Anyone who saw the recent Personnel Today story about the 'stagnating older workforce unable to retire' will be right behind Watson Wyatt pensions expert Gary Smith in his comments about older workers who have "peaked in terms of their productivity and value to their employer" and are causing pension and succession planning headaches. The only problem is that he does not go far enough. Why not make all over-50s redundant as a precaution? Another advantage of this is that these ageing 'STAGS' (an acronym which means something like 'stagnating old gits') won't build up any more severence entitlement so you've got the double savings of pensions and redundancy payouts.
No doubt the politically correct lobby will say this is discriminatory and that demographics mean it is important to utilise people of all ages, never mind all that old rubbish about how it is up to HR to engage and motivate employees regardless of their age. Nonsense, I say. There's a terrific film starring the late Charlton Heston, Soylent Green, where older people are made into a form of protein to feed the rest of the population. Why aren't our politicians and think tanks coming up with innovative ideas like that?
On the other hand, perhaps we are mixing up two issues here - the pensions issue and the issue of talent and performance management. Perhaps it is a bit suspect to make assumptions about the work performance of broad groups on the basis of age or other criteria, like gender or race for example. Where is Smith's evidence that older workers are less capable than, say, Generation Y?
Ageism - there ought to be a law against it, eh?
