Seniors still sidelined as skill drought approaches

Retirement meant anything but kicking back for John Sayles.

At age 69, six months after his retirement party, his company asked him to join a team of engineers in war-torn Baghdad, where he worked 12-hour days, seven days a week on a reconstruction project.

"It’s the best of all worlds," said Sayles, now 71, a planner who still consults occasionally for the Iowa-based firm from which he retired, Stanley Consultants Inc. "You never know when the phone rings who it’s going to be."

Programs that tap retirees’ skills and keep older workers on the job longer would seem to be a natural solution to the looming shortage of skilled workers related to the Baby Boom generation’s approaching retirement.

The oldest of the 76 million-member generation turns 66 in 2012, when one in five U.S. workers will be 55 or older.

Yet a new study of five Midwest states by the AARP found that employers such as Stanley, which ranks No. 1 on its list of best employers for workers over 50, remain the exception rather than the rule.

AARP also found that perceptions of older workers have changed little during the last two decades.

The study was based on interviews with 679 human resource executives in Illinois and four surrounding states–Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin and Missouri–where 2.6 million workers are 55 or older.

"Few employers in these states have implemented approaches to attract and retain older workers, and even fewer believe that the aging of the workforce is important to their companies," states the study, the fifth in a series initiated in 1985.

By Barbara Rose
Tribune staff reporter

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