13 Things to Never Share or Discuss with Your Co-workers

13 Things to Never Share or Discuss with Your Co-workers

"It's a social environment as well as a work environment. However, you must remember while you can be friendly and develop a good rapport, business is business and friendship is friendship."Most workers don't realize that what they say has as much impact on their professional imges as what they wear. People who say too much, about themselves or others, can be seen as incompetent, unproductive and unworthy of professional development.

To avoid your next case of verbal diarrhea, here are 13 things to never share or discuss with your co-workers.

1. Salary information What you earn is between you and Human Resources, Solovic says. Disclosure indicates you aren't capable of keeping a confidence.

2. Medical history Nobody really cares about your aches and pains, your latest operation, your infertility woes or the contents of your medicine cabinet. To your employer, your constant medical issues make you seem like an expensive, high-risk employee.

3. Gossip Whomever you're gossiping with will undoubtedly tell others what you said, Plus, if a co-worker is gossiping with you, most likely he or she will gossip about you.

4. Work complaints Constant complaints about your workload, stress levels or the company will quickly make you the kind of person who never gets invited to lunch. If you don't agree with company policies and procedures, address it through official channels or move on.

5. Cost of purchases The spirit of keeping up with the Joneses is alive and well in the workplace, but you don't want others speculating on the lifestyle you're living –or if you're living beyond your salary bracket.

6. Intimate details Don't share intimate details about your personal life. Co-workers can and will use the information against you.

7. Politics or religion People have strong, passionate views on both topics. You may alienate a co-worker or be viewed negatively in a way that could impact your career.

8. Lifestyle changes Breakups, divorces and baby-making plans should be shared only if there is a need to know. Otherwise, others will speak for your capabilities, desires and limitations on availability, whether there is any truth to their assumptions or not.

9. Blogs or social networking profile What you say in a social networking community or in your personal blog may be even more damaging than what you say in person. Comments online can be seen by multiple eyes. An outburst of anger when you are having a bad day … can blow up in your face.

10. Negative views of colleagues If you don't agree with a co-worker's lifestyle, wardrobe or professional abilities, confront that person privately or keep it to yourself. The workplace is not the venue for controversy.

11. Hangovers and wild weekends It's perfectly fine to have fun during the weekend, but don't talk about your wild adventures on Monday. That information can make you look unprofessional and unreliable.

12. Personal problems and relationships – in and out of the office Failed marriages and volatile romances spell instability to an employer. Office romances lead to gossip and broken hearts, so it's best to steer clear. The safest way to play is to follow the rule, 'Never get your honey where you get your money.

13. Off-color or racially charged comments You can assume your co-worker wouldn't be offended or would think something is funny, but you might be wrong. Never take that risk. Furthermore, even if you know for certain your colleague wouldn't mind your comment, don't talk about it at work. Others can easily overhear.

HR World in Transition Phase

Three New Roles Every Modern, Strategic Talent Management Function Must Have

These roles are Employment branding, workforce planning, and retention.

The human resources profession is one often perceived by those outside the function as a bureaucratic, compliance-driven, administrative function that is reactive versus proactive and that changes at the speed of a rock.

In most organizations, that perception is one well-earned, since most HR processes and policies are developed in response to a significant event and are intended to limit certain behaviors instead of enabling others. HR has become the function known for saying "you can't do that" as opposed to function known for saying "this is how we can accomplish that." However, a few leading organizations are breaking with tradition — at least when it comes to talent management — establishing new functional structures that account for current labor market realities, and adding new proactive activities to the stable of HR services.

A growing number of organizations are leveraging the visibility currently being placed on the impending talent shortage/crisis by corporate leaders and growing the scope of talent management activities to include formalized processes, programs, and departments focusing on proactive management of the employment brand, retention, and workforce planning. These groundbreaking organizations are tearing down massive walls that years of political infighting have created between HR functions in order to develop entirely new HR structures where all deliverables are integrated to "strategically" manage the portfolio of talent that the organization can use to call upon to achieve both short- and long-term objectives.

No longer does the training and development function devise and offer training programs for skill sets that can more readily be acquired through recruitment at a lower cost. No longer do key employees leave the organization because a bad manager kept them from advancing or learning. No longer do offers made to top candidates get rejected because compensation cannot adequately assess the market value of talent. Sounds too good to be true? It isn't, but getting there isn't easy; lots of archaic thinking gets in the way!

Strategic Human Resource Management

In today’s intensely competitive and global marketplace, maintaining a competitive advantage by becoming a low cost leader or a differentiator puts a heavy premium on having a highly committed or competent workforce. Competitive advantage lies not just in differentiating a product or service or in becoming the low cost leader but in also being able to tap the company’s special skills or core competencies and rapidly respond to customer’s needs and competitor’s moves. In other words competitive advantage lies in management’s ability to consolidate corporate-wide technologies and production skills into competencies that empower individual businesses to adapt quickly to changing opportunities.

In a growing number of organizations human resources are now viewed as a source of competitive advantage. There is greater recognition that distinctive competencies are obtained through highly developed employee skills, distinctive organizational cultures, management processes and systems. This is in contrast to the traditional emphasis on transferable resources such as equipment. Increasingly it is being recognized that competitive advantage can be obtained with a high quality workforce that enables organizations to compete on the basis of market responsiveness, product and service quality, differentiated products and technological innovation.

Strategic human resource management has been defined as ‘ the linking of human resources with strategic goals and objectives in order to improve business performance and develop organizational culture that foster innovation and flexibility ‘. Strategic HR means accepting the HR function as a strategic partner in the formulation of the company’s strategies as well as in the implementation of those strategies through HR activities such as recruiting, selecting, training and rewarding personnel. Whereas strategic HR recognizes HR’s partnership role in the strategizing process, the term HR Strategies refers to specific HR courses of action the company plans to pursue to achieve it’s aims.

HR management can play a role in environmental scanning i.e. identifying and analyzing external opportunities and threats that may be crucial to the company’s success. Similarly HR management is in a unique position to supply competitive intelligence that may be useful in the strategic planning process. HR also participates in the strategy formulation process by supplying information regarding the company’s internal strengths and weaknesses. The strengths and weaknesses of a company’s human resources can have a determining effect on the viability of the firm’s strategic options.

By design the perspective demands that HR managers become strategic partners in business operations playing prospective roles rather than being passive administrators reacting to the requirements of other business functions. Strategic HR managers need a change in their mindset from seeing themselves as relationship managers to resource managers knowing how to utilize the full potential of their human resources.

The new breed of HR managers need to understand and know how to measure the monetary impact of their actions, so as to be able to demonstrate the value added contributions of their functions. HR professionals become strategic partners when they participate in the process of defining business strategy, when they ask questions that move strategy to action and when they design HR practices that align with the business strategy. By fulfilling this role, HR professionals increase the capacity of a business to execute its strategies.

The primary actions of the strategic human resource manager translate business strategies into HR priorities. In any business setting, whether corporate, functional, business unit or product line a strategy exists either explicitly in the formal process or document or implicitly through a shared agenda on priorities. As strategic partners, HR professionals should be to identify the HR practices that make the strategy happen. The process of identifying these HR priorities is called organizational diagnosis, a process through which an organization is audited to determine its strengths and weaknesses.

Translating business strategies into HR practices helps a business in three ways. First, the business can adapt to change because the time from the conception to the execution of a strategy is shortened. Second, the business can better meet customer demands because its customer service strategies have been translated into specific policies and practices. Third, the business can achieve financial performance through its more effective execution of strategy.

In brief, a strategic perspective of HRM that requires simultaneous consideration of both external (business strategy) and internal (consistency) requirement leads to superior performance of the firm. This performance advantage is achieved by:

. Marshalling resources that support the business strategy and implementing the chosen strategy, efficiently and effectively.

. Utilizing the full potential of the human resources to the firm’s advantage.

. Leveraging other resources such as physical assets and capital to complement and augment the human resources based advantage.

HR to become a Strategic Partner

Challenges for HR to become a Strategic Partner

1. Avoid Strategic Plans On Top Shelf (SPOTS).
More strategies are written than acted upon. More visions are created than realized. More missions are espoused than executed. More goals are stated than accomplished. Becoming a strategic partner means turning strategic statements into a set of organizational actions. Overcoming the challenge of SPOTS requires that HR professionals force organizational issues into the strategic discussion before strategies are decided. HR needs to facilitate organizational diagnosis that highlights how aligned business strategies are to organization culture.

2. Create a Balanced Scorecard
The concept of Balanced Scorecard is not new but its application has become increasingly popular. A balanced scorecard focuses on serving multiple stakeholders (investors, customers, and employees) and can be a total performance index assessing executive performance. HR executives, for example, are judged on the extent to which they add value for each stakeholder. The categories apply to any large or complex business.

• Economic Value Added (EVA): Meeting the financial numbers expected of the executive.
• Customer Value Added (CVA): Meeting Customer-service goals.
• People Value Added (PVA): Meeting employee expectations.

These three indicators form an overall, balanced scorecard measure for tracking executive performance. If HR executives are to be strategic partners, they need to absorb and apply the concept of the balanced scorecard in two ways.

First, they need to be equally accountable for all segments of the balanced scorecard, not just for the employee dimension. As the balanced scorecard indicates, employee commitment is only one criterion for effective HR performance, and HR professionals in strategic partnership will be held accountable for the same dimensions as other managers.
The HR professional’s performance is no longer judged by his PVA score alone, but by all three scores. This approach requires that HR professionals master their business’s financial and customer issues and recognize their contribution to attaining these goals.

Second, although accountable for all three dimensions of the balanced scorecard, HR professionals should provide intellectual leadership on the employee dimension. This means that we as HR professionals should not restrict ourselves in measuring employee commitment and satisfaction index alone. Rather, we need to define the employee dimension of the balanced scorecard not only in terms of employee attitude, but also in terms of organizational processes. The processes represent those activities that affect employee attitude, such as leadership, teamwork, communication. Empowerment, shared values, mechanisms for treating individuals with dignity and so on. By measuring these processes and employee attitudes, HR professional fully define the employee stakeholder dimension of the balanced scorecard.

3. Benchmarking, or learning about best practices, has become increasingly important when it comes to evaluating Human Resource management. With great fervor, teams of employees identify and visit other companies recognized as world class. These field visits provide businesses with information on how to gauge their work relative to the best in class.
Traditionally, benchmarking was done on the harder, more objective aspects of a business, for example, technologies, systems, financial ratios, or quality. Increasingly, firms also benchmark softer management practices.

Firms like General Electric and Digital Equipment Corporation deploy a senior management team to examine management practices in some of the best managed firms in the world to identify key processes for improving productivity. It was concluded that best practice in human resources should focus less on a particular practice than on a set of general principles. This involves leveraging a system of HR practices by focusing on two or three key strategic initiatives that promote the integrative theme. This way the HR function adds value that is credible and understood by both line and HR management.

Executive Coaching and Business Strategy

Successful executive coaching requires sophisticated understanding of organizations as well as of individuals. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the intersection of business strategy and the executive coaching that supports it. Senior leaders play a critical role in setting direction, defining strategic positions, and providing focus for the business operations needed for successful execution. Through executive coaching, a leader can be more effective, as an individual, in guiding the execution of the strategy. Furthermore, given the positions these individuals occupy in their organizations, coaching can also affect the formation of strategy.

An essential HR responsibility is to support the business strategy with initiatives, programs, processes, and business partner consulting that may help the organization achieve its business goals. Executive coaching is one area in which HR has the potential to support not only the execution of the strategy but its development as well. Involvement of HR in executive coaching may take a variety of forms that include supporting an ad hoc request for coaching, developing a coaching program as part of a larger HR or executive development strategy, or providing executive coaching directly as an internal coach.

Four Different Coaching Roles

This approach (Witherspoon and White, 1996) defines each coaching role according to its purpose:

• Coaching for skills, which focuses on specific skills required for a current job
• Coaching for performance, which focuses more broadly on a present job
• Coaching for development, which is directed toward learning for a future job
• Coaching for the executive's agenda, which focuses on learning that is related to an executive's agenda in the broadest sense

The last role, coaching for the executive's agenda, is the most directly relevant to strategy. Building on Witherspoon and White's model, in this role, a coach might:

• Be a sounding board for an executive who needs to explore the feasibility of several potential strategy scenarios

• Help test an executive's assumptions regarding marketplace realities and the opportunities they present

• Point out blind spots on the part of the executive that are impeding implementation

• Enhance creativity

• Support the efforts required to pursue a given strategic direction by helping an executive lay out a change strategy that supports the business strategy

The role of coaching for the executive's agenda seems to have the greatest relevance for strategy; however, any of the roles could help focus learning that relates to business strategy. For example, when coaching for skills, an executive may need to address some of the following areas:

• Acquiring more knowledge about the new Internet economy in order to fully understand emerging strategic options

• Honing negotiation skills for new partnerships with customers who simultaneously become partners, suppliers, and competitors

• Further refining expert communication skills with the goal of implementing and providing leadership through major organizational change.
The other two roles, coaching for performance and coaching for development, may also be appropriate for specific situations involving strategy formation or execution.

Ref: Catherine Fitzgerald and Jennifer Berger

Executive Coaching and Business Strategy

Successful executive coaching requires sophisticated understanding of organizations as well as of individuals. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the intersection of business strategy and the executive coaching that supports it. Senior leaders play a critical role in setting direction, defining strategic positions, and providing focus for the business operations needed for successful execution. Through executive coaching, a leader can be more effective, as an individual, in guiding the execution of the strategy. Furthermore, given the positions these individuals occupy in their organizations, coaching can also affect the formation of strategy.

An essential HR responsibility is to support the business strategy with initiatives, programs, processes, and business partner consulting that may help the organization achieve its business goals. Executive coaching is one area in which HR has the potential to support not only the execution of the strategy but its development as well. Involvement of HR in executive coaching may take a variety of forms that include supporting an ad hoc request for coaching, developing a coaching program as part of a larger HR or executive development strategy, or providing executive coaching directly as an internal coach.

Four Different Coaching Roles

This approach (Witherspoon and White, 1996) defines each coaching role according to its purpose:

• Coaching for skills, which focuses on specific skills required for a current job

• Coaching for performance, which focuses more broadly on a present job

• Coaching for development, which is directed toward learning for a future job

• Coaching for the executive's agenda, which focuses on learning that is related to an executive's agenda in the broadest sense

The last role, coaching for the executive's agenda, is the most directly relevant to strategy. Building on Witherspoon and White's model, in this role, a coach might:

• Be a sounding board for an executive who needs to explore the feasibility of several potential strategy scenarios
• Help test an executive's assumptions regarding marketplace realities and the opportunities they present
• Point out blind spots on the part of the executive that are impeding implementation
• Enhance creativity
• Support the efforts required to pursue a given strategic direction by helping an executive lay out a change strategy that supports the business strategy

The role of coaching for the executive's agenda seems to have the greatest relevance for strategy; however, any of the roles could help focus learning that relates to business strategy. For example, when coaching for skills, an executive may need to address some of the following areas:

• Acquiring more knowledge about the new Internet economy in order to fully understand emerging strategic options
• Honing negotiation skills for new partnerships with customers who simultaneously become partners, suppliers, and competitors
• Further refining expert communication skills with the goal of implementing and providing leadership through major organizational change.

The other two roles, coaching for performance and coaching for development, may also be appropriate for specific situations involving strategy formation or execution.

Ref: Catherine Fitzgerald and Jennifer Berger

360-Degree Feedback Appraisal System

A Study of 360-Degree Feedback Appraisal System. In this atmosphere, the 360-degree feedback concept has much to offer. Unlike the traditional performance appraisal model, in which superiors evaluate subordinates, the 360-degree approach does not rely solely on the superior to provide feedback to the employee. Instead, it enlists multiple constituencies to provide feedback to selected organizational members. These constituencies include superiors, peers, and coworkers in support areas, subordinates, internal customers of the unit's work, and external customers of the organization's products. In this process the feedback recipient is expected to evaluate his or her own performance on the selected behavioral dimensions. This self-evaluation is then compared with that provided by the other feedback providers. The recipient is encouraged to use the feedback to improve performance and to make a greater effort to blend his or her contributions with the needs of the group. This linking of individual performance with feedback from all relevant constituencies fits well into the emerging team-based workplace. Another difference from traditional performance appraisal is that 360-degree feedback is supposed to be given anonymously. Study has demonstrated that anonymous feedback is more honest and closer to what raters actually feel about the feedback recipients. Appraisers whose identity is known to the feedback recipients give higher ratings than those who are anonymous.

While the 360-degree concept has much to offer and many successes have been documented there are also stories of confusion and disappointment. Many of the 360-degree programs are carried out in the absence of a strategic context, and fail to focus on contributions that they can make to a firm's competitive advantage. There is little consistency to what is being done, and 360-degree feedback programs can range from any deviations from the traditional vertical form of performance appraisal to highly sophisticated feedback systems that systematically gather, analyze, and disseminate behavior data to managers, professionals, and even rank-and-file workers functioning in teams.

Many organizations adopt 360-degree feedback without clearly defining the mission and the scope of the program. Consequently, employees who receive the feedback are left to figure out for themselves how to cope with the results and tend not to develop goals and action plans following 360-degree applications. One study concluded that while such programs are popular, in many cases little more than lip service is paid to them. Furthermore, there is discouraging evidence regarding the effectiveness of feedback-intervention programs as tools in bringing about improvements in performance. A review of over 600 feedback studies found that only one-third reported improvements in performance. Another third reported negative changes in performance, while the final third reported no impact. In their haste to gain the advertised benefits of 360-degree feedback, organizations may not be sufficiently aware of the problems that often accompany its adoption. Failure to recognize the problems that often occur can lead to disillusionment, reduce the value of the exercise, and confirm the lip service that tends to be paid to 360-degree results.

Future Prospects & Recommendations.

360-degree feedback is powerful because it makes it easy to gather and report credible feedback about important issues that are otherwise hard to quantify. Like any powerful tool, it needs to be used with care in order to derive all the benefits.

Here are seven recommendations for avoiding problems.

1. Learn about the technology before you invest in it. 360 feedbacks is changing as rapidly as hardware and software systems are changing. Much is possible now that wasn't dreamed of a decade ago. Innovations in 360-degree systems such as 20/20 Insight GOLD have made feedback easier, more accessible, more affordable, more flexible and more versatile than ever. Not all 360-feedback publishers are innovating at the same pace or in the same direction. This creates a challenge for the prospective user who is learning about feedback options. However, a thorough, up-to-date review of what's available now will ensure that you get the maximum capability for the least investment.

2. Make sure that organization is prepared for 360-degree feedback. Readiness can be improved by addressing the following areas:

* The climate of trust

* Organizational stability

* Feedback practices

* Development practices

* Awareness and acceptance of 360 feedback

* Availability of computers

3. Use well-researched, well-constructed survey items. A 360-degree assessment is only as effective as the items that make up the survey. The best surveys are carefully constructed and locally validated. This is challenge is made easy by customizable survey platforms such as 20/20 Insight GOLD.

4. Protect confidentiality. People are willing to give honest feedback if they believe that doing so will benefit them and the people receiving it. You should establish policies and procedures that keep ratings anonymous and give supervisors only the summary data they need to help direct reports improve performance—and no more.

5. Use skilled facilitators. When people receive 360-degree feedback the first time, they often need help sorting through, accepting, understanding and making use of the information. People who have experience making this process successful should lead these meetings.

6. Follow up. Don't make the mistake of thinking that 360 feedbacks alone will improve performance. It can focus on priority development needs and produce strong motivation to change in many people, but individual development planning; coaching and empowerment of developmental activities are essential.

7. Separate developmental feedback from personnel and compensation decisions. 360 are best used for measuring the hard-to-quantify aspects of work, such as interpersonal skills. Reward systems are expensive, so they're best applied to reinforce desired results. It's a mistake to apply rewards to the work processes rather than work outcomes. Follow developmental feedback with developmental initiatives, not rewards.

On the other hand, interpersonal behaviors (e.g., leadership, team interaction, communication, sales, service, negotiation and instruction) aren't easily quantified or measured. The best way to get objective data about this aspect of performance is 360-degree feedback.

Training and HR Technology--Retrain the Brain.

As aging baby boomers look to keep on working, producers of `brain fitness' software—aimed at improving memory and keeping the mind sharp—see an opportunity to pitch their products to employers.

Software tools to keep the brain fit are headed to the workplace.

The products have been making a splash in the consumer market in recent years as older Americans wrestle with memory loss and other cognitive declines. And now vendors of "brain fitness" software are beginning to see employers as another fertile market, especially given the desire of baby boomers to stay in the workforce for years to come.

A host of challenges face this nascent industry. They include doubts about the effectiveness of the software, concerns that exercises in front of a computer will bore people, and the prospect that employees in their 40s, 50s and 60s will feel stigmatized signing up for what could be considered brain rehab.

But advocates are confident the burgeoning field of brain health is far more than a fad, and companies are likely to see significant benefits in areas such as productivity and retention through the use of the new software tools.

Posit Science, a San Francisco-based firm, says several employers are testing its software this year. Posit Science's Brain Fitness Program has been shown to improve the memory of people 60 years or older by 10 years or more, and the company's CEO, Jeff Zimman, expects solid results in corporate trials as well. "This is going to be a hot area," he says.

The Players

The brain fitness arena has its roots in scientific findings during the past two decades that the brain is fundamentally "plastic"—capable of rewiring itself even late in life. That's good news, because experts also note that brain functioning begins to fall off as early as age 25. Among the key researchers in the field is Posit Science founder Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco who was recently featured in a PBS program on brain fitness.

To combat the dulling of the mind and stave off the horrifying effects of dementia, a host of vendors now tout brain training software programs, including Happy Neuron.com, CogniFit, Posit Science and Fit Brains. Video game company Nintendo also is a player with its Brain Age software.

Posit Science expects solid results in corporate testing trials of its software. "This is going to be a hot area." --Jeff Zimman, CEO, Posit Science

The content of these programs varies. Happy Neuron.com, for example, offers games designed to work out five major brain functions: language, attention, memory, visual processing and "executive function," which includes logical reasoning. One of Happy Neuron's language games, "Split Words," asks users to match the parts of words divided into two or more sections, with the help of a general category for the session such as "gardening."

Fit Brains plans this month to introduce games for a range of cognitive functions. By the end of March, it intends to add games as well as other features such as brain fitness metrics.

Brain Age, built for the Nintendo DS mobile game device, runs users through activities such as solving math problems, playing sudoku puzzle games and reading literature aloud.

Posit Science, meanwhile, works to improve memory and train the brain on basic processing skills. In one activity, users are asked to listen to two tones played in rapid succession, then decide whether the second was higher or lower than the first.

Benefit Questioned.

The brain training software industry is new but promising. Brain Age and its sequel Brain Age 2 have together sold more than 14 million copies worldwide since 2005, says George Harrison, who was senior vice president of marketing at Nintendo of America before retiring from the company at the end of 2007. Nintendo's brain games are inspired by the work of Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima, and they estimate the "age" of users' brains based on their performance. But the products are pitched primarily as fun, Harrison says. "We haven't done any scientific research to demonstrate any health claims," he says.

On the other end of the spectrum, Posit Science has had its software tested by researchers who have presented findings in scholarly journals and at conferences. In November, the company touted results of a study of 524 healthy adults 65 and older. Half of them completed up to 40 hours of the Posit Science program. The other half followed the advice that older people will benefit from new learning in different subject areas, and completed up to 40 hours of a computer-based educational training program on topics such as the history of Great Britain.

Those in the Posit Science group showed "significantly superior" gains in standardized, clinical measures of memory equal to roughly 10 years, the company said in a statement. The company also said participants in the Posit Science program showed significant gains in how they perceived their memory and cognitive abilities, such as remembering names and phone numbers or where they had left their keys, as well as communication abilities and feelings of self-confidence.

Even so, the degree to which software programs can slow the cognitive decline associated with aging has been questioned. Sandra Aamod, editor of the journal Nature Neuroscience, and Sam Wang, professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton University, offered a critical view of the products in a November New York Times opinion piece. A better bet, the authors argued, is physical exercise.

"So instead of spending money on computer games or puzzles to improve your brain's health, invest in a gym membership," the authors wrote. "Or just turn off the computer and go for a brisk walk."

Some advocates for computer brain fitness products say software training should be part of a broader range of brain health activities, including walking and swimming.

Paul Nussbaum, a neuropsychologist and chief scientific officer of Fit Brains, suggests a five-part program for brain health, with attention to socializing, physical activity, mental stimulation, nutrition and spirituality.

Targeting the workforce

Until now, companies haven't paid much attention to brain health, Nussbaum says. He notes the way corporate health fairs typically have tables set up for diabetes and bone density. "There's nothing at these health fairs focused on the brain," he says.

Corporate training departments also have ignored sharpening basic employee mental skills such as memory or language processing.

The graying of the workforce may change that. The number of U.S. workers 55 and older is projected to grow by 46.7 percent between 2006 and 2016, according to a December report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The rate of expansion in the number of those older workers is nearly 5.5 times the 8.5 percent growth projected for the labor force overall. People 55 and older are expected to make up 23 percent of the workforce in 2016, up from 17 percent in 2006 and 12 percent in 1996.