BUSINESSES RIDE THE SILVER TSUNAMI
By Christopher Reardon
The Silver Tsunami – or the wave of baby boomer retirements – is cresting and businesses are taking steps to ride the tide and remain successful. Yet there is a strong under-tow.
A record 1.7-2.1 million Americans will retire in 2024, according to Social Security Administration Data, as reported by NorthJersey.com. That compares with an average of 1.0-1.3 million retirements from 2010 to 2019 and 1.6 million in 2023.
At the same time, fewer workers are entering the workforce because following generations are smaller than the baby boomer generation. As a result, there remain 8 million job openings in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Additionally, the Silver Tsunami is creating a talent and knowledge drain that businesses in an array of sectors must address. Retiring workers are taking with them knowledge and experience not easily replaced. For instance, the manufacturing sector will need to fill 4 million jobs between 2020 and 2030, 2.4 million of them due to retirement, but 2.1 million of those will go unfilled due to a lack of skills among younger workers, according to a report by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute.
Vulnerable sectors with a large number of employees aged 55 and older include:
• Wholesale Trade – 27.6%
• Financial Activities – 26.3%
• Manufacturing – 25.3%
• Health Care and Social Assistance – 23.6%
Source: U.S. Department of Labor
Morris County and the immediate region are not immune from these challenges.
“The people gap has been going on for quite a while,” said Donna Miller, chief visionary officer at C3Workplace and founder of Donna Miller Business Growth Consulting. “Positions have been hard to fill (and) finding the right people has been super competitive…The knowledge gap is likely only to get worse as the Silver Tsunami continues.”
That gap is exacerbated by remote working, Miller added.
“The 20- and 30-somethings are missing out on learning, training and growth that comes through osmosis,” she said.
Yet there are solutions.
“It comes back to building culture based on values,” Miller said. “How we address any talent gap – whether it’s because of COVID or inflation or the Silver Tsunami – it means attracting people who believe what we believe…The 20- and 30-year-olds want to work for a company where they’ll have an impact. So if you can attract through culture, it’s super powerful and sticky.”
Retraining also is a key to companies successfully riding the Silver Tsunami, according to Tony Iacono, president of County College of Morris (CCM).
“New Jersey retirement is different than in other states because of the cost of living. People are retiring but not necessarily not continuing to work. Often they are launching new careers,” Iacono said, citing public workers, police and firefighters. “They are going back into the work force in a different way…We help them do that.”
CCM has seen a substantial increase in retraining for new careers, most often in health care, teaching and manufacturing, but also retail, hospitality and culinary. Older students are enrolling in workforce programs for upscaling, according to Iacono. Overall, the college’s enrollment in workforce programs has increased by 79% over two years.
The college also is partnering with businesses to develop internship programs to groom students for future positions. Iacono noted that nurses are being offered jobs before graduating and salaries have increased.
“It’s changed the way (businesses) hire,” he said.
In addition, through its Workforce Development Program, CCM provides companies with programs to retrain existing employees, either on campus or on site, customized for the individual businesses and required skills.
For example, CCM worked with Atlantic Health System to create a paramedic program designed to help provide different career paths, including paramedics retraining toward becoming nurses.
Atlantic Health has been planning for the Silver Tsunami for some time, according to Trish O’Keefe, PhD, RN, president of Morristown Medical Center, and senior vice president and chief nurse executive for the ystem..
“For the patients, we need to ensure quality care is delivered,” she said. “So recruitment has always been very important to us.”
Atlantic Health partners with nursing schools and local colleges such as CCM and William Paterson, performs outreach to area high schools and middle schools to promote health care as a profession, and identifies people who want to change careers and demonstrates to them that health care offers a great diversity of career options.
“There are wonderful professional options in health care,” O’Keefe said.
“We now have four generations working together in our organization. Each generation has a different drive, a different connection. So, we found we need to create different programs that keep each generation engaged,” O’Keefe said, echoing Miller’s comments about culture.
This includes creating a positive work environment, offering attractive benefits and competitive salaries, career development – creating professional pathways for employees to advance their careers, such as through specialty certifications – flexibility – recognizing the needs to employees, through flexible work schedules and work-life balance – and increasing the use of technology, such as robotic applications to make jobs easier and reduce the burden of documentation.
“During the height of COVID, we were not allowing students to come into the hospital so they came to us with theoretical knowledge but with little clinical experience,” O’Keefe added. “So we have expanded our clinical orientation programs to ensure competency of our new team members.”
Atlantic Health also instituted succession planning on the physician side and created a program for retired team members supporting return to work on a per diem basis. For example, Morristown Medical Center’s chief nursing officer retired and now works part-time in human resources recruiting nurses.
“We have the opportunity to redesign new roles for our team members,” O’Keefe said.
Finally, Atlantic Health received a U.S. Department of Labor grant that provided a five-year $3 million grant to recruit and retain staff focused on expanding and diversifying its pipeline of qualified nurses.
These collective efforts are working, according to O’Keefe.
“We’re definitely increasing our recruitment and retaining our amazing staff,” she said.
Added Iacono, “This is a period that is going to have its challenges but there are opportunities, as well.”
