Dychtwald is the founder and CEO of Age Wave and a visionary on the lifestyle, marketing, and workforce implications of an aging population. Erickson is an executive officer of The Concours Group and an experienced adviser on the organizational and strategic implications of the changing workforce. Morison is an executive vice president of The Concours Group and a leader of breakthrough research on a wide variety of management challenges. The authors’ Harvard Business Review article, “It’s Time to Retire Retirement,” won the McKinsey Award.
In essence, the “workforce crisis” to which the title refers results from an insufficiency of talented, skilled, and principled people at a time when competition for them has never been more intense than it is now...and “the coming shortage” of them is certain to increase in months and years ahead. In the first two parts of this volume, the authors explain how this “brain drain” threatens organizational performance, why a new workforce strategy is needed, why older workers (ages 55+) comprise “the biggest untapped resource” and how to optimize their services, why and how the “boomer bottleneck” disrupts productivity, how to rekindle employees’ passion for work, why the best of the younger workers (ages 18-34) keep leaving, and how to connect with them. Then in Parts III and IV, they explain why flexible work arrangements are needed and how to make them work, why continuous education matters and how to make it pay off, why “variety will rule” and how to leverage it, how to evaluate the talent and skills of the current workforce and anticipate their needs, and finally, how to formulate and then implement strategies by which to avert a workforce crisis.
Readers will greatly appreciate the authors’ no-nonsense approach to real-world issues. Their observations are based on extensive research and their recommendations are both practical and do-able. The provision of various case studies is a substantial value-added benefit. It is instructive to see how various organizations have either avoided or satisfactorily resolved the “workforce crisis” each faced. There are two other books which should be read in combination with this one: Leigh Branham’s The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave: How to Recognize the Subtle Signs and Act Before It’s Too Late and Bradford Smart’s Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People (Revised and Updated Edition).
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