seasoned professional experts

seasoned professional experts

The Value of Seasoned Professional Experts in Today’s Workforce

1. Introduction to Seasoned Professional Experts

For years we have bandied about terms and bantered back and forth trying to define what those of us over forty are capable of in today’s business world. The concept of a seasoned professional expert takes into account this varying array of capabilities. The characteristics of seasoned professionals include knowledge, experience, a wide network of contacts, fluid inquiry skills, and the willingness to share what they have learned without being dogmatic or invasive. Wisdom comes with time and those in this category are often arbitrators because of their perspective. Their role is often that of a mentor, counselor, or an advisor, providing the continuum that younger persons need.

In 1994, newspaper columnist and author Gail Sheehy wrote a book, “New Passages,” in which she redefines the challenges people face as they move through adult life and modify their perceptions of themselves. She contends that each of us grows and evolves in seven-year stages. Many people today are living through their thirties, forties, and fifties and don’t begin a “third stage” until fifty-five. People are healthier and live longer than those of a century ago did. Longevity plus a longer, healthier lifestyle offers more opportunity. Many will experience the need to recreate themselves professionally. The professional knowledge and skills they have accrued during their lifetimes, combined with the lessons from their personal lives, will provide a new dimension in their lives from which they can continuously draw a lifetime of lessons.

2. Benefits of Hiring Seasoned Professionals

There are many benefits in hiring seasoned professionals for today’s businesses. These include the multiple areas of expertise held by the seasoned professionals, creating a more balanced workforce, and providing role models for younger workers. Due to the focus on the cost of doing business, businesses are now seeking more operational and capital performance through productivity, cost containment and a focus on business goals, which the seasoned professional can provide.

Businesses today need to focus and strengthen the productivity, maximize operational efficiencies, and profitability while maintaining a competitive edge in order to meet the challenges in the marketplace. There is an increasing expectation that new technology results in substantial improvement in productivity and associated cost savings. Businesses must focus on technology initiatives and investments that result in substantial improvement in productivity and related cost savings. The professional can provide the computer literacy and technical skills, and businesses can develop the talent who will incorporate these competencies in their work.

3. Challenges Faced by Seasoned Professionals

We do a great job discussing the problems faced by new hires in the last few years and some description of adjustments on the company side, but fail to recognize the prompted admissions outlined in this paper. There are unique challenges faced by seasoned professional experts who are part of the current workforce and a few guidelines that should successfully address those needs. These unique challenges are on a professional and personal level. For seasoned professionals, the challenges allude to an identity crisis and to an unavoidable generational encounter for those that have been part of foundation and long-standing advancements. How does the essential worker expected to fiscally hold off retirement—due to the timeline of societal demographics—maintain, regain or recapture yesterday’s professional value?

Organizations have established norms of retirements and created economic plans based on those long-standing protocols. What is an organization to do when market labor supply reflects half-retirees shifting from one full-time job to another full-time job, receiving a full-time pay? Fighting for an early concerned verbal gesture can verge on discrimination scares and public embarrassment by well-versed company accidentals from losing discrimination law cases. A discrimination lawsuit can be bad publicity. Such notion advances from all combinations for the seasoned experienced individual.

4. Strategies for Retaining and Leveraging Seasoned Professional Expertise

Once inflection point awareness has been created, a foundation established, and the business support network is in place, there are six critical strategies to consider when retaining and leveraging seasoned experts. They are retention, retirement, flexibility, non-work learning environments, work/fun interface, and leveraging expert advice. All six strategies point to the need to change the way we work and the value of using seasoned workers to achieve excellence in organizations.

Four key retention strategies have emerged from the experts. Managers, as well as the mature worker, must know when they are in an inflection point crisis. Retirement is not a four-letter word! Mature workers who confidently head towards the decision that is right for them and their family do best. Employers must identify areas of continual career development and learning in support of both the worker and the organization. Several strategies that effectively encourage retention center around offering a variety of challenges, flexible hours, and part-time assignments; worker-controlled career planning; personal career counseling and coaching; performance rewards and recognition; a proactive EAP; wellness programs; and a supportive non-work life environment for mature experts.

5. Conclusion and Future Outlook

In this chapter, we explored the specific value contributed by seasoned professional experts, defined as experienced professionals, in specific fields, who can provide expertise, advice, and mentorship to other workforce members. Five characteristics of seasoned professional experts are presented and based on the literature review, which are: (1) their vast experience that entails tacit knowledge; (2) their wisdom that comes from evaluation and experience; (3) their advanced expertise that is derived from support; (4) their comprehensive perspective that is developed from the systemic understanding of a specific work field; and (5) their self-actualization as an approver by instilling professional values and priorities. Executive and organizational support for the presence of seasoned professional experts at work was also covered widely in this work.

The review of previous studies indicates contemporary workforce need seasoned practitioners, acknowledges their roles, and encourages their presence. The benefits of the coexistence and collaboration between seasoned practitioners and novice professionals, which are mutual learning, generation of new ideas and benefits, and the application of educational theories and practices, can be great step in harnessing the collective talents and preferences that knowledge-based enterprises require. After outlining the work on seasoned professional experts and specific expectations for each function, concluding remarks revisited the changes regarding professional growth models necessitated by the presence of seasoned professional experts at work within the framework of learning organization, and presented future research areas for researchers interested in this field. Overall, our goal is to shed light on the topic so that increased organizational capacity and competency can be created in response to greater diverse workforce demands.