In 2019, one in eleven people globally,
were aged 65 and older.
By 2050, it'll be one in six.
These shifting demographics,
a combination of a long-term increase in life expectancy
and falling birth rates,
means the average person is getting older.
And while we should celebrate living longer,
we also have to accept that means working longer, too.
We really need to think about
what this is going to look like
when there's fewer younger people and more older people
and how this will work moving forward.
It could mean greater economic burden
falling on the shrinking group of working adults,
but it could also be an opportunity
for individuals, as well as companies.
The multi-generational age-diverse workforce
benefits in a whole range of ways.
Those policies that benefit older workers
are highly likely to also benefit
younger and midlife workers.
Society is having to adapt to this new reality.
The companies that realize that age is just a number,
could reap the biggest rewards.
My name is Christina Matz
and I'm an associate professor at Boston college,
in the school of social work
and I study the aging workforce and productive aging.
So when social security was started back in 1965,
the expected life expectancy was really around 70-75
and so people were expected to spend
a handful of years in retirement.
And so now that we're looking at, you know,
15, 20, 30 years potentially in retirement,
being able to sustain your income
over the course of that period of time, is a real issue.
So does that mean we have to keep people in work longer,
or do we need to rethink
the way we work, more broadly?
It's really important that we make sure
that we shift away from this focus on chronological age,
more to capabilities, and opportunities and strengths.
There's still rampant amounts of ageism
that exist in the workplace.
We see it in the rates
of re-employment among unemployed workers.
We've actually seen an increase
in age discrimination throughout the pandemic.
In recent years,
age discrimination has been revealed beyond the anecdotal
and witnessed across the corporate level.
Big companies have been accused
of laying off thousands of older employees
to change their image, and attract younger workers.
A study for Deloitte suggested that if you're older,
you're likely to be considered less capable,
less able to adapt, or less willing to pitch in.
We found that individuals
who are on age diverse work teams,
are more engaged than those
who were on age-segregated work teams.
And so really having that diversity of opinion,
that diversity of skills and talents,
the diversity of experience,
really makes a huge difference
in terms of engagement.
Other studies have supported that,
in terms of increasing productivity, which in turn,
increases the likelihood of the employee
staying with that organization.
So it reduces turnover.
Helping older people stay in work
has wide-reaching benefits too.
According to a 2015 report,
holding onto workers for just
three years beyond normal retirement,
could add 55 billion pounds to the British economy.
It could also increase wages and employment
for younger generations.
If more older people stay in work,
they'll have more money to spend in the economy.
But fixing the age demographic time bomb,
as some like to put it,
isn't just about delaying retirement.
For many older workers,
there's a simple reason to stop work,
our bodies make it hard to continue.
At BMW's Dingolfing plant in southern Germany,
the company had noticed a time bomb of their own.
The average age of the plant workers in 2007 was 39,
and was due to rise to 47 by 2017.
Former head of the powertrain plant, Nikolaus Bauer,
was concerned about what that would mean for productivity.
If you bear in mind that older population
tend to need longer time to cure from a sickness,
have longer absenteeism,
have maybe physical abilities
which are not as good as from young workers.
What can we do?
We have to improve the competitiveness
of the existing factory.
The plant had committed
to guaranteeing employment to its loyal workers,
rather than forcing them into early retirement.
So it used the situation to learn
about its workforce and improve conditions.
We created a facility within the plant
and installed the age average
that the other plant will have in 10 years.
Meaning, we took elder people, brought them to the line,
and we took younger people out.
Line managers work with the employees to identify
what might help them work better and in more comfort.
They identified 70 measures
which they put in place for a small cost,
such as changing footwear,
installing wooden flooring and adjustable chairs,
and adding variety to the stations
the employees worked at throughout the day.
It turned out that eight hours on one workstation
is physically very, very demanding.
We should have a rotation concept.
First, something demanding for shoulders and arms,
then let's say something for, demanding for the legs.
Then let's say something demanding for the brain.
They were not in principle,
dedicated to improve the productivity,
they were dedicated to improve ergonomics,
but ergonomics, measures of ergonomic,
also turned out to be very helpful for productivity.
Within three months, productivity was up 7%.
The line's absenteeism rate was halved,
and the defect rate dropped to zero.
All the others
which are not dedicated to that line said,
"that is the pensioners line," at first.
But the pensioners line proved to be better
than all the other lines within one year.
So why do you think the older workers did better?
Age brings experience.
If you are old, you have already made enough faults,
which you won't ever repeat.
Ten years later, I can say,
this is more or less, basic in every BMW factory.
According to HSBC,
15% fewer adults will join the workforce
within the next two decades.
Thanks to coronavirus,
the global baby drought could be even more pronounced.
Harnessing the contributions of older workers
could become a serious competitive advantage.
This idea has already birthed
a new career path: The 'Returnship'.
So a 'returnship' is really
sort of like a student internship,
except it's tweaked for the mid-career professional.
It is a short-term work opportunity,
where the company and the individual
have the opportunity to test out
the working relationship,
before the employer makes the hiring decision.
Carol Fishman Cohen co-founded iRelaunch,
a company specializing in the career re-entry space.
We're working with people who are returning to work
after career breaks, for a whole range of reasons
and they could be returning
in their 40s, 50s or 60s.
Sometimes people are returning to work after retirement,
so they're un-retiring because retirement
didn't turn out to be what they thought it was gonna be.
Or maybe they have financial pressure
that they weren't expecting.
What are employers looking for from relaunchers?
If you think about the qualities
of the relauncher population,
they're educated, they have great work experience,
they have a mature perspective.
They have worked before,
they've worked on multi-generational teams,
they've worked with different personalities,
they've faced work deadlines.
You don't have to teach that to them.
Our work lives are getting longer.
Some of us could spend five or six decades in work.
So should we all start
thinking differently about our careers?
The career break can really be a gift
and I don't think people realize that,
but once you're on career break,
it's the first time many of us
allow ourselves to step back and reflect
on whether we were even on
the right career path to begin with.
Because if you think about it,
some of us just fell into a career
without really knowing that much about it.
It was our first job out of school,
we took another job in that same area,
and all of a sudden we had a career.
And others of us were maybe
fulfilling other people's expectations,
like maybe our parents wanted us to go into a certain field
and we were feeling some pressure, and so we did that.
And that's one of the attributes
of people who relaunch their careers,
is they have a more mature perspective,
they know themselves a lot better,
and they have a better sense
of where they can add the most value to an employer.
When you think progressive workplace,
you'd be forgiven for not thinking
of financial services right away,
but it's where the returnship actually started.
It took off throughout Wall Street,
as the banking industry realized
it was losing successful women
and its senior roles were thinning out.
They're intentionally bringing back people who are older,
because they want them to fill
those mid to senior level roles,
where they haven't had enough women
because of attrition over time.
It almost goes counter to what
you might be thinking about
with ageism in the workforce,
because most of the people who get hired
through return to work programs
are in their 40s or 50s or older.
While many might dream of retiring early,
for most it's far from reality.
In the U.S.
it's estimated to cost a million dollars to retire at age 65
yet, 21% of Americans have no savings.
Research also shows that people who stop working and retire,
lose social contacts, and suffer ill health.
Employment on the other hand,
brings both physical and mental health benefits,
and staves off the time we draw on savings, and pensions.
We really need to think about
alternative ways of working.
More flexible working arrangements,
that allow people to phase out of retirement slowly,
over a longer period of time.
Considering things like, mid-life sabbaticals.
Considering education that is more lifelong
and extended across the lifespan.
We have to be careful when we talk
about solutions around working longer,
to be sure that people are not
pushed out of work when they really need it
and pushed out of health insurance
and other benefits that come with working,
that older adults often need.