T
TALKING HEADS
Older workers have purpose and passion too
I
Jane Evans
Employers must invest
in older workers to
attract and retain
the best talent in an
ageing society.
48 // Future Talent
f you Google ‘millennials’ or
‘generation Z’, the chances
are that you will find a blog
or article arguing the need
to adopt a different management
approach with these new generations
of workers.
Millennials, it seems, are looking for
‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’. Apparently,
older generations were (and I quote) “all
about getting the job done and getting
paid for it”. This concept may have had
some validity back in the 1950s, when
the paid workforce was predominately
men bringing home the bacon, but it’s
downright insulting to the first women
in the workplace who fought so hard for
equality rights.
The millennial generation wants to
do the right job for the right purpose:
meaning, passion even, is the currency
of the day. For some of us, it always has
been and always will be.
I hate the young/old divide with a
particular passion. We all know 25-year-
olds who could run the world and
80-year-olds who run the marathon.
There always have been, and always
will be, fast starters and late bloomers
(and, if we’re lucky, we’re all going to
live a lot longer than we imagined).
Working towards gender neutrality may
be topical, but we also need to work
towards age-neutral work environments
— before it’s too late.
Business leaders and HR teams
should listen and take note of the specific
cultural needs of younger workers, but
they ignore at their peril the experience
of those at the opposite end of their
careers. A recent report from the UK’s
International Longevity Centre shows
the share of the workforce aged fifty
and over rose from 26% in 2004 to 32%
in 2018; it predicts that it could reach
37% by 2040.
Its message for business is that
employers need to invest in their
mid-and-later-life workers so that they
can “attract and retain the best talent in
an ageing society”.
In reality, however, there is an
epidemic of joblessness for the over
fifties, with a third facing long-term
unemployment — and it’s a trend that
hits women hardest. Women over fifty
have 31% of the pensions savings of men,
(largely due to not benefiting fully from
the maternity benefits they fought so
hard for). Even if they are working, they
are in jobs that pay 72% of men’s salaries.
Since I started The Uninvisibility
Project I’ve heard heartbreaking stories
of brilliant midlife professional women
who have become ‘invisible’, some even
“I hate the
young/old divide
with a passion”
facing bankruptcy and homelessness
or working minimum-wage care jobs
to keep the bailiffs at bay.
It seems all too easy to lose sight
of these invisible midlife women, their
experience and skills — developed both
inside and outside formal employment
— overlooked or underemployed at a
time when we need all the collective
knowledge we can muster to tackle
the huge economic, social and cultural
challenges facing all of us. By all means,
let’s harness the passion of this new
generation, but let’s temper it with some
good old-fashioned wisdom too.
Jane Evans is the founder of The
Uninvisibility Project (uninvisibility.
com), a movement that wants to wake
up the world to the plight and potential of
midlife women and create opportunities
for them.