When experience gets downsized
IT usually starts innocently: a 52-year-old staff member, who has been loyally clocking in since Elon Musk was still using a dial-up modem, walks into HR, summoned by an email ominously titled 'Performance Improvement Discussion'.
He is expecting maybe a workflow upgrade or, if he dares to dream, a long-overdue promotion. Instead, he is gently told that his role no longer fits into the company's 'new structure'.
Fast forward three weeks and a fresh-faced 26-year-old with the same job description, now rebranded as 'Digital Workflow Ninja', is sitting in his old cubicle, sipping teh tarik in a can and talking about 'workflow synergies' on a podcast.
Selamat datang to the corporate jungle, where if your knees creak louder than your keyboard, you are no longer considered 'future-ready'.
Let us not kid ourselves. No company is going to outright say: 'We're letting you go because you are closer to EPF withdrawal than TikTok virality.'
Instead, they cloak the blow with corporate lingo so thick you will need a decoder and possibly a translator from PwC. You will hear familiar phrases like: 'We're shifting towards a more tech-driven operation.' Translation: We saw you panic-click during a Zoom call. Goodbye.
'Your position is no longer required.' Translation: We needed your salary to hire two interns with TikTok skills and no overhead.
'Based on recent performance reviews, we have decided not to continue your employment.' Translation: We gave you KPIs requiring Canva, AI and hashtags. You asked, 'What's a hashtag?' You're out.
These phrases sound strategic, objective and even fair. However, beneath the shiny HR language is a growing corporate trend that smells suspiciously like ageism, served on a recycled PowerPoint slide titled 'operational agility'.
And the irony? These same 50-somethings were once the original disruptors. They survived dot-matrix printers, dial-up modems and telex machines. They ruled the office back when 'cloud' meant the weather and 'streaming' referred to Sungai Klang.
Now, because they don't refer to Excel as 'coding', they are being treated like expired yogurt.
Let's be clear, this is not always about tech skills. Often, it is about cost.
Older employees are expensive. They have earned their stripes (and their bonuses) and that makes them a prime target during corporate 'realignments'.
Why pay one experienced manager RM15,000 when you can hire three juniors who call you 'boss' and work on beanbags?
I am not saying companies should never let go of older employees. Businesses need to adapt and not everyone is a unicorn.
But when the exits start looking like a silver tsunami and the average age in a department suddenly drops by 20 years, someone needs to say: 'Eh, macam tak kena je (Eh, this does not feel right)'.
The sad part? This purge is happening at a time when these employees are hitting their professional prime.
Emotionally intelligent, steady under pressure and immune to office gossip (because they don't care who is dating whom in HR), these are the people who will tell you how to fix the printer with a paper clip and a prayer.
So, what can companies do instead of quietly ghosting their veterans?
First, stop making technology the only yardstick of relevance. Train, don't terrorise. If an uncle can learn to scan a MySejahtera code during MCO, he can learn Microsoft Teams, even if he still calls it 'the new Skype thing'.
Second, design KPIs that value multiple generations. Instead of awarding points for building the best Slack bot, how about rewarding crisis management, mentorship or knowing where the office router lives?
Third, create roles that honour experience. We already have too many 'digital transformation officers'. What we need are 'wisdom integration managers'.
Fourth, consider phased retirement or consultancy gigs.
Let the seniors exit with dignity, not a surprise exit memo, a weak kopitiam lunch and a generic farewell email: 'We wish you all the best in your future endeavours.' That is not closure. That is a cop-out.
And finally, educate your HR managers. If your definition of 'diversity' stops at race and gender, it is time for an age-inclusion crash course, ideally taught by the same 50-year-old you were eyeing for 'strategic downsizing'.
At the end of the day, a company that discards its veterans the moment they develop crow's feet is one that may soon realise: wisdom isn't Googleable, loyalty isn't scalable and no 25-year-old knows why the office printer only works after you slap it twice and press 'start' in BM.
So, the next time someone says: 'We're realigning our strategic priorities,' look around. If everyone left is under 35, sipping oat milk and calling the surau a 'quiet pod', your company may have just aged itself out of wisdom.
After all, a successful company is not built on vibes and fast Wi-Fi alone but also on memory. And someone has got to remember where the HR kept the punch card machine or at least the emergency Milo stash from 2007.
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