Some countries order it, some beg it, most need it. In ageing populations in many parts of the world, there are simply not enough younger people to maintain the workforce needed to look after the industries, the services and the old.

So, older workers have to be encouraged or pressed into service, even after they have reached retirement age.

As the years go by and people get wealthier, they have fewer children. My father lived in a family of eight siblings. My wife and I have five children. All but one of my children have only two.

Even the simplest of mathematicians can work out that a longer life means more working years if age-related benefits and affordable medical care are to be sustained. In some countries, they don’t seem to have quite grasped this. They will. New technology brings many benefits. It has not so far delivered much income for not working. Humans must still earn their daily bread and may need to do so for a while yet. This is a cause for rejoicing, not regretting.

Growing and blossoming

When I was young, a lifespan was “three score years & ten” – seventy years of life. Twenty were regarded as essential to grow up, 40 to work and 10 to retire. Life expectancy has extended since then. In many places it is still lengthening, though Covid and poor diets are actually reducing it in a few countries, including the US. But now it is said that the first person to reach the age of 150 may already have been born.

Humans are like magnolia trees. They improve with years and blossom in spring.

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Is staying alive all that important? It is if you are young, if you are happy, if you are loved and have people to love.

If you are poor, sick, weary and lonely, it may not be quite such fun, but the majority of people still want to stay alive. They do not know if there is anything beyond death. They do, however, know that there is a fantastic world here, one that takes a lot of exploring and that provides interest for the curious for way longer than a lifetime.

Staying happy and healthy

The ability to meet the cost of living is a major determinant of whether you have a happy or chilly old age. Your essentials may be modest but you need to eat, to keep warm or cool, to have some over-the-counter medicines for the inevitable aches and pains of advancing years and maybe a little for travel or gifts for your family and friends.

To be reasonably financially independent is a very necessary comfort when you are less agile. Both employer and employee need a clear picture of the resources available both to the business and to the worker.

There is also plenty of evidence that the healthier you stay through good diet and exercise, the longer you will live vigorously and happily. One of the reasons for staying healthy is to be able to help those who don’t have such good health. There are many other reasons, too – dementia is clearly delayed and may be totally avoided if you keep working. It must be the whole of you that keeps going – body and brain.

The new workforce order

Employers have been slow to adapt to the new workforce order. They still favour the young because they are more tech savvy, generally don’t cost so much and are less experienced in handling difficult bosses.

Management is a study topic even more important today than it was 50 years ago. The evidence of how it is being taught and the consequential behaviour of managers may lead us to conclude that it perhaps may be marginally better than in the last century, but the difference is tiny. Management is still often appalling.

Employees found a new clarion call with Covid lockdowns and the concept of work from home (WFH). Their attempts to exploit it post pandemic have led to a conflagration of theories and practices, the net of which has reduced working hours regardless of where the worker is deployed. So, the demand for labour has increased. The already significant attempts to get older workers on their feet again have been redoubled.

The right jobs for the right people

The fundamental concept behind the aged working has been missed and so the jobs that they have got have often been menial, physically unsuited to a creaking body and distasteful for those whose work had previously been predominantly cerebral.

As a young person, you work when you must and sleep when you can. With age comes the need to sleep when you must, leaving you the option to work when you can. The concept of job demands dominating an employment contract has to be rethought with people demands being put first and job practice adapting to them.

When appointing young managers, I always suggested that they hire a recent retiree from a similar business to sit next to them in the office. There is no need for a title, as long as the salary is good. The younger managers were under no obligation to agree to the suggestion and if they did, they didn’t have to consult the older person. They certainly never had to account for how often they did or did not consult him or her.

These mentors proved invaluable. They had no responsibility for the decisions taken – those were the managers’. They were someone to talk to, to clear the air, to get ridiculous ideas on the table and see if they could be moulded into sensible ones. A significant part of our business as mentor-coaches is based on this concept. We label it “When in Doubt, Shout”. Many clients have been doing it for years.

Reading people well

One of the handicaps to making better use of older people is the rigid and ineffective way in which they are “read”. Reading people comes even before reading spreadsheets in all today’s work.

To take someone’s CV as a template of potential is as daft as saying that we cannot manage our sources of energy to allow for electric vehicles. Whatever age group you are hiring, what matters is the future. The past tells you what someone has done – not necessarily how well they did it. They aren’t going to tell you if they screwed up, are they?

What someone has done is the foundation stone of who that person is, not the design of the new building. Managers are often referred to as builders. They do, indeed, help people to build their careers. They also build businesses. But actually they are architects rather than builders. The foundation must be solid but it is not what built the Taj Mahal Palace or the Eiffel Tower – it is what they were built on. Successful employment of older workers relies even more on the architect than it does for younger, less experienced workers.

Making their mark

Older workers want one thing more than anything else. They want to make a contribution to their society. They have probably worked hard, saved, maybe raised and educated a family. They won’t talk much about their life coming to an end but they will think about it a lot. We would all like to have done more useful things with our lives.

We would all like to feel appreciated for who we are.

“You made your mark” is the kindest thing you can say to someone who is nearing the end. If, as an employer, you help someone to make that true, you, too, are making yours.