Older job seekers gutted by policy failure

The failure of the Government's $70 million mature age worker initiative had many fathers but paternity must go to a lack of implementation.

Experience+ was launched in 2010 with the aim of getting more mature age workers 50+ in to work while ensuring current older workers were assisted if they wanted to work on past the traditional but non binding retirement age of 65.

Even though the $10 million Jobs Bonus for older job seekers was launched last April, it has only attracted less than 120 successful candidates. It has taken the Government and DEEWR 12 months to get 120 mature age people a job for three months work. This failure has been typical of Government's response to Australia's changing demographic shape as the Boomers age and transition to retirement or on to the dole and sickness benefits.

According to the 2010 Intergenerational Report, the worst-case scenario is that by 2050, government spending will outstrip revenue by 2.75 per cent of GDP, with half of all government-spending going towards health care and the aged pension.

Minister Kate Ellis and DEEWR must explain why they failed to design, implement and promote Experience+.

Over the last 18 months, the Gillard Government has scrapped three important mature age initiatives: On the Job Support, Experience Plus Training, and Job Transition Support. The monies saved from these programs were rolled into the Corporate Champions and the $25.8 million Experience+ Work Ready program, which hopes to provide job hunting skills and basic IT literacy training for people 50+. After 12 months of planning, Work Ready has not gone to market.

On the Job Support was an excellent program aimed at helping older 'tradies' and labourers find new ways to work so they didn't have to bust their guts in their late 50s and 60s. If you work 'on the tools', and you're over 55, the chances are you're carrying a work related injury. The idea was to ease them off hard labour and into less physical work. It is believed the programs were scrapped due to low enrolments. There is no help for these battlers now.

The defunct Experience+ Training program allowed provided training (at the Certificate III level or above) for mature age workers so that they could get skills to successfully mentor and supervise apprentices or trainees. The Government was going to pay employers almost $5000 per employee to hold on to their best workers and train them up. The program wasn't promoted and withered on the vine.

The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research's $20 million Investing in Experience (Skills Recognition & Training) program replaced DEEWR's More Help for Mature Age Workers in July last year. It aimed to help up to 5,000 mature age workers to gain nationally recognised qualifications. It is unclear how many people have completed this program.

How serious is the Government about contingency planning for demographic change, as the post war generation begins to retire? Not very. The media favours 'happy' stories of older people getting jobs - which are good – but which border at times on condescension. So far there has been no discussion of what the nation is trying to achieve with its older job seeker and worker strategy.

One of the reasons why the Government is trying to defray pension and healthcare outlays from 2010-2050, is to avoid shackling young people to a life of tax slavery to support the welfare of their ageing parents and grandparents.

While the unemployment rate for 55+ is low at about 3.5 per cent compared to youth unemployment (ABS. 11.8 per cent), unemployed older job seekers 55+ on average can take more than 72 weeks to find work, compared to about 40 weeks in the 25-44 age range.

In South Australia, if you're 55+ and unemployed, on average it will take a job seeker 81 weeks to find a job. Minister Ellis has done an excellent job in promoting her childcare portfolio but she has ignored the workplace participation portfolio and she may pay for this at the next election.

Unfortunately the $15.6 million Champions project will flounder as the Government launched it too late in the electoral cycle and the Prime Minister's call for a September 14 poll has squibbed employer interest. Why sign up to a program, which will be scrapped if and when the Coalition form government?

Yet while superannuation companies and lobby groups criticize the Government for planning to rescale top end super tax benefits, those same companies are pulling back from offering individual advice on investment strategies and instead, are directing their clients to the web. Web based superannuation planning is about as useless as a chocolate teapot. Older workers need one-on-one financial planning help.

The $15.6 million Corporate Champions program also sought to help employers prepare for the demographic effects of the retirement of the large Boomer demographics. Few employers, large or small, have heard of the program and only 250 companies will be selected over the next four years. The Abbott Government will almost certainly scrap the initiative.

The Government recently completed the tender for the delivery of the Champions project to a number of providers. They will try assist businesses to complete organizational profiles and assist with workforce planning, retraining and retaining their older workers on a needs basis.

Yet each provider uses a raft of different methodologies born from different 'workplace philosophies' – some based on dubious social science or understanding how organisations work. The worst of these pertain to diversity. These providers believe employers have a moral obligation to employ more older workers because 'it is the right thing to do' – much like gender equity.

Whether or not an employee holds their position depends on a raft of factors but some of the most important are merit, performance and the ability to change with the strategic direction of the business. The older worker push is not a diversity or equity issue, nor is it a HR problem. It relates directly to business planning – to capability and profit.

The Australian Industry Group (AIG) and Australian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ACCI), have been selected to not only manage but provide services for the Corporate Champions project yet neither has any experience in organizational change, workforce development or demographics. Both lobby groups are against the basic tenets of the program, one of which is the introduction of workplace flexibility for mature age workers (not of workers). What these organisation really fear is that flexibility may also convey legal rights to work part time or in some cases, from home. Shock. Horror.

So the Corporate Champions providers, delivering half a dozen different types of methodology, some based on diversity, some based on human capital theory, will create vastly different outcomes. But what employers want is specific business focused results. Very few providers have this capacity. Most sit in the 'diversity' camp.

In the last 10 years in Australia, there have been more than 50 major studies by private and public sector organisations examining the myriad effects of the retirement of the Boomer generation. National Seniors recently put out another study called Age Discrimination in the Labour Market. It tells us what older job seekers and workers have known for 20 years. Age discrimination is rife. No kidding.

The timidity of the Experience+ and Corporate Champions push matches the will of the Government and DEEWR to place this issue high on the national agenda. It is hoped the Opposition, if it forms government, won't make the same mistake.