of mature workers – retraining them, revitalizing them, and even attracting new ones to the organization. As individuals, we must plan for a long period (often 20-plus years) of active, healthy live post ‘traditional’ retirement. How individuals choose to spend those years and how corporations create conditions for productive employment will seriously affect corporate success and overall economic health.”1

These comments characterize the issues impacting many industries, including hearing health care, as a whole and most specifically within the hearing instrument specialist side of our industry. Boomers desire to continue employability, and we need to explore a consideration of perhaps a second or even third career track within our industry. By their mere presence and established work ethic, boomers and near-boomers are positively influencing societal mores regarding employment and employability. It is imperative that hearing health care professionals be creative in their hiring and retention practices.More than 32 million Americans have some type of hearing impairment, yet only around 6.5 million have obtained assistance or properly addressed these deficits. The number of individuals who will be impacted by hearing loss is expected to increase dramatically for a myriad of reasons, including lifestyle choices, medical or health conditions, environmental and pharmacological impacts, and a rapidly ascending aging of our overall population.

Over the last 20 years the audiology realm of the hearing industry has established some succession planning efforts by establishing AuD programs. However, the number of graduates from these programs is not expected to even come close to meeting the aging audiologist population anticipated to retire in the next 10 to 15 years.

Currently, there are only a handful of established programs to try to increase the numbers of non-audiologist hearing health care professionals. However, this loose alignment remains somewhat fragmented, and the graduation of viable practitioners remains small. There are not enough to replace the current level or practitioners and certainly not enough to address the needs of the growing U.S. population with some type of compensable hearing impairment.

A look at the demographic cross-section of the national population shows that it is comprised of Gen Y/millenials (28 percent), baby boomers (26 percent), Gen X (20 percent), post-millenials (17 percent), and traditionalists (9 percent), who were born before 1945. While more than half (52 percent) of baby boomers work in health care occupations, the numbers are considerably less for the other groups: Gen X (23 percent), Gen Y (17 percent), and traditionalists (8 percent).

An analysis of these statistics reveals several patterns and trends. More than half of all health care workers are baby boomers. Most traditionalists currently are working in upper-level health care positions or are clinicians rapidly approaching retirement status. While nearly three out of 10 Americans belong to the Gen Y group, barely one-sixth of that group currently work in a health care occupation.

These statistics foreshadow some potential serious concerns about how we will effectively provide health care services for our aging population, which is increasing in size dramatically. Many baby boomers are choosing to retire or opt out of active employment in the health care arena, while there is a dramatic reduction in the percentage of Gen Y members choosing to enter the field.

These trends present a two-fold problem in succession planning:

  • the ability to replace the workers currently functioning in our health care system and
  • growing the number of potential replacements for a group whose members appear to be less interested in pursuing careers in health care.

Clearly, turbulent waters lie ahead. Creative measures are necessary to stem the tide in the next several years. Since the establishment of formal scholastic programs to “grow our own” are few in numbers for non-audiology hearing health care practitioners and are likely well down the road, other options must be considered to maintain and grow practitioner numbers.

The route that makes the most sense at this time, given the fluctuating economic conditions, is to follow Dychtwald’s methodology of retraining and revitalization. There are many competent and highly motivated baby boomers and older Gen Xers who have been displaced in prior careers or are looking to change their career path. Many may be in their 40s and 50s – not the stereotypic job candidate. This is where we must shift our paradigm from a traditional succession planning mindset of bringing in employees with intentions of perhaps decades-long career tracts and instead be willing to consider an available and multi-experienced population for shorter time frames, such as five, 10 or 15 years. These individuals generally are highly motivated, with great work ethics and remarkable adaptive qualities.

According to Dychtwald, organizations view a number of actions as essential for responding to the evolving demographic trends. Of those, hearing health practitioners should focus on the following actions in an effort to change their paradigm and consider hiring the mature worker:

  • invest more in training and development to boost employee skill levels,
  • do succession planning,
  • train line managers to recognize and respond to generational differences,
  • bring back retirees into workforce,
  • offer customized benefit packages to employees,
  • conduct studies to determine projections of the demographic workforce make-up and organizational retirement rates,
  • offer employment options designed to attract or retain semi-retired workers, as well as Gen X and Y workers,
  • change employment practices to address discrimination regarding age and disabilities,
  • change health and safety policies to reflect an aging workforce, and
  • use retirees and mentors.2

Other actions all industries should consider implementing are as follows:

  • offer language courses for employees and managers,
  • change health and safety policies to reflect changing language needs,
  • move the business to a different location, and
  • change employment practices to address discrimination regarding gender, race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation.2

In changing this paradigm, how should hearing health care practices approach modifying their hiring practices? They must be sure to fully address these questions in their hiring considerations:

  • What is the age profile of your organization’s new hires? What is your track record in hiring other companies’ retirees? What is your track record in hiring workforce returnees age 55 and over? How well are you tapping varied talent sources?
  • What are your working assumptions about the pros and cons of hiring mature workers? For which roles do you seek mature candidates? For which roles do you avoid them and why? On average, are you more or less likely to offer a job to a mature candidate instead of a younger one? How do you account for any differences?
  • What is your pitch to mature workers? What do you offer that meets their needs at their career stage? Do you actively recruit them? Do you have retirees working as contractors? If so, are there patterns in the disciplines contracted and the arrangements made with them?
  • Are there signs of age bias in your organization? Do older workers have equal access to promotion and training opportunities?
  • What do mature employees want in work opportunities and benefits, both before and after the point of retirement? Who wants to postpone retirement or return as working retirees and why?
  • Do your pension or benefit plans and any proposed changes to them facilitate or impede the hiring of mature workers and the implementation of flexible retirement? Do you have any benefit plans? Why or why not?
  • Do these plans motivate or discourage those who want to phase into or postpone retirement? What are the implications for employee and talent retention?
  • How do government regulations restrict the structuring of your pension and benefit plans or inhibit them from meeting your business goals and your employees’ needs? What would you like the government to change? Are you making your voice heard among policy-makers and legislators?

Many organizations already are considering the merits of hiring more mature workers not only for entry-level positions but with the goal of developing them to assume greater roles and responsibilities. They need to ask and answer not only the tough questions but the right questions of both their applicants and their own organizational practices.

To survive in the long term, the hearing health care field must adopt many of these practices and create their own “future scope” that can be enhanced through the practice of “boomers hiring boomers” where feasible. These philosophical changes throw much of the conventional wisdom out the door because of the lack of an established ‘”farm system” to grow our own.

This change is only the first in a number of steps our industry must take to adequately grow and perpetuate our field and be able to meet the increasing needs of our impending and rapidly advancing “age boom.”

References

  1. Dyvhtwald, K. (1996). Age Power: How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc.
  2. Dychtwald, K., Erickson, T., Morrison, R. (2006). Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talents. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Resources

  • Cohen, J.D. (2006). The aging nursing workforce: How to retain experienced nurses. Journal of Healthcare Management, 51 (4): 233-45.
  • Haeberle, K., Herzberg, J., Hobbs, T. (2009). Leading the multigenerational work force. Healthcare Executive Journal, September/October, pp. 62-67.
  • Mathiason, G.G., Chagala, L.C., Reed, A.J., et al. (2004). Strategic initiatives for the changing workforce. Available online at www.littler.com/publication-press/publication/strategic-initiatives-changing-workforce.
  • Society for Human Resources Management, (2004). Leadership styles series part II: Leadership styles: Generational differences. Briefly Stated, pp. 1-7.