The slow global economic environment has cast a somewhat gloomy outlook for mature workers as businesses strive to become more productive and adapt to the pace of technological change across all industries. Despite this, Randstad’s recent Workmonitor research points to a more positive sentiment amongst workers in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.
Not just economic benefits
Governments in the region have recognised the impact of mature workers on the workforce, as well as the economic value they could bring to businesses and society at large. Past research has shown that hiring mature workers brings many benefits, which include the ability to leverage greater experience and knowledge, higher loyalty and commitment, and a stronger work ethic.
Mature workers form a critical percentage of the local talent pool in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. By keeping this segment of the workforce in employment, businesses are able to tap into a much wider database of local talent to hire from.
You can teach an old dog new tricks
In Singapore, businesses are being incentivised to employ mature workers through subsidies in the form of wage support for Professionals, Managers and Executives in certain age brackets. Hong Kong and Malaysia respectively run the Employment Programme for the Middle-aged and the Human Resources Development Fund aimed at training mature and retrenched workers. Whilst in Singapore, the WorkPro scheme offers a number of support programs and incentives to retrain and retain mature age workers.
The research has also revealed that employers in the region are beginning to feel the benefits and are showing a stronger positive sentiment towards the future outlook of mature employees in the workforce.
Singapore (54%), Hong Kong (54%) and Malaysia (52%) employees either strongly agreed or agreed that there were active policies set in place in their companies to retain mature workers - higher than the global average of 44%.
Sentiments around employment prospects increasing for mature workers over next five years were also substantially stronger with the highest percentage of employees in Hong Kong (68%), followed closely by Singapore (66%) and Malaysia (63%) beating the global average of 44%.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
