What does it cost to train a new
employee? Or perhaps the question is better phrased, what does it cost you
to lose a good employee?
Senior employees have been around the block a few
times and have found that things aren't always better somewhere else and it's
worth the effort to try and make things change rather than job-hop. Hiring
seniors doesn't guarantee you of a long term employee but on average, you won't
find them leaving as quickly or for the same reasons.
How much does it cost you for your clients to
do their personal business at work? Most employers will be shocked at
these numbers and most would even deny that it could be, but they are
accurate.
Phone calls to the baby-sitter, the girlfriend, love-note
emails, fraternization at the water-cooler, downloading MP3 files, shopping
online, browsing, and general personal primping cost the average employer more
than 28% of the total productivity that they are paying for according to a
recent university study. The same study showed that for people over the
age of 50, this personal activity goes down to an average of 9%. So while
you are paying seniors a higher salary, it is very probable that you are getting
much higher performance from your senior employees.
Senior employees don't use the sick time that
their younger counterparts do. According to a recent MetLife study, people
over the age of 50 use 45% less sick time than do people in the 25-35 age
range. It's not that younger employees are generally less healthy or that
they intentionally lay out of work more often.
But consider that people
over age 50 are generally not raising young children who often get sick and need
personal care at home or spread the illness to the parent. Children that
go to school are in contact with many cold virus' as well as the old strep and
pink eye favorites. Seniors don't run as much risk here for obvious
reasons and neither are they as apt to have to stay home and stay with sick
youngsters.
Depending upon the age of the seniors that you
hire, you may not run into a requirement to pay for a health insurance policy.
Even if you do, it very likely will be a single or at somewhat cheaper
rate. Many senior employees are already on Medicare, and providing them
with a Medicare supplement policy is cheaper and a tremendous benefit to the
senior employee too.
