For many employers, ‘resilience’ used to mean contingency plans and crisis comms. Now it’s become a talent issue: can your organisation keep critical skills in place, keep performance steady, and recover quickly when the labour market tightens?
Barnett Waddingham’s Britain’s Got Talent research frames the shift clearly: employers are becoming more focused on retaining talent and skills than relying on external hiring. That’s being driven by a mix of rising economic inactivity and long-term sickness, tighter talent supply (both domestic and overseas), and rapid change in how roles are shaped by automation and AI.
One of the most practical responses is also one of the most under-used: making older workers and career-break returners central to workforce strategy, not an afterthought.
Why this matters now: retention is the main game
When talent supply is constrained, ‘replace and retrain’ becomes expensive and slow. Organisations are then pushed towards a harder, more valuable task: keeping the people they already have and widening the pool of people they can realistically attract.
The research highlights multiple pressure points at once:
- Concern about the shrinking availability of domestic talent (linked to long-term demographic trends).
- Concern about reduced availability of overseas talent following changes to immigration policy, with some employers expecting to lose overseas employees due to new policies.
- Worries about the health of the existing workforce, with employers citing concerns around increasing rates of poor mental health and long-term sickness.
In this context, resilience becomes less about finding more people and more about reducing avoidable turnover, keeping capability, and building reliable routes back into work.
Older workers and returners aren’t a ‘nice to have’ – they’re a capability lever
The research points to a striking headline: three out of four employers (77%) are concerned people don’t have the skills they need.
That helps explain the renewed focus on groups that can strengthen capability quickly:
- Older workers often bring depth of experience, judgement and stability – especially valuable where quality, risk and customer outcomes matter.
- Returners can provide high-impact skills and maturity, particularly when they’re supported with structured re-entry rather than being treated like standard hires.
This isn’t about stereotyping either group. It’s about recognising that when skills gaps are the worry, you need strategies that protect and rebuild capability – and these groups can do both.
The trade-offs employers need to plan for (without overreacting)
An ageing workforce does bring practical requirements. The research notes concerns such as training (19%) and insurability (18%).
These issues can be managed – but only if employers treat them as design questions, not reasons to opt out.
What helps in practice:
- Role design that matches reality: adjust physically demanding elements, re-balance workloads, and make flexibility workable without quietly penalising career progression.
- Targeted development: build skills where the role genuinely needs it rather than assuming a blanket ‘digital skills gap’.
- Benefits and health support that reflect longer working lives: if you want people to stay, they need to be well enough to stay – and they need to feel supported, not managed out.
The key is proportionality: acknowledge the requirements, then build them into the system.
A multigenerational workforce pulls benefits in different directions – unless you use data properly
One of the biggest mistakes employers make in tightening labour conditions is spending more without knowing what actually works.
Britain’s Got Talent flags a measurement problem: employers can increase spend on training and benefits without first having the insight to understand what matters to employees at different life stages, what engagement looks like, and whether investment is changing outcomes.
It also makes a simple point that’s easy to miss: resilience requires joining up data, not just collecting it. Examples cited include looking for correlations between health claims and operational errors, or whether turnover patterns reflect culture and management issues rather than pay alone.
In other words: the question isn’t “should we spend more?” It’s “where does spend change behaviour, performance and retention?”
AI adds a twist: resilience depends on protecting career pathways
AI and automation are part of the same resilience story. The research captures a real concern: if more junior roles are automated away, where do future leaders get early-career experience?
The practical implication is not ‘stop automation’. It’s redesign junior roles so they still build skills, judgement and progression routes – with human oversight where it matters. That’s not just a talent issue; it’s a long-term resilience issue.
For older workers and returners, AI can be positive if it removes friction (admin, repetitive tasks) and supports productivity. But organisations need to avoid creating a two-tier workforce where only some groups get development and progression.
What ‘good’ looks like: a resilience checklist for employers
If you want to make older workers and returners a genuine part of your resilience strategy, focus on five practical moves:
1) Make flexibility specific, not generic
Flexibility means different things to different people. For older workers it may be reduced hours, phased retirement options, or predictable scheduling. For returners it may be a structured ramp-up period or hybrid arrangements that make re-entry realistic.
2) Build structured on-ramps for returners
Treat returners as a talent stream with a defined route in: re-onboarding, confidence-building, and manager guidance – not “here’s your laptop, good luck”.
3) Protect capability with targeted development
Use modular learning, job-relevant support and practical skill building. Don’t assume training needs are the same across the workforce – or that training is the only answer.
4) Use benefits to support longer, healthier working lives
The research underlines the growing importance of pensions and healthcare in securing loyalty and motivation over the long term as older workers become more central.
If you want retention, benefits have to help people stay well and stay engaged, not just tick a box.
5) Upgrade your people dashboard
If you’re not tracking what predicts turnover and performance, you’re managing by assumption. The research points to under-tracked areas like workload, retention and eNPS-type measures, plus the need to understand benefits usage and engagement.
You don’t need perfect data – but you do need enough to target investment and prove impact.
The point isn’t to do more – it’s to do what works
In a tightening labour market, resilience is built through decisions that reduce fragility: keeping skills in the organisation, making work sustainable, and creating reliable routes back in.
Older workers and returners fit that agenda because they strengthen capability and continuity – provided employers remove avoidable barriers and back the strategy with insight.
Done well, this isn’t a special initiative. It’s what a serious, modern workforce strategy looks like.
Read more here: www.barnett-waddingham.co.uk/edna-articles
Author profile
Julia Turney is a Partner and Head of Platform and Benefits at Barnett Waddingham, advising employers on benefits strategy, employee engagement and practical ways to improve retention and workforce resilience. She works with HR and Reward leaders to align benefits and wellbeing support to workforce needs, and to use data to understand what drives behaviour and outcomes across different employee groups. Julia is particularly interested in how organisations can strengthen capability by supporting multigenerational teams, including older workers and career-break returners, while keeping investment focused and effective.
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