Age profiling allows you to take a clearer look at the age of your workforce now and in the future at an organisational, departmental or team level. The tools provided here will help you profile your workforce by age, and therefore to predict trends and identify areas where there may be a higher likelihood of retirement requests in the future, and where you need to consider retirement conversations. The age and whole time equivalent analysis tools will also show you the distribution of full and part time workers across your workforce.
Why use age profiling?
- To identify work areas with a high average age.
- To help plan for retirements and how you will recruit or retain staff.
- To highlight patterns and trends across your workforce.
- To assist workforce planning.
This means you can use workforce planning, along with increasing awareness of flexible retirement, to make sure your organisation’s succession planning now protects the provision of care services in the future.
How to use age profiling tools
Age profiling is not a one-off exercise. It should be part of a comprehensive workforce planning process that will raise questions for your organisation to consider, and help inform decision making going forward. It needs to be an ongoing process and a source of information for continual improvement. It is particularly important for managers to have accurate information when discussing future career and retirement plans with staff.
There are three interactive planning tools available on this site. They can be accessed via the links below:
- UK Working Longer Group Interactive Tool
- Scottish Working Longer Group Interactive Tool
- Age and Whole Time Equivalent Analysis Tool
Choose the tool which best meets your needs in a given situation.
Flexible retirement
Following on from the modelling process, your organisation may find it helpful to enter into a dialogue with staff about retirement options. Research carried out by the UK Working Longer Group revealed that managers are often reluctant to discuss the subject of retirement with staff, but open and constructive discussions around retirement plans will be a vital element of workforce planning in the future. Early consideration of the options available can be helpful to both staff and employers and information on flexible retirement alternatives can be found at the Flexible Retirement Hub.
Shared learning
Our shared learning web page includes an example from City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust which details how they have used age profiling to assess the impact of retirement on specific work areas where the average age is higher than others.
Let us know how you’ve used age profiling in your organisation, get in touch.