The risk and benifits of younger workers - Essay Example

The Risks and Benefits of Younger Workers Essentially, both the risk and benefit of hiring young workers such as fresh graduates from universities can be summed up in one word i.e. training. Given that the company is facing some problems with discrimination issues against older workers, the company might have to look at other factors which influence the age of the worker recruited at the company. However, the business case against hiring younger workers is certainly there because younger workers will require an investment to be made in them in terms of time and money which will take the shape of training.

This means that an individual who comes in as a fresh graduate at his first job will need to be informed about company protocols and how things are done within the company. It may take them a day to learn all they need to know for some positions but for others they may take more than a month of dedicated training and may even need continued guidance while they are performing their duties for the company.At the same time, this investment made by the company may not be recuperated or even lead to substantial benefits for the organization if the individual decides to leave the company within a year of joining.

In this case, all that the company would have done is to train a person in order to enable them to find a better paying job. Of course retention is also a part of the HR department’s duties but training is an investment in people which entails its own risks.On the other hand, there are significant advantages towards recruiting individuals with little or no experience and the immediately visible business benefit is to the bottom line of the company since a fresh graduate has to be paid a lot less than a person near the age of retirement who can demand a salary which is equal to the one given to the company’s directors.

Of course an older person with experience might be able to bring a lot more to the table but the company has to balance how much it can afford to spend on recruiting and retaining such a star performer or business guru.Additionally, pouring young blood into the company will have the advantage of giving the company new ideas and instant familiarity with new technology which may not be known to older individuals. Again, in this case training can be useful as exemplified by GE which continually recruited individuals who were intimately familiar with computer technology in order to teach the older people working in much higher positions on how to use things such as email and instant messaging (Welch, 2005).

Overall, the cost benefits, influx of new ideas and fresh information certainly tilts the balance in favor of recruitment for younger persons rather than seeking out expensive individuals who might bring nothing more than experience and a nameplate to the company.Works CitedWelch, Jack. Winning. Harper-Collins, 2005.Word Count: 505