Older job seekers gutted by policy failure

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.