He hadnвЂ™t expected it to take so long to find qualified candidates and wondered if he should contact a recruiting agency.ДЄ knock on the door interrupted his train of thought. Heberer was trying to fill a position in basic research that had opened when Medignostics had enticed one of its chemists into management. Only two more applications-a meager yield for a job that had been posted for three weeks on online boards and in the daily press. He dropped the report on his desk and combed through the rest of his mail. Their priorities were all about cutting costs. He felt as if the members of MedignosticsвЂ™s executive wing-all of them older than 55-had ganged up on him. вЂњHow will we find good workers to fill the ranks?вЂќ Heberer smiled grimly: At the moment, the bestsellerвЂ™s title struck a chord. вЂњWhat happens when our employees start retiring in droves?вЂќ he asked. In his report, Heberer went further to predict the effect this trend would have on the German workforce. In just 25 years, more than a quarter of the countryвЂ™s population would be over age 65. The picture it painted of the future was anything but rosy. Written by Frank Schirrmacher, an editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, the book chronicled the demographic transformation occurring in Germany and seemed to be the hot topic of conversation everywhere Heberer went. While the executive team might not have been reading many demographic studies, he trusted theyвЂ™d heard of the wildly popular bestseller Das Methusalem-Komplott (The Methuselah Conspiracy).

Heberer had timed his proposal carefully. вЂњGranted, thatвЂ™s a long way off,вЂќ he thought, вЂњbut what could be a bigger priority than a disaster you clearly see coming?вЂќ He flipped open his report to look once again at the shocking statistic: Without immigration, the countryвЂ™s population would fall from 82 million to 24 million by 2100. The average age of the German population was steadily rising, and that had real implications for the midsize pharmaceutical companyвЂ™s personnel. HeвЂ™d done all the research, and everything heвЂ™d read pointed to a rocky road ahead. For the past six months, this had been his pet project. Noting the crispness of the binder, Heberer doubted that anyone had read beyond his cover sheet. On the title page was affixed a yellow Post-it, with the words вЂњNot a priorityвЂќ penned in the ornate handwriting of Erwin Baum, the vice president of HR. It outlined the long-term human resources strategy he believed Medignostics needed to adopt in order to remain competitive in the next 20 years. The internal-mail envelope heвЂ™d just torn open with great expectations contained the report heвЂ™d labored over for months. Human resources manager Frank Heberer frowned.

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