“Why do people feel pressure to have an answer for every question?” Even when they don’t know Jack, they make it up on the fly. Ten years ago our training courses included a short video clip of college students at some of the more prestigious universities speaking at length with great confidence about a subject which they obviously knew very little. One episode had students suggesting summer’s were warmer because the Earth had moved significantly closer to the Sun. This video claimed we have been programmed from a very early age to know the answer or make it up. Apparently, some people take to this training better than others. If you really want to know the cause, you’ll need to ask someone else, because I simply do not know.
24Mar
Coping with the retirement of critical experience
Filed in Economy | International Politics | Management
During the next few years, western countries will face a more intense labor shortage than last felt in the first two years of this century. Very few companies are prepared for this with hardly any looking to utilize the aging workforce to fill this shortage. Initially, offshore workers will be able to handle some of the shortage. However, India and China are only a few decades from reaching a neutral or negative growth in trained workers.
A survey in America last month by Ernst & Young found that “although corporate America foresees a significant workforce shortage as boomers retire, it is not dealing with the issue.†Almost three-quarters of the 1,400 global companies questioned by Deloitte last year said they expected a shortage of salaried staff over the next three to five years. Yet few of them are looking to older workers to fill that shortage; and even fewer are looking to them to fill another gap that has already appeared. Many firms in Europe and America complain that they struggle to find qualified directors for their boards—this when the pool of retired talent from those very same firms is growing by leaps and bounds.
Why are firms not working harder to keep old employees?
