Competition for young employees

29 October 2010. DocNet, the HSG’s association for doctoral students and graduates who are writing a postdoctoral thesis to qualify as a professor,has again invited outstanding speakers to the congress this year. Keynote speakers included representatives from academia and trade and industry, as well as a member of the Club of Rome. Highlights of the congress included innovation and marketing (“Senior customers as a new target group”) and the human resources perspective (“Dealing with older members of staff” and “Age diversity at the workplace”).

New challenges
Besides the growing pressure on social-security and pension systems, enterprises are also facing numerous changes. Thus companies in the German-speaking area are increasingly struggling with a lack of highly qualified young employees (the “war for talents”). However, demographic change also presents enterprises with opportunities, such as rising sales opportunities through well-funded senior customer groups (the “silver market”).

Publication accompanying the Symposium
Speakers’ contributions, as well as a great deal of background information, will be published in a book accompanying the Symposium. The bookFrom Grey to Silver − Managing the Demographic Change Successfullywill be presented during the Symposium and will then be available from bookshops.

Consequences of a “screwed-up” age structure
In his preface to the publication, Roman Herzog warns against the incisive consequences of the “screwed-up age structure”. It is to be feared that a “democracy of pensioners” will emerge and that younger people will be placed at a permanent disadvantage. Nonetheless, demographic change also offers economic perspectives, as the strongly growing segment of the “silver market” demonstrates in Japan. In any case, the prospect of a healthy, long life as such is already a “silver lining in the clouds”, which must be appreciated, Roman Herzog underlines in the publication.