The potential for a loss of productivity through an aging workforce that becomes more susceptible to health problems doesn’t need to happen. For instance, most modern manufacturing can make quite simple changes in the production line to prevent it. Service organizations must also find ways to hang onto talent and experience without clogging up the opportunities for younger people.
This calls for new ways of thinking and more flexibility in terms of how the different generations within the workforce come together, and how we hold onto all the workers with their years of experience.
Flexibility at retirement might be a sensible idea. For example, more imaginative contractual relationships post-65, allowing people to stay in the workforce but on different contractual terms, or annualized hours so that companies can tap into capacity, knowledge and experience when required but not have a permanent, full-time commitment to it.
The biggest business challenges are in changing our assumptions about the cycle of work and retirement, and for more businesses to see the aging population as part of the mainstream of both their workforce and their consumer base. That reorientation of thinking will be quite a challenge for most businesses.