Julianne Parkinson: Connect February 2023

The impact of Australia’s sustained workforce crisis can be felt in every corner of our nation, from classrooms and construction sites to farms, factories, and hospitals. Amidst ballooning demand for housing, healthcare services, digital services, educational services, food and natural resources, there’s too much work to be done, and too few minds to share the load.

An October 2022 report by the National Skills Commission found that the number of occupations struggling to fill positions leapt from 153 to 286 over 2022 – meaning nearly one-third of all Australian sectors are facing critical shortfalls.

Stringent restrictions enacted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic have seen substantially fewer skilled migrants relocating to Australian shores.

Concurrently, declining numbers of younger Australians, aged 15 to 24, are currently engaged in, or seeking, paid employment.

Significant drivers of this trend include the hastening automation of many service-based industries, and increased enrolment in higher education and training. Changing societal values, and evolving attitudes towards career, leisure time and personal pursuits are also contributing factors.

The comprehensive depletion of Australia’s labour force is a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon, that demands innovative thinking on all fronts.

At the Global Centre for Modern Ageing®, we firmly believe that retaining older Australians in meaningful employment, and encouraging retirees to re-join the workforce with the appropriate levels of support is critical to maintaining our nation’s prosperity and economic productivity, reducing welfare expenditure and increasing self-reliance in retirement.

We are living longer, in greater health, than ever before. Many thousands of older Australians are rounding the corner to their planned retirement with an increased capacity, desire or need to continue working. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures, dating to 2019, more than 143,000 older Australians returned from retirement in 2018-2019 alone, citing boredom, financial obligations, or a change in their personal circumstances.

There is strong evidence that mature workers represent a valuable, and underutilised resource. This reliable, characteristically hardworking cohort, brimming with knowledge and lived experience, stand ready, willing, and able to contribute.

Older workers’ hard-won expertise can help to bridge the widening skills gap, boosting productivity and reducing staff turnover. Their skills and knowledge can be captured, to benefit the next and subsequent generations, through collaboration and mentoring opportunities.

Tomorrow’s workplaces, and workforces, cannot be a copy and paste of the past. To harness this enormous opportunity, and cultivate truly resilient, ‘future proof’ teams, recruiters and business leaders alike must be prepared to skill up, and think differently. Organisations must create the conditions that enable older adults to thrive and contribute to their full potential.

In this edition of Connect, we explore the documented benefits, and foundational principles of harmonious, age inclusive workplaces, sharing practical strategies to engage, retrain and retain older workers.

Also in this edition, we unpack the benefits of ageing-focused Living Laboratories, and explain how GCMA’s flagship LifeLab® supports high-calibre user co-creation for entrepreneurs, non-profits, organisations, and governments in the APAC region and worldwide.

Finally, we share evidence-based resolutions for healthy, purposeful ageing in 2023 and beyond, inspired by the world’s famed Blue Zones.

We trust that the topics discussed in this latest newsletter spark stimulating, vital conversations about the conditions we set for older adults, and how these align with our own expectations, and aspirations, for the future.