Aging Workforce: When Experience Becomes an HR Issue

Population aging is no longer a trend to watch from a distance. It’s already a concrete reality in most Canadian industries. The share of workers aged 55 and older in Canadian companies has more than doubled in 20 years, according to Statistics Canada, and the trend continues across nearly every sector.

For a long time, this aging trend was mostly treated as a labour shortage issue: how do you replace retiring workers? How do you attract and prepare the next generation?

But a new Statistics Canada study adds an important dimension to this conversation: retention and the preservation of expertise.

What the New Data Shows

According to the report Aging Workforce and Labour Productivity, Canadian companies reach their highest productivity level when the average age of their workforce falls between 46 and 50.

These companies are 8.8% more productive than those with an average worker age of 25 or younger.

Note that these results describe a relationship observed at the company level, not a measure of individual worker productivity.

The decline observed after this peak remains modest, however. Statistics Canada describes a “concave” relationship between average workforce age and productivity: it rises, peaks, then gradually declines rather than dropping sharply.

These findings challenge the idea that productivity declines steeply with age. Instead, they paint a much more nuanced picture, one that varies considerably from sector to sector.

A few examples:

• Construction and manufacturing: the productivity peak comes earlier, when the average worker age is between 36 and 40, and the decline afterward is steeper. Statistics Canada attributes this partly to the physical demands of certain jobs.
• Finance and insurance: productivity keeps climbing into the late forties, then declines more gradually.
• Wholesale trade, retail, and transportation: the peak comes when the average age is between 41 and 45. Companies with a more experienced workforce remain significantly more productive than those with much younger workers, reflecting how much experience matters in these sectors.

What This Means for Retention

This data carries particular weight in a context where 23% of Canadian workers are considering leaving their jobs.

Retention is no longer just a question of organizational well-being. It’s becoming a direct issue of performance, expertise, and continuity.

When someone holding key expertise leaves an organization, the loss goes beyond the cost of recruiting or filling the position. It can also mean losing hard-to-document knowledge, established relationships, mentoring capacity, and a deep understanding of operations.

That’s the kind of value you can’t simply replace by filling a vacant role.

Statistics Canada’s new data invites organizations to better measure the strategic value of the expertise within their walls, and the risks tied to losing it.

A serious HR conversation about retention needs to ask the right questions:

• Where does the hardest-to-replace expertise live?
• Which employees play a key role in knowledge transfer?
• What essential contributions go unnoticed because they’ve become routine or expected?

Because when performance becomes familiar, it risks becoming invisible too.

Strategy Built Around People, Not a One-Size-Fits-All Approach

Paying closer attention to retaining experienced employees doesn’t mean recognition efforts should focus on a single age group.

Expectations and preferences vary from person to person. Some value public, immediate recognition. Others prefer direct, personalized appreciation, or recognition that marks major milestones in their journey.

As we explored in The Generational Recognition Gap, a one-size-fits-all approach risks fully meeting no one’s expectations.

The goal isn’t to choose between generations, but to build a recognition culture diverse and personalized enough that everyone feels seen and valued.

Adjusting focus based on the data doesn’t mean neglecting other segments of the organization. It means making sure certain employees don’t become invisible simply because their experience and performance are taken for granted.

The Role of Recognition

This is exactly where recognition becomes a strategic lever, not just a nice gesture.

Encouraging Skill Sharing and Knowledge Transfer

Recognition isn’t just about highlighting results. It can also reinforce the behaviours that let expertise circulate throughout an organization.

Sharing knowledge, mentoring a new colleague, passing on know-how, or taking the time to explain a work method are all actions that directly contribute to team development. Yet they often fly under the radar, especially when they’ve become part of the daily habits of the most experienced employees.

By intentionally recognizing these behaviours, organizations can further encourage mentorship, skill sharing, and peer learning.

An effective recognition strategy shouldn’t just value what employees accomplish individually, but also how they help others grow and contribute to preserving expertise within the organization.

Leaning on Peer-to-Peer Recognition

Peer recognition surfaces contributions that managers don’t always see, especially in environments with dispersed teams or different shifts.

It can also help spread expertise by giving visibility to behaviours that move the whole team forward.

Adapting Practices to Individual Preferences

Digital platforms, peer recognition, milestone celebrations, personalized messages, or appreciation cards: there are many ways to recognize employees.

What matters is offering enough flexibility so that recognition feels relevant, authentic, and tailored to what genuinely matters to the people receiving it.

In Summary

Workforce aging is often framed as a problem to anticipate. Statistics Canada’s new data invites us to also see it as an asset to preserve.

For HR, the issue isn’t favouring one generation over another. It’s about better understanding where value lives in the organization, recognizing contributions that go unnoticed, and creating the conditions for expertise to stay, transfer, and keep moving teams forward.

Because when performance becomes familiar, it risks becoming invisible too. And that’s often exactly the moment organizations start taking key talent for granted.