Ageing presents wide ranging human resource challenges. Large numbers of retirements mean significant loss of experience, know-how and organisation memory.
Staff departures or retiring also provide opportunities for organisations. There is a chance to bring in a new profile of employee, to change assign staff across divisions, to improve job-filling through broader candidate search and, perhaps more contentiously, to reduce staff numbers.
Most governments well aware of the ageing challenges and of the need at least to uphold public service capacity in the face of large-scale staff departures.
In Australia, the Australian Public Service Commission takes an active role in sharing experiences across government agencies with workforce planning and other ageing-related issues. Ageing policies, focused on upholding capacity, are broad but concerns remain on coordinating such policies across the different levels of government and thus the ability to manage staff and resources reallocation.
While in Germany, the public service ageing policy tied to the strategy supported by the federal government that combines a sustainable family policy with a policy of active ageing that promote the use of experience-based knowledge.
With most the public service retiring over a short period of time, upholding the capacity of the public service to deliver the same level and quality of public services for all citizens is a complex management task and achieved in tandem with service delivery changes to meet the new demands from an ageing society.
An ageing population and an ageing public service need holistic strategies that encompass improved service delivery planning and workforce planning across sectors and levels of government, reallocation of resources, and productivity increases.
