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Everything in the States really is mega-sized. I’d started to get used to the pint-sized cups of coffee and colossal conference centre, but I was almost dumbfounded by a session I attended called “Hot topics and new developments in HR: a public policy update”. Perhaps this was rather naive, given the current economic environment and the recent changes in the White House, but there are masses of legislative bills being considered right now that will have a direct effect on the work of HR professionals in the US. I have also acquired a new respect for any UK HR people who take on roles across the Atlantic. This is major legislative territory.

I had gone to the session with the intention of seeing the progress the new president had made with the various employment pledges he made during his campaign trail. While I soon realised it’s too early to properly assess this, there was a definite sense that much of what is being proposed on Capitol Hill is very unpopular among the American HR community.

The biggest employment issues right now for the federal government relate to healthcare, workplace flexibility, leave and industrial relations. Healthcare is the one dominating the US headlines currently, driven by major concerns, not only about the failure to cover vast numbers of poor people, but also over soaring costs. While both sides of the Senate House, business and the public agree on the need for reform and a new focus on wellness and prevention, the extent to which employers are going to have to pay for the changes, including erasing tax benefits for employer-provided schemes, is very contentious. While the NHS may not be perfect, it definitely takes the pressure off many employers in this area and I don’t envy those American HR managers who will have to navigate their way through whatever changes are eventually passed.

The proposals around workplace flexibility and leave benefits, which both Obama and McCain made much of during their campaign trails, are complex but the view from SHRM is that any new paid leave (for parental reasons or sickness, for example) should be through employer incentives rather than mandatory.

Perhaps the biggest changes for HR are contained in the industrial relations proposals, which, according to one of the SHRM experts presenting the session, would “change the way unions are organised in America forever”. I sensed this bill, which aims to boost rapidly declining union membership and would strengthen the workplace rights of unions, caused the greatest alarm among delegates.

Whatever the outcomes of these proposals, which are yet to be finalised, one thing is for sure: the Obama administration is not standing still and major changes to the US employment landscape are imminent.
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According to the Office for National Statistics, for the first time there are more people aged over 65 in the UK than there are people aged under 15, and the fastest growing age cohort is the over-85s. The problem is that rising life expectancy is coinciding with low or falling fertility rates - and this is an economic time bomb. At present in the UK there are four people of working age supporting each pensioner but within, say, 30 years this will have fallen to 2.5 people.

Soon I will be 72 and, assuming I get to 85-plus, I am not only going to be a nuisance but, according to one report I have read, I shall be dangerous. Actually there are three Ds: doddery, dependent and dangerous.

The gloomy prediction is that us oldies, many with inadequate pensions, will not only be an economic burden but we will be competing with you younger folk for increasingly scarce resources – jobs, housing, exhaustible fossil fuels, food and water, the NHS and so on.

Solutions are easier said than done, but here are a few:

• old people should work until they drop (the participation rate for over-65s is currently only 7 per cent – and that includes me);

• we should boost labour output with more working women and/or more immigrants;

• we should invest heavily in lifelong learning so that an ageing population develops new skills and remains competitive.

The population time bomb may be every bit as serious as climate change. Doing nothing certainly doesn’t seem a sensible option. Or am I just being paranoid?

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