Kelly Yang
Hong Kong can expect a fast-shrinking workforce as the city’s elderly population is likely to soar in the next two decades. Manpower experts have called for concrete steps to be taken to make the elderly more employable to fill the anticipated labor gap.
Hong Kong society will age rapidly over the coming two decades. The Census and Statistics Department estimates there will be 1.82 million people aged 65 or above in 2026, accounting for 25 percent of the population, compared with 1.16 million, constituting 17 percent of the population last year.
In 2036, the elderly population will soar to 2.37 million, accounting for 31 percent of the population. By that time, one in every three Hong Kong residents will be elderly.
In the coming three to five decades, the growth rate of those aged 85 or over will be faster than that of those aged 65, the government envisages.
The rapid pace of population aging will exert striking pressure on the city’s working-population structure. Hong Kong’s working population will probably reach its zenith in the next five years, after which it could hover at low levels for decades to come.
According to the Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong’s working population will reach a peak of 3.68 million in 2022 and then will steadily diminish to 3.13 million in 2066. In other words, a loss of 500,000 working people is predicted in the coming 50 years. In addition, the proportion of working people aged 55 or above will increase from 20.2 percent to 27 percent in the same period. By that time, there will be one elder for every three to four employed people.
Besides the dwindling working population, the coming retirement wave will worsen the situation. In the next 10 to 15 years, about 900,000 retirees will further exacerbate the thorny issue of an inadequate workforce in Hong Kong.
A roundtable conference held on Dec 8 at the Conrad Hotel by all-round recruitment and education media Recruit, and co-organized by China Daily Hong Kong Edition and the Hong Kong Management Association, brought together government officials, academics and employers to exchange views on rolling out the blueprint for long-term manpower planning to stimulate elder employment and fill the anticipated labor gap.
Healthy labor force
“We need to pay more attention to maintaining a healthy labor force in the future. Not many companies are doing this in Hong Kong. We need to focus more on this trend as companies should encourage more ideas like work-life balance to make employees healthy,” Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong reckoned at the roundtable.
Enhancing the employability of Hong Kong elders is paramount to countering the shrinking workforce. In Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, governments have extended the official retirement age, endowed subsidies to enterprises hiring elders, established elder employment resource centers and created an environment conducive to elder employment.
In Hong Kong, the administration extended the retirement age for newly recruited clerical civil servants from 60 to 65 two years ago. As civil servants recruited after 2000 do not have pension benefits, they should choose to work for more years.
First and foremost, all panelists concurred that providing flexible employment by private enterprises and non-government organizations is paramount to bolstering elder employment.
Hong Kong-based Lotus Tours has one special program called ITA — independent travel agent — which lets staff who have passed retirement age take on commission-based jobs. Under this program, elders can continue working but, at the same time, not feel too stressed.
“In terms of elder employment apart from our own company recruitment scheme, we also consider elderly people who retired from other industries like aviation and hotels. We believe their experience will still be relevant,” said Tony Chau Wai-man, technology and human resources general manager at Lotus Tours.
“Actually many elderly are willing to come back to work after retirement, but they do have one principle — instead of working under pressure as management, they prefer to take on technical positions so that they can pass on their experience and service skills,” said Joseph Wong Chong-chun, chairman and chief executive officer at Stelux Holdings International, a Hong Kong-listed enterprise specializing in the watch and optical retail and wholesale sectors.
An online survey by Recruit in midOctober revealed that 95 percent of the 616 employed people surveyed in Hong Kong are willing to work after retirement if there are suitable job offers. About 52 percent of respondents said they will try different job types away from their professions. Nearly 70 percent of them see parttime jobs and job flexibility as more appropriate if they continue to work after retirement.
Chinese herbal products retailer Hung Fook Tong Group Holdings agreed, saying elders continue to work as a way to express their wish to contribute to society.
“Why cannot we make some flexible working arrangement for them? It does not matter whether it is a paid or non-paid job like volunteer, only the contribution matters. I think we all need to think about it as we are all going to get older,” added Ricky Szeto Wing-fu, Hung Fook Tong Group Holdings general manager and executive director.
However, promoting elder recruitment sometimes is not easy as employers have many misconceptions.
Recruit also interviewed 123 employers in the city through an online questionnaire to gauge their opinions. Of the surveyed employers, 85 percent agreed that hiring retired people or extending the retirement age can relieve the pressure of labor shortages, but only 49 percent hired retirees. A further 49 percent had extended the company’s retirement age in the past five years.
Communication culture
“I think what is more important is to build a culture of communication with the company. In addition, I see many peers now hire people aged from 60 to 65 with yearly contracts but they start to hesitate when hiring someone over 70. They just need more time to consider,” Gingko House CEO Joyce Mak Men-mei noted.
Gingko House is a social entrepreneurship which supports elder employment in Hong Kong. Of the eatery shop’s workforce, 80 percent comprise elderly employees. These elderly staff are the 1940s generation who still need to work to support their lives. The company envisages, in the coming 15 years, the elder workers will be the generation of the 1960s decade who champion non-materialistic values such as work-life balance and self-fulfillment.
Besides giving flexible employment, a job-matching platform that can match job demand and elder worker supply is also vital.
“If a company wants to keep its elderly employee or an experienced technical employee wants to try something new after retirement, where can they go to find the new job? Maybe there can be a database in social welfare organizations to enable the elderly to look for new jobs at certain organizations online,” moderator and HKMA Executive Director Victor Lee Sze-kuen suggested.
“If the elderly want to develop a second career path after retirement, what can be the basis for them to do so? We need to give them options because the reason why they choose to work is different from the young,” said Lawrance Wong Dun-king, president at Many Wells Property Agency.
In Hong Kong, the labor participation rate of elders aged 65 or over was 9.4 percent last year, much lower than the 31 percent in South Korea and 26 percent in Singapore, according to Legislative Council Secretariat data.
Law attributed this to social-welfare system differences. “Welfare protection in South Korea is much less comprehensive than in Hong Kong and this is why more South Koreans need to work after 65 years old. In Singapore, the employed cannot choose to retire if their savings balances in the Central Provident Fund cannot meet the minimum requirement that can support their lives after retirement,” Law said.
Creating a social learning environment is the third solution to enhance the employability of local elders.
“As for retraining, universities like the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Open University of Hong Kong all offer off-campus courses. At the OUHK, we have the Elder Academy with related courses for the elderly to continue learning. Half of the courses are for interest only, and the other half are work-related courses,” said Reggie Kwan Ching-ping, vice-president (academic) at the OUHK.
“I am happy to hear that some universities and organizations have certain retraining courses to provide a platform for the elderly to return to the workplace. There are not a lot of young people in our industry, so I believe the silver market can help to fill the shortage,” Hong Kong Association of Property Management Companies President Andrew Lee Chun-lai said.
Lee is optimistic on elder employment in the property-management business. “It is a relatively traditional industry so I do not expect the information technology can be quickly adopted here to replace humans.”
executive
vicepresident (academic), OUHK
general manager and executive director, Hung Fook Tong Group Holdings
president, Many Wells Property Agency
president, Hong Kong Association of Property Management Companies
technology and human resources general manager, Lotus Tours
Lawrance Wong Dun-king,
secretary for labour and welfare
chairman, Hong Kong Society for the Aged
chairman and CEO, Stelux Holdings Intl
Silver market
The government also raised the age ceiling of Type B Security Personnel Permit holders from 65 to 70, a move lauded as being able to drive elder employment in the property-management business.
The predicted huge market size of the silver economy in Hong Kong is the fourth engine to thrust elder employment.
While the aging society bestows the challenge of a constraining labor workforce, on the other hand, it also creates a vibrant sliver economy; retirees will be big spenders in various business services. In particular, population aging will drive medical and scientific development.
The silver economy in the Asia Pacific will balloon to $3 trillion this year, according to consultancy firm Ageing Asia. Hong Kong was ranked as the region’s leader in terms of the silver business index among the 15 surveyed economies, which was ahead of Australia, Japan and Singapore.
Nevertheless, the silver consumption market in Hong Kong is not so developed as compared with other places such as Japan.
“Take the retail industry as an example, we can design some new products specifically for elderly consumers. A similar approach can be adopted to think about what kind of jobs to offer to them as well,” Senior Citizen Home Safety Association CEO Irene Leung Shuk-yee recommended.
“One thing we need to tackle first is the change of perception. There is no direct link between age and a person’s ability,” Leung reiterated.
“Today’s situation is different
CEO, Senior Citizen Home Safety Association
as many people aged over 65 have received secondary education or even university education. As the service industry plays an important role in Hong Kong’s economy, these elder people certainly have the ability to help,” echoed Kim Mak Kin-wah, chairman at the Hong Kong Society for the Aged.
This NGO has been promoting flexible working arrangements for the elderly since 2008. However, the problem was that elder employment at that time denoted the perception that elders are only working for money. Employers were not interested in these initiatives and they did it only to fulfill corporate social responsibility efforts.