Companies will face a severe shortage of badly needed skills in this decade, unless they act now to entice top-performing older employees to delay their retirements, according to a report from The Conference Board called "Valuing Experience: How to Retain and Motivate Mature Workers."

The findings are based on the responses of 150 senior human-resource executives to an online survey -- 76 percent from U.S. companies, 24 percent from other industrial nations. The survey participants were about evenly divided between manufacturing/utility firms and service firms. More than 67 percent of the companies represented have worldwide annual sales of $5 billion or more.

Of the 150 responding companies, 68 have workforces with 20 percent or more employees who are 50 years of age and above. Among other findings:

• 81 percent do not deal with cross-generational issues in their diversity training.
• More than two-fifths of survey participants have 30 percent or more employees who are 50 years of age and above; 77 percent of this group are manufacturing firms.
• Almost two-fifths of companies in the survey offer their employees early-retirement incentives. Of that group, 64 percent say they offer them to "avoid downsizing," suggesting their aim is to cut costs without wholesale dismissals.
• The average retirement age in the companies represented is under 59.