Are we going to waste the generation with the best preparation?

Are we going to waste the generation with the best preparation? We live in times of great change: pandemics, geopolitical tensions, social revolutions… and an accelerated technological transformation in the background. The former are conjunctural and will pass, but the latter is structural and not only will it not pass, but its tendency is to accelerate.

All of this is leading to changes in the economies and at work. Hundreds of thousands of people are leaving their jobs because “they are no longer needed”, most of them around the age of fifty, that is, the age at which a professional can contribute more due to the experience factor.

The statistics in our country give us a picture of the situation: of the total number of unemployed people, one million are over fifty years old. The vast majority want to go back to work but are finding it difficult to the point that 70 percent of those over 55 think they will never do it again.

This, which at the individual level is a problem, at the country level is the greatest waste of talent that we have known in our history.

Are we going to waste the generation with the best preparation?

The questions to ask ourselves are: are we willing to waste all that talent? can we afford it? what can be done? The digital revolution is currently the main agent of transformation of the economy, work and society.

And it is behind the loss of the vast majority of those jobs. However, it is also the main engine for creating new jobs and new business projects based on innovation. Therefore, there is the paradox that what produces the problem is also the solution.

Training in skills related to the digital world will be one of the ways by which we will be able to take advantage of that talent that is now leaving the productive economy, but for this it will be necessary to solve a problem that is very obvious and that has come to be called ageism, that is, age discrimination.

Generation with more preparation

In general terms, when selecting talent for digital jobs, companies tend to hire young people. However, the evidence shows that the performance in these types of positions of a middle-aged person with the necessary skills is not lower than that of younger people.

Here, too, another avenue of opportunity opens up: the collaboration of the two generations to form powerful teams in which each person contributes experience, knowledge and skills that make the whole much more than the sum of its parts.

But to be able to solve the problem with this will not be enough. We must also add the expansion of the economy and the productive fabric, in other words, the creation of new companies. For many of these highly educated and experienced middle-aged people, this will be the way. And with this, in addition to creating jobs, our economy will be strengthened.

Author: Juan Manuel Martín Menéndez, Member of Cibercotizador