Most people plan on working way past 65—and so HR leaders should consider stepping up their reskilling training programs to keep top talent at their own organization, according to Mercer's 2019 Global Talent Trends report.

“With 75 percent of employees intending to keep working past retirement age, and five generations working side-by-side, it has never been more important for businesses and society to think creatively about how to leverage experience workers,” the authors write.

Executives agree: upskilling and reskilling have moved up the executive agenda from ninth to third position in this year's report – and insurance executives say it's now their the number one priority.

“Especially when talent is scarce, people development becomes key to organizational competitiveness and sustainability,” the authors write. “But to deliver what executives want, HR must shift its mindset or risk a self-fulfilling prophesy: HR leaders say the main barrier to reskilling is the concern that reskilled talent will leave the firm.”

Across the globe, the median investment in reskilling is $1,000 per person, with the highest investments occurring in the retail sector, as well as by employers in China (both categories report a median investment of $2,000 per person.)

The majority of workers (83 percent) believe it is primarily their responsibility – rather than their employer's responsibility – to keep their skills up to date. As such, the top reskilling approaches used by HR leaders are employee-directed learning (59 percent) and informal hands-on learning (50 percent), though to ensure they keep talented workers in critical positions, employers are also developing formal reskilling programs (55 percent).

“Focusing on older workers has become urgent because this population is acutely vulnerable to automation – older workers tend to be concentrated in jobs where at least 50 percent of the tasks can be automated,” the authors write.

While automation will necessitate many jobs to be “deconstructed” into individual tasks, employers are increasingly realizing that there will always be “jobs to be done.” To fully leverage their human workforce, employers need to determine whether certain tasks are repetitive, strategic, necessary year-round or project-based, according to the report. Employers also need to figure out how jobs can be more clearly defined to reflect team roles and still give employees freedom to contribute.

“By freeing up resources, organizations can rethink how they deploy people accordingly, especially because the jobs that remain will likely require different levels of labor intensity and cognitive maturity,” the authors write.

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Reskilling and upskilling becoming bigger talent-management priorities

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