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Recruiting talent is an ongoing challenge for many sectors and one solution is to prioritize hiring senior employees.
This is an opportunity to review your employment strategy, adapt certain roles and reevaluate your organization’s processes.
There are many benefits
Experience and skills transfer
One of the risks associated with the retirement of senior employees is a loss of expertise and skills. Keeping your employees in the workforce for longer will allow you to retain this expertise and assign your older employees roles that involve knowledge transfer, for example.
Diversity and innovation
Organizations are increasingly aware that maintaining a diverse workforce is required in order to tackle challenges from all angles and identify blind spots. Generational differences must also be taken into account. The complementary strengths of each employee will boost your capacity to innovate and implement the changes required for prosperity.
This approach aligns with the lasting trend of participatory governance which considers the perspectives of employees at different levels and encourages them to actively participate in the organization to increase their engagement and retention.
Productivity and cost reduction
Older employees who wish to continue their professional activities have built up a wealth of experience. Their autonomy, experience and network of contacts have increased over the years and could be valuable assets for an organization willing to leverage them. Doing so will allow you to more easily maintain efficiency while reducing the cost associated with radical change and mistakes made by poorly-supervised novices.
Mitigate the labour shortage
The infamous labour shortage is a hot topic and it could be countered in high-risk sectors by reorganizing work around older employees in specific roles on either a part-time or full-time basis. This should certainly be explored as a means to maintain your existing services.
Boost your reputation
The working world changes at breakneck speed. We can no longer ignore the widespread trend of corporate social responsibility (CSR) that citizens are attentive to. CSR will be a deciding factor for both your clients and future employees when choosing between you and your competitors. To remain in the game, you must put a CSR policy in place. Employing seniors could become one of the desired inclusion criteria.
What solutions can help you to retain seniors in employment?
Rethink your hiring process
Changing your habits could be useful. Did you reassess your recruitment criteria over the past year? It might be time to overhaul your hiring model.
- Put a clear policy in place and ensure that the CVs of qualified candidates are not rejected due to age-related criteria.
- To avoid unconscious bias, make sure that your job interviews are as standardized as possible. Where practicable, consider creating a diverse hiring committee of individuals of different ages.
Review your recruitment methods
Online job postings are the most common method of advertising certain employment opportunities. However, you could take an active approach to recruitment and seek out senior candidates. For example:
- Consider contacting organizations with many senior members;
- Post job opportunities in local media or periodicals for seniors;
- Call on a recruitment agency that can pinpoint talent in their network to meet your needs.
Take a flexible approach to the daily lives of workers
Where possible, a certain level of flexibility regarding work schedules can benefit your entire workforce and ultimately improve productivity. This applies in particular to older employees who are often less concerned with salary-related criteria than working conditions. Initiatives such as reducing working hours and offering teleworking and additional paid or unpaid vacation days are likely to please senior employees and keep them on your payroll for as long as possible.
Offer professional development programs
It’s never too late to learn new skills. Senior employees can be inspired by integrating new working methods or embracing new technology that will make their work easier. However, offering appropriate support and time to adapt is important. As a result, they can continue to give their best.
Put mentoring programs in place
In order to avoid a costly loss of skills required to maintain your company’s productivity, you could consider offering a skills exchange, transfer and mentoring program. Assigning such central roles to senior employees is also a win-win situation. They would feel valued in their new role and passing on their experience to younger colleagues would greatly help your organization to move in the right direction.
Offer the possibility of phased retirement
To retain your experienced employees, you could consider offering a phased retirement plan based on their needs. This could include reduced working hours and offering seasonal work or contracts for specific projects.
Tax benefits for your workers
Retire later with a larger Québec Pension Plan (QPP) pension fund
Workers should bear in mind that if they retire later, they’ll benefit from a larger pension fund:
- Where workers start receiving their retirement pension before age 65, the payments will decrease by 0.6% each month;
- Payments will increase by 0.7% each month where workers start receiving their pension after age 65, up to a maximum increase of 42% if they start at age 70;
- On January 1, 2024, the maximum pension eligibility age was increased from 70 to 72. Deferring payment until age 72 rather than 70 will increase payments, up to a maximum of 58.8%.
Canada Employment Credit
Under the Canada Employment Credit, workers can claim an amount ($1,433 in 2024) in addition to their basic personal amount if they are aged 65 or older.
Optional QPP/CPP contributions
You should note that since January 1, 2024:
- QPP contributions are optional for workers aged 65 or older, provided they are already receiving payments;
- Workers aged 72 or older will no longer be required to contribute to the QPP.
It should also be noted that the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) already gives workers aged 65 or older, but under 70, the option of electing to stop making CPP contributions if they are receiving a QPP or CPP retirement pension.
Québec tax credit for career extension
For 2024, workers aged 60 or older can claim a Québec tax credit for career extension. The maximum net value of the credit is $1,500 for workers aged between 60 and 64 and $1,650 for those aged 65 or older. However, as of 2025, this credit will be available only to workers aged 65 or older and certain calculation criteria will be reviewed. The reduction threshold has been increased from $40,925 in 2024 to $56,500.