Older Workers Need to Brace for Cutbacks
Never mind quiet quitting. Companies are moving toward stealth
personnel reductions. Make sure your skills are up to speed.
BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER,
G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN
With all of the noise about workers' reluctance to return to the
office, the end of the five-day work week, and all the folks quietly quitting
without leaving, it's easy to overlook one huge slice of the population that
has exactly the opposite problem. Not that these people don't want to come
back; it's that they're not wanted or needed. I call this the "don't call
us, we'll call you" problem because employers mostly never do. Companies
are taking advantage of the pandemic's disruptions to make one-time,
substantial changes -- mainly reductions --- in their fixed personnel costs.
Millions of Americans are just waking up to the frightening
reality of the new normal and the harsh hybrid world where if you're a certain
age (50 and up is a good benchmark) and your skill set is not well-suited to
the digital economy you may simply no longer be required by your employer.
Outliving your economic value has been an issue for decades as technology has
kept advancing, but the acceleration of the disruption in the last five years
has been even more substantial, particularly for mid-level white collar jobs.
It's especially disturbing when the MAGA morons in Congress keep yapping about
raising the age for Social Security while employees just a few years from the
retirement goalposts -- and after a lifetime of contributions to the fund --
now face being abruptly and unceremoniously unemployed.
Whether you've been replaced by younger, cheaper folks, outmoded
by automation or A.I., or outsourced to the new WFH labor force willing to work
from anywhere for less and with fewer benefits, your relative value,
negotiating strength, and leverage have all likely diminished. Which means your
continuing employment prospects aren't looking that great. Let's just say that
the employers are "feeling their oats" these days and see the
pendulum of negotiating power headed back their way.
Employers in every kind of traditional industry learned two
crucial lessons throughout the pandemic and the growth of the "gig"
marketplace: (1) they could get by with a lot less of almost everything,
especially people, and (2) having an on-demand and variable workforce instead a
locked-in, full-time, and fully funded group was an amazingly effective way to
closely tie their operating costs to the real-time demand for their products
and services.
As a simple example, the insurance industry has determined that
it no longer needs thousands of adjusters because some of the most
time-consuming tasks they performed - like physical inspections of damaged
property and vehicles -- can now be handled directly by their insureds using
mobile apps. Call centers across the country which used to be staffed full
time are now largely empty due
to new technology and being replaced by foreign boiler rooms as well as by
people working part time, for peanuts, at home.
Unfortunately, these two lessons - fewer folks and flexible employment - really stuck, while the difficulties we all faced with
just-in-time inventory strategies, supply chain collapses, and little or no
system resilience or redundancy seem to have already started to fade. We're
sadly back to the "save me a dollar today and let the future take care of
itself" approach as public companies concerned with quarterly results try
to offset the very slow rate of returning revenues by "saving their way" to success. Especially with substantial headcount cuts, which never work
in the long run.
Let's be clear as well that ageism is a serious concern and an
active driver of a portion of these shifts. I've described some of the
affirmative steps that every smart older employee should be taking to increase
the likelihood that he or she will make the latest cuts. If that describes you, it's time to recalibrate and
realistically reassess where things stand for you since the game and the goals
have shifted pretty dramatically in the last six months along with the balance
of power between employer and employee.
Here are five things to consider as you plan out your next
moves.
(1) The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. Everyone tells themselves, from time to time, that they're
irreplaceable. Convincing yourself is easy -- the world, not so much. If you're
going to be prepared to deal successfully with the new challenges which you're
certain to face, you need to be as realistic about your shortcomings as you are
proud of your skills and accomplishments. And you need to be smart enough to
know when you shouldn't trust yourself. Get a second opinion from a trusted
friend before you jump off the cliff.
(2) Experience matters less and less every day in
tech-centric businesses. In a
world where change is constant and new technologies emerge weekly, whatever got
you through and made you valuable in the past is worth exponentially less
today, because no one has experience doing things that have never been done
before. Don't judge yourself by your prior results; no one else will and,
in fact, a fairer question is not what you did, but what you could have done
with the resources and opportunities you had. In today's business world, your
history and prior behaviors may actually be impediments to progress,
adaptation, and agility going forward.
(3) You need to leave the "rocket science"
to the rookies. At best, most of us over
50s in the workforce are digital immigrants and, across the board, we're
matching skills and trying to compete in the new digital economy with millions
of younger, faster, digital natives. This is simply no contest; you won't win.
Trying to explain generative AI to most grown-ups is tougher than trying to
teach a fish to ride a bicycle. Stick to your knitting and don't try to pretend
you're something you're not.
(4) It's probably not the right time for you to
start a new business. It's never been easier to start a business or harder to build
one that's successful
and sustainable. You can easily convince yourself that you have the skill set,
the endurance, the passion, and the perseverance to make a go of it starting
from scratch, but nine times out of 10, startups fail. Not a good bet or
a good use of your savings to try.
(5) You may keep your job, but the job you keep won't be
the same. If you're lucky enough to
be kept around, you should be mentally prepared to make some attitude
adjustments. The job is to do what needs to get done now -- not what or how
things used to be done -- and not how you think they should be done. In the new
normal, they have to pay you, but they don't have to thank you. And you don't
have to like what you're doing; you just have to do it.
The healthiest and happiest folks I talk to these days combine
practicality with confidence. They say that there's no task that's beneath them
and none that's beyond them. These are the long-term keepers in every company.
