Not so many years ago, if an HR department thought at all about its company's over-50 workforce, it probably was in connection with downsizing and early retirement packages or long-term care insurance. Nowadays, if you are not already head to head with top management plotting how to retain your company's baby boomer contingent and scheming over ways to recruit even older workers, your head must be someplace else. In the proverbial sand, maybe?

It's a matter of simple arithmetic. The baby boom generation represents 18 years of population explosion during the years 1946 to 1964. The first of 78 million baby boomers turned 50 years old on January 1, 1996. The percentage of workers age 55 and older will grow twice as fast as the total labor force and will amount to 14 percent of the U.S. labor force by the year 2005.

That's the big picture, but you need to look at the numbers within your own organization right now. "How important are baby boomers to your company?" asks Richard Pimentel, senior partner in Milt Wright Associates, a California-based consulting firm specializing in disability management and return to work strategies.

What percentage of your workforce do boomers comprise? What proportion of the company's skills and knowledge resides among them? If you conclude that your company must keep baby boomers on the job as part of a survival plan, then you have some work to do.

"HR's ability to keep baby boomers going is a challenge," Pimentel says. And it won't be the onsite fitness facilities; pet-sitting services, 24-hour cafeterias or other trendy perks that keep the over-50 set on the job. What it will take, Pimentel told an audience at the SHRM/Hudson Institute War for Talent conference last month, is adapting to the aging workforce in two key areas: first, by including non-occupational injuries and illness in return-to-work programs; second, by preventing and treating work-related stress, and getting employees with debilitating stress back to work.

Time keeps on ticking, ticking

As much as they might have liked to, even the almighty baby boomers have failed to discover the secret of eternal youth. For many people, health becomes a major issue once they turn 50. Employees may experience their first serious medical condition in their late 40s or early 50s. It may affect them for the rest of their lives. Chronic illnesses and conditions (e.g., arthritis, high blood pressure, and heart disease) also kick in around that age, and some companies will lose people as a result, Pimentel observes.

The longer an employee stays off work, Pimentel says, the more likely it is that the employee will never return -- regardless of whether the injury or illness is work-related. In connection with work-related disabilities, Pimentel says, employers have learned that work can be therapeutic for injured workers. It can help the employee recover sooner and more completely. For these reasons, Pimentel says, "The great challenge will be to integrate 'work as therapy' into non-occupational illnesses and injuries."

Pimentel recommends a model of disability management that involves HR, benefits administration, workers compensation, health and safety, and top management. "If you have a return to work program modeled on finding really good jobs for injured workers," Pimentel says, "you will have to tear it down and start over." What's needed, he says, is a "case management" model, not a "plug-in" model.

And don't overlook ergonomics, Pimentel says. "It's not just fluff; it may be key to your company's survival. You should budget and plan for it."

Stress boom looms

It's not just physical health that's at stake for boomers and their employers. Stress, Pimentel says, is a major health concern for mid-life persons and a top productivity and performance concern for American employers.

He calls stress "the bad back" of the new millennium.

The sheer numbers of aging baby boomers would make their stress-related problems an employer concern regardless of anything else. But, as usual, there is a uniquely boomer spin on work-related and other stress. For example, Pimentel points out, "Baby boomers were 'promised' employment for life. Now employment for life is off the table, and that 'breach of contract' is causing a lot of anger and frustration among baby boomers."

What's more, Pimentel says, boomers had children later in life because (due to advances in birth control) they could. But having children during their "prime saving years" rather than their "prime earning years" is having an impact on retirement age and savings, says Pimentel. Boomers are also dealing with elderly parents, he points out.

This all adds up, Pimentel predicts, to an epidemic of clinical depression among the baby boomer generation. The Prozac family of drugs already is the number-one-selling drug among employees today, he says, followed by antacids and ulcer medications. Pimentel says HR should work with people experiencing stress and depression, and offer attitude training that makes it socially acceptable to seek treatment for these conditions.

New lease on work life

Baby boomers are looking for meaning, Pimentel says, and asking what it's all about. So give it to them, he says. Offer your aging workforce opportunities to grow and find meaning in their work.

Specifically, Pimentel suggests, give older workers opportunities to mentor, enable them to continue their career development and give them back job security. Not the old "employment for life," but a new job security within themselves -- the ability to make themselves marketable.

"We are a touchy-feely generation," Pimentel, himself a boomer, says. "We are high-maintenance and we are worth it. We are the only people who know how your company works and we will leave without telling you!"

This article is courtesy of HRWire. All rights reserved.