The average age of the workforce is steadily increasing.  For employers, that means the average age of their workers is steadily increasing. Baby Boomers, who make up the majority of the workforce, are now aged 45 to 62 years. Over the next few years more and more of them will be retiring turning a trickle into a torrent. In the past new hires would be found easily enough to replace them. In the future the shortage of replacement workers from among the younger generation, the so-called Gen-Y (currently aged 16 to 31 years old), may make finding the right, or any replacement a lot more difficult.

It’s not possible to get a handle on what issues an aging workforce might present for your business until you have an understanding of the age grouping among your current workers and an idea of when they will start to retire, particularly those that are highly efficient, well skilled or just plain good workers. That can be discovered by carrying out a demographic study to show what percentage overall of employees will become retirement-eligible in the near future. A closer look will identify the key people whose departure would be a real loss to the business.

Next after that is to develop a strategy for tackling any problems the retirement wave might present. You can think in terms of hiring replacements and keeping current people on longer.

Hiring replacements

Most small businesses seem to prefer to hire from among Baby Boomers and Gen Xers with only a minority actually preferring to hire members of Gen-Y for their team. Enthusiasm, a willingness to learn and technological savvy are reputedly among Gen-Y's greatest assets but their unreliability, lack of experience, frequent job changing, know-it-all attitude and lack of team playing raise concerns for small business employers. But with Boomers going and increasing competition for the small pool of Gen-Xers there won’t be a choice. In the US, typical of advanced economies, the American Society Of Training And Development is predicting that 76 million workers will retire over the next two decades with only 46 million arriving to replace them. Most of those new workers will be Gen-Ys. Employers will be faced with a multigenerational workforce among whom some real generational differences will exist.  Generational clashes in the workplace are nothing new. What is new is the size of the gap between their different values and work styles that could threaten to lower morale, increase employee turnover and reduce productivity. Getting them to work harmoniously will be a challenge demanding more focus on enabling and encouraging the ability of different generations to work in a collaborative manner. It’s definitely time to start catching up on information about management techniques for bringing out the best in Gen-Y. On the other hand, employers will be repaid, through the better retention and integration of Gen-Yers into the workplace, for any investment in training they make relating to those basic skills that generation is perceived to be short on such as conflict resolution skills, communication, supervision skills, workplace etiquette and customer service.

Focusing on retention

Keeping on older workers provides an opportunity to retain organizational knowledge for a time and the opportunity to pass it on. Pairing older and younger workers together in a mentoring relationship, maybe guided by some formal training, builds skill level. Having new hires accompany more tenured employees as they perform their day-to-day tasks, (job shadowing), provides them with an insight into the resources, techniques, and short cuts that make experienced employees more efficient.

Of course, these schemes are predicated on having the old hands around still to pass on their knowledge or to just be doing their job. The fact that Boomers are reaching retirement age isn’t to say that they necessarily will retire. Longer life expectation, poor saving habits and a rising cost of living are keeping many people back at work well after they become eligible to retire. Circumstantial ‘push’ drivers like these may keep people at work but attractive ‘pull’ tactics based on more flexible and innovative working conditions, which suit their needs and circumstances, will ensure you retain or attract the best.

That’s why employees need to understand what will make employment continue to be attractive to older workers. For example, older workers tend to prefer a workplace that continues to offer them training, makes some workplace accommodations to suit their reduced physical capabilities, provides flexible scheduling (such as part time work and work from home), offers retirement and health benefits and a phased retirement package.

As the workforce continues to age, businesses that want to stay competitive  will plan to retain and use the knowledge of their older workers, as well as arranging for it to get passed on to the next generation.

Thinking about death is uncomfortable in itself – cold bloodedly sitting down and working out scenarios to deal with what will happen in the event of it actually happening is even more traumatic. That’s part of the reason why succession planning goes to the bottom of the ‘to do’ list for most business owners.

Even those who have gone to the effort of preparing a succession plan may not have constructed it to be in the true best interests of their spouse or the longer term viability of their business. Because of the tax benefits involved, estate and tax advisors commonly recommend leaving the business to the surviving spouse. While this makes perfect tax avoidance sense, it may not constitute a healthy family business succession planning strategy. For a number of reasons, emotional and practical, a surviving spouse may want nothing whatsoever to do with the business in the absence of their partner. This is one reason why succession planning must begin with a frank family survey; it’s necessary to establish correctly two things - who wants to perpetuate the business and who can perpetuate the business.

The spousal partner may simply not want to take on running the business. Then the succession planning must take their reluctance into consideration. On the other hand, while many spouses have worked with their partner from the start-up of the business and involved themselves in its operations so that they have an intimate knowledge of it, many have not. Without proper knowledge of the organization they may not be skilled enough, or lack the financial experience, to manage it. It’s not doing the spouse or the business any favors to pass on the challenges of running a business to someone who lacks the competence to do so.

If your business has more than one owner then you need to understand the risks you may face if you die unexpectedly without having a proper buy-sell agreement in place.  Looking at the situation quite objectively, if you were to make your spouse the heir of your share in the business, or, by default let that happen, would it be welcome to the other partners? Or to your spouse? A successful partnership is a delicately balanced relationship and bringing on board a deceased partner's spouse can be difficult. Do they get along personally? Would they see eye-to-eye about the future of the business? In the absence of any special arrangement the remaining partners cannot force the spouse to sell them their share, and the spouse cannot force the remaining partners to buy his/hers. This sort of Mexican standoff can spoil a business and create a situation that is both unpleasant and unprofitable for your spouse.

Spousal interests might be best protected by turning your shares into cash through sale to the remaining partners. Again, lack of preparation here can have unfortunate consequences for your spouse – specifically, would they be able to sell your shares, and at a fair price, to the remaining partners? A buy-sell agreement can be structured to manage this by providing for an automatic buyout by your remaining partners upon your death. This arrangement is funded through the purchase of a life insurance policy (also called buy-sell insurance) to facilitate the buyout by them. A written succession plan would detail how the business will be valued and what your spouse’s share will be. As a result, a business succession plan with buy-sell provisions provides all owners and their spouses with legal certainty should the unforeseen occur and reduces the risk of either side becoming embroiled in legal action over a valuation or payout figure.

It's important to realize that management (your power) and ownership (your assets) are for the purposes of succession planning, two distinct entities. You don’t need to transfer both to your spouse to protect their future. You may decide, for instance, to transfer management of the business to one of your children whose youth, enthusiasm about the challenge and skill makes them the person best suited to exercise management while maintaining an income stream for the spouse by transferring a share of business ownership to them.

Losing a partner is a dreadful enough experience in itself. Bequeathing your spouse an interest in your business that proves to be more of a burden than a support would be tragic.  The development of a business succession plan is crucial to making the business provide just the type of support you intended for them.

It can take hours of hard work creating and organizing to publish your own email newsletter but if it doesn’t attract subscribers then all that work represents just so much wasted effort. One of the most important parts of email marketing is getting people to actually subscribe to your publication. Without subscribers, your enewsletter is pretty pointless, so promotion is worth every bit as much attention and effort as you devoted to creating it.

Here are some tips on how to build your opt-in list of subscribers

1. Put the subscription box in a prominent place on your webpages. Somewhere towards the top of the page is a good position to get it noticed. And yes, that is ‘webpages’ – not every visitor will make their first landing on your home page so provide the opportunity to subscribe from every page of the website.

2. Market your newsletter offline. Merely adding a link to your enewsletter subscription page on your website will not make it an overnight success. Passive list building just doesn’t work; it will need active promotion in other online and offline channels as well:

• Send an email to existing customers
• Issue a press release in the local paper
• Send around a flyer
• Mention it in any blogs, newsgroups, discussion lists, and forums you subscribe to
• Mention it in the signature file at the end of your emails - anyone who receives an email from you will also receive your invitation to subscribe to your newsletter

3. Make it sound attractive. Write copy for your promotional materials that will attract the specific segment of customers/prospects you want to attract mentioning their particular needs, wants, and interests and the hot buttons that will motivate them to take action. Push the benefits of signing up to your enewsletter – what’s in it for them. They’ll want detailed specifics if you are to convince them to give up their email address to someone they don’t personally know.

4. Offer an incentive to sign up. This is very powerful. For example, you could offer new subscribers something substantial like a physical prize, a gift card or a coupon exchangeable for a product up to a certain value. Quite common is an offer of a free whitepaper and entry into a draw for a prize. Whatever it is, ensure you choose something that will resonate with the target customer demographic. Set up a special opt-in page for the contest and then go to work promoting it. There are many blogs and websites that allow free advertising of these types of contests and if you form a joint venture with someone else, you can widen the potential audience numbers even more.

5. Let them see a sample or current issue. People like to see what they're signing up for and whether it is likely to be of interest to them before they hand over their email address.

6. Make subscription easy. More subscriber information makes for a more qualified list and for better target marketing BUT being asked for a lot of contact information can be intimidating and will turn off many potential subscribers. Only ask for their email address at first. You can build up their detail by offering incentives to provide them in issues of the newsletter itself.

7. Make it safe. Put a link to your privacy policy next to the subscription box. Make your privacy policy clear so people understand exactly what you are going to do with any personal data they supply. One thing worth mentioning specifically – assure them you won’t share, swap with or sell their email address to third parties.

8. Let people know they can unsubscribe at any time. Add a link to your unsubscribe page right underneath the subscribe box.

9. Encourage referrals. If subscribers find your information useful they probably have friends or colleagues who would also. Put a ‘Refer a friend’ link in your enewsletter with a message like ‘If you enjoyed this, why not forward it to a friend’. Make it easy for people to forward your email on.

It’s all too easy to get people offside through poor communication – the careless remark that cuts to the quick, the dismissive answer. People make mistakes in how they communicate with others all the time. Managers are no different.

Ask yourself if you deal with your employees in any of the ways listed below. Every one of them demonstrates a careless indifference to the concerns of the other person or a gap between talking the talk and actually walking the walk. Any discrepancy between the talking and the walking will get you labeled as a bad communicator and a bad boss.

1. Ask people for their opinions, ideas, and continuous improvement suggestions, and fail to acknowledge their contribution or provide a reason for why it can’t be implemented. Worse - acknowledge it was a good idea and then proceed to do nothing about implementing it.
2. Tell them they are in charge of something because they have the most skills and knowledge then step in and micromanage how they do things. Worse - undermine or change their decisions without explaining why.
3. Ask people for their input as if their feedback mattered even though you have already made up your mind about the final decision.
4. Call a meeting and turn up late leaving everybody frustrated with the waste of their time. Worse – send in a message saying something more important has come up and you can’t make it after all.
5. Bring the kids or pet dog in and let them run riot then ask an employee to clean up the mess.
6. Badmouth employees to their colleagues. They’ll know they will be getting the same rubbishing from you behind their back in their turn. Just as bad – humiliate them in meetings in front of coworkers.
7. Set a strict dress code for employees then turn up in your track suit. Worse (at least from a fashion statement point of view) – tuck them into a pair of Ugg boots.
8. Fail to address behavior and actions of people that are inconsistent with company policy. Worse – apply them inconsistently or make excuses for the shortcomings of favorites.
9. Make your priority everybody’s priority by always getting people to drop what they were doing and help you out. Worse – then blame them for not getting their tasks done on time.
10. Appropriate your employee’s idea and take credit for it. Worse – do it in a team meeting (at least some of the people there will know who really came up with the idea first).
11. Change your mind frequently about plans and timelines without good reason. Worse - fail to communicate the changes to the people expected to do the work.
12. Allow an employee to fail when you had information that he did not and which he might have used to make a different decision.
13. Speak loudly and rudely to intimidate people. Worse - dominate all conversations so people don’t get the opportunity to respond to accusations and comments.
14. Refuse to accept constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement.
15. Ignore certain people and/or favor others. Worse – be inconsistent and make a person a superstar one day and a non event the next.
16. Let your anger show by swearing, bullying employees, shouting at them on the phone and slamming doors on them.      
17. Don’t return the calls or emails of employees – keep them wondering.
18. Slap down questions, concerns and ideas that come up in meetings. Worse – belittle the person who dared to speak up.
19. Cut off the employee you were talking to to take a personal call no matter how important the matter under discussion – or unimportant the personal call.
20. Misrepresent or distort conversations with your employees when discussing them with a third party.

A penny saved is a penny earned - Benjamin Franklin