Assessment and Forecast of Valuing Experience by Employing Retirees: An Italian Perspective

Taking the forecasted lack of qualified young staff, it will be increasingly important for organizations to rely on experienced employees, and possibly even extend working life by employing retirees. In an action research study, 122 small and medium size enterprises in North-Eastern Italy were analyzed. An ad hoc questionnaire of 31 items was administered. It was generally answered by the HR managers of the companies. Of interest in this study was the retirement process, as well as the possibility for workers to continue their work after formal retirement age. A first part of the study focused the option of extending working life beyond retirement. Practically, the demand of workers to extend the work activity is higher than the offers of enterprises. However, both the offer by the company, and the wish to continue uttered by employees occur extremely seldom: 92.9% never proposed continued work to an employee, 87.5% never had an employee who wished to go on working after retirement. A second part of the study focused on competencies needed by the enterprises, and in what extend these are available on the labor market. The majority of companies (78.6%) needed abilities or competencies among their workers that were difficult to find. Moreover, 87.5 % saw a lack of these demands in the younger workforce. Complementing this perspective, for nearly all participating companies (91.1 %) work experience was important or very important for core activities. All in all, from both parts of the study, the need to actively integrate the “Silver Economy” (active@work, 2006; sen@er, 2006) and to re-use the “unused capacity” of the older workforce, which is currently nearly excluded from the labor market (Wise, 2005).