Bridging the Gap: Part 2

We also talked about the issue of educating organizational leaders on the importance and benefits of having representation from older adults and the difficulties that those organizations might have to work around in order to gain the advantages that older adults can provide. Successfully integrating older citizens into organizations that can benefit from their input will mean finding ways to highlight the values offered by having access to older workers and comparing this, often intangible value, to the real costs of implementing the kinds of programs that will attract their much needed experience.

Given the continuing demand and fluctuation of business needs, it can be a hardship on many leaders to accommodate flexible schedules or create short-term projects from long-range goals, situations that best fit the needs and capabilities of older adults. We talked about current successful models in both the education sector and in the utilization of programs like Your Encore. These programs, however, are most useful where the nature of work is more project-oriented or for specific periods of time, e.g., semesters.