Posts Tagged “mature age jobs”

Discrimination against older workers will cut economic growth and strain resources, institute warns

AM By Brett Worthington

17/10/2017

Australia is at risk of a pension crisis unless employers stop their “discrimination” against older workers, advocates for regional Australia have warned.
The Regional Australia Institute (RAI) has warned the Federal Government’s pension bill would rise from $45 billion to $51 billion within three years, unless efforts were made to help more mature workers gain employment, particularly in regional communities.
Chief executive Jack Archer said continued unemployment of people older than 55 would cut economic growth and put a greater strain on public resources.
“We hear that there is a lot of people who would like to work, who would love to stay in the workforce either part-time or full-time even though they’re in their late 50s, 60s and even into their 70s,” he said.
“But we’re not doing a very good job of giving them the training, giving them the incentives around the pension, and working with employers to stop the discrimination around employing older workers.”

Ageing demographic in regional areas
The RAI has today released a report that outlines the economic benefits of hiring older workers, which it said would help accelerate economic growth in regional communities.
These communities are ageing at faster rates than metropolitan areas.
Mr Archer said the ageing regional demographic was partly the result of people shifting away from cities when they retired.
He said Victor Harbour in South Australia, Port Macquarie-Hastings in NSW, and East Gippsland in Victoria all had at least 20 per cent of the population reliant on the aged pension.
“It basically means you’ve got a lot of talent on the bench, a lot of people who could be involved and contributing who are sitting around homes and wishing they were doing something else,” he said.
“The social benefits of [tackling] this [will be] enormous in these regions where the impact is severe now.”

Getting older people into work
The report calls for a variety of approaches to getting more older Australians into work.
“For regions with low participation rates like the Bass Coast in Victoria or the Lockyer Valley in Queensland, the focus will be to increase workforce engagement in general,” the report stated.
“For those with high participation rates but also a high incidence of part-time employment like Augusta-Margaret River WA and Busselton WA, the policy focus will need to be more targeted towards addressing underemployment.”

The report also suggested part-time work could not only keep older people employed for longer, but it could help lure others back into work.
“As Australians approach retirement age, the opportunity for more flexible working arrangements opens up new opportunities for older Australians who want to stay engaged in the workforce, but scale down at the same time,” the report stated.
“For many, the inability to scale down to a part-time role often means having to drop out of the workforce completely.”

No luck after 150 job applications
Wagga Wagga man Peter Sweeney took a voluntary redundancy from the public sector five years ago.
The 66-year-old said when he attempted to return to employment, he was unable to secure an interview, let alone a job.
“Not everybody is ready to lay down and die,” he said.
Mr Sweeney said he applied for at least 150 jobs before he gave up his hunt.
“I had strong analytical skills, excellent communication skills — written and verbal — and investigation skills,” he said.
“I would have said they would have all been very current. I was able to cope with the applications on the internet.
“There is no doubt in my mind that my age was the thing that kept coming up.

Mr Sweeney said he became involved in a men’s shed group, where he discovered other people had been through a similar experience.

He took his superannuation as a pension and was now entitled to receive a partial aged pension.
“People have told me that they don’t like putting older people on because they’re too set in their ways,” he said.
“Their skill levels are out of date, they can’t take instruction from younger people and they’re generally too tired.
“They want young people. They want people they can socialise with, whereas the oldies are interested in different things.
“The ones that do employ seniors do it for that reason — they don’t want to mess around with a lot of people who have got too busy social lives and can’t come to work on Monday.”

Economic benefit from employing older workers
Mr Archer said as the population aged the workforce shrank, and that risked future economic growth.
But he said that could be reversed provided employers embraced an older workforce.
“In some regions we can see an extra $30 to $40 million of annual consumption in the local area as a result of lifting participation of older workers by 2 or 3 per cent,” he said.
“That then flows on to other jobs in the community.
“What that tells us is if you get the right mix of incentives, you can really have a significant impact on local economies.
“[When] those people are earning [an income], their pension bills will either disappear or be much lower and the government will get a benefit from that.”

‘Apprenticeships for the over-60s are impractical and insulting’

18th September 2017 at 16:20

Offering apprenticeships to older learners is ‘robbing kids of their future’, says Charlie Mullins, of Pimlico Plumbers
As someone who has campaigned for apprenticeships for my whole working life, I can’t get over our minister of state for apprenticeships and skills, Anne Milton, telling the House of Commons that they should be available to everybody “whatever their background and age”.
It has always been my view that apprenticeships are there to give our youngsters greater opportunities in life, but encouraging over-60s to take on apprenticeships is quite clearly robbing kids of their future.
I’m all for the older worker and I love having a mix of ages in the workplace. We can always learn from experience, but ultimately you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Encouraging over-60s to start the same course as teenagers is a step backwards. It is both impractical and insulting. If we start handing these precious opportunities out to over-60s, the meaning of “apprenticeship” will change entirely. Practically speaking, in my industry how are these senior trade apprentices going to learn all the tricks of the trade when they aren’t able to lug around heavy materials or stand all day on a site?
Those of us who have completed an apprenticeship with a lot of hard graft will know that they’re nothing like we see on TV. We’ve got to stop confusing the term “apprenticeship”. It’s yet another case of common sense being thrown out of the window.

I can honestly say that I will never take on an apprentice who isn’t young, ripe and ready. We need to save these opportunities for the kids of tomorrow, not waste them on the fogies.
I’ve said from day one that apprenticeships are the way we can reduce crime levels and help to solve the skills gap. Apprenticeships are for youngsters and as soon as we start giving them to older people, they won’t want to do it. Fact. It is our duty to preserve apprenticeships as being a trendy route through life.
‘Don’t waste apprenticeships on the fogies’
We have around 300 apprenticeship applications every month at Pimlico Plumbers, and we’ve got many who make a massive difference to the business. We’ve come a long way since apprenticeships were a second-rate option, and with university applications down this year I was starting to think we were making real progress. We can’t let this set us back and put youngsters off.
Don’t get me wrong, I started my career as an apprentice, and I owe my success to the fact that I was able to learn a trade in this way. I am a big believer in retraining and supporting older workers, but we’ve got to call it a “senior training scheme”, not an apprenticeship.

I’m not saying that older workers are past their sell-by date – far from it. They can bring real credibility to a business and are respected by both colleagues and customers, due to their experience. We’ve had many brilliant older workers in separate roles at Pimlico Plumbers over the years, including van washer Buster Martin, and my current PA Mario, who’s in his seventies. It should be a standard thing in businesses to have young, enthusiastic apprentices who are learning both traditional and new ways of working and older, equally enthusiastic workers who are happy to share their experience and have their ears bent by younger colleagues.
I’m a proud supporter of protecting apprenticeships and getting youngsters motivated to learn and work. In fact, I believe the term “apprentice” is so vitally important to young people today that it should be trademarked, and only used in the proper way. We can’t let it be thrown around and run the risk of putting youngsters off what is a genuine, financially rewarding career option.

I’ve reached out to Anne Milton for a meeting and I’m pleased to say we’ll be looking to get a date in the diary soon. She’s got a lot on her plate, with being committed to reaching 3 million new apprenticeship starts in England by 2020 – but these need to be, what I call, “true apprentices” taking on these apprenticeships. Anne does some great work with encouraging women on the tools too, but I really think I can offer her some insight on apprenticeships, seeing as it is at the core of my business.
Yes, let’s champion retraining older workers and train them on senior training schemes, but we can’t run the risk of putting teenagers off apprenticeships because we’ve let the over-60s join their course.

Charlie Mullins is managing director and founder of Pimlico Plumbers

Particularly nasty new scam is targeting older Aussies’ savings

If you have an elderly parent, there is a worrying new fraud that you must warn them of, after a number of older Aussies were robbed of their life savings by a particularly complex phone-and-bank scam.

The unusually detailed fraud runs like this: a person telephones, claiming to be from an expensive jewellery store, and warns the victim that their credit card is being used to purchase a particularly pricey item.

The ‘jewellery salesperson’ informs tells the victim that they’re concerned their card is being used fraudulently and warns them to call their bank and the police, and even helpfully offers to transfer them to the police so they can report the crime.

However, the phone transfer is to a fake police officer, who then advises the victim that staff within their own Australian bank are involved in the fraud and that they must not alert them that the gig’s up. Instead, the ‘police officer’ advises the victim to transfer the money they have in their Australian bank account to a UK account via the international bank transfer system, in order to ‘protect’ it from the scammers.

The victim is warned to carry out the transfer without mentioning its purpose to bank staff, whether they do so by telephone or in a branch.

But the UK bank accounts are actually controlled by the scammers, who then make off with the money. Once money leaves Australia, it is difficult to retrieve, even if it is paid into a legitimate UK bank account.

The fraudsters are known to be targeting Australians over the age of 75. And although their ploy may sound implausible, Starts at 60 has been told that a number of older people have sent a significant sum overseas in just the past few days.

Source: Startsatsixty.com.au

Public service fat cats and MPs get the cream

UPDATE: Liberal frontbenchers Simon Birmingham and Christopher Pyne have backed the process that delivered politicians a minimum $4000 pay rise from next week, with Senator Birmingham insisting their salaries were kept “well and truly in check”.

Australian politicians have been handed a two per cent pay rise from next Saturday on top of their current $199,040 base salary.

On top of that, they will get a tax cut as the 2 per cent budget repair levy is also due to be removed on July 1.

In justifying the decision the tribunal said it had received submissions calling for salaries more in line with the private sector.

“Over the past year there has been a notable increase in submissions to the Tribunal seeking higher remuneration for offices and individual office holders based at least in part on private sector remuneration,” the statement said.

Mr Pyne said politicians have nothing to do with determining salaries and they’re not in it for the money.

“We do it because it is a wonderful way of helping the society in which we live,” he told the Nine Network

Senator Birmingham said the pay rise came after the minimum wage was bumped up.

“It is an independent process and it was a two per cent pay rise this year, after a pay-freeze that the independent process determined last year. And of course just recently, the minimum pay rise for minimum wage was handed down at 3.3 per cent,” he told Channel Seven.

While he acknowledged parliamentarians were well remunerated Senator Birmingham said they were not there for the money.

“I think you can see the processes working to keep politicians’ salaries well and truly in check, there was a freeze, there’s a lower than the minimum wage as people would think it should be,” Senator Birmingham said.

PM gets payrise

Federal politicians, judges and top public servants will enjoy pay rises of up to $12,000 a year from next week, pushing backbench MPs’ base pay above $200,000 for the first time.

At a time of record low wage growth and rising government debt, the Remuneration Tribunal awarded a 2 per cent pay rise to all senior public office holders yesterday, following another 2 per cent pay rise in January last year.

The latest rise was necessary “to attract and retain” people of “calibre”, the tribunal said, pointing out that minimum wage workers would receive a 3.3 per cent pay rise ($22.20 a week) from next month and public sector wages had increased 2.4 per cent over the year to March.

The boost means backbenchers’ pay, excluding allowances, will rise by just under $4000 to $203,020.

The Prime Minister will get a $10,350 pay rise to $527,854; the High Court chief justice’s base pay will rise $11,461 to $584,511.

“There has been a notable increase in submissions to the tribunal seeking higher remuneration for offices and individual office holders based at least in part on private sector remuneration,” the tribunal said.

It suggested the era of “economic restraint” that saw pay rise deferrals in 2014 and 2015 was over.

Falling private sector wage growth, which earlier this week prompted Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe to invite workers to ask for a rise, rose 1.9 per cent over the year to March.

The Human Rights Commission president’s pay will rise to $423,650.

Some MPs questioned the pay rise last night. Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm said: “I think we are already very well paid and don’t need a pay increase at the moment. Given the state of the budget in particular, it’s ill-timed.”

Greens leader Richard Di Natale said “people have had a gutful”. “At a time when income inequality is out of control and wages are going nowhere, politicians get a pay rise,” he said.

Cabinet ministers, currently paid a base salary of $343,344, will get nearly $7000 extra and will now be paid $350,210 a year.

Heads of the 18 government departments in Canberra, who earn up to $861,700 a year, will enjoy pay rises of between $9500 and $12,063, the latter going to the secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The tribunal said public office holders were making financial sacrifices. “Office holders serve for the public good (and) many of these office holders do not expect or require that monetary compensation be set at private sector levels,” the tribunal said.

The pay increase will occur as the government’s 2 per cent budget repair levy on top-rate taxpayers end.

“This represents an increase of 1.6 per cent per annum over the 18 months since the last general increase” effective from January 2016, the statement said, noting increases were not granted in 2014 and 2015.

MPs also receive a non-taxable $276 allowance for every night of the 18 weeks a year they are in Canberra.

“This decision is a slap in the face for the thousands of commonwealth public sector workers whose wages have been frozen for well over three years as they’ve been stuck fighting for their basic workplace rights and conditions,” said Community and Public Sector Union national secretary Nadine Flood.

The 170,000 federal public servants have not had a general pay rise since the Coalition was elected in 2013 and have been locked in a battle over renewal of enterprise agreements.

Staff at the Defence Department on Wednesday became the second major department to agree to an enterprise deal which will bring a 6 per cent increase over the next 18 months.

Staff at the Australian Taxation Office and at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet are voting on the pay deal today.

“This decision will certainly give frontline public sector workers the impression that there’s one set of rules for them and quite another for those at the top,’’ Ms Flood said.

Public Service Commissioner John Lloyd said Ms Flood’s comments were “misleading”.

“The main reason for the delay in employees receiving a pay increase is the CPSU’s persistent campaign opposing salary increases that have been on offer for 3 years for most of the employees. The increases offered have been for an average 2% a year over a 3 year term,” he told The Australian.

“The generous pay and conditions of public servants are not under threat.”

Source: The Australian

MP calls on employers to give older workers a chance

Anna Hartley | 4th Jun 2017 12:00 PM

BLAIR MP Shayne Neumann has encouraged Ipswich employers to give people over 50 a chance to get back into the workforce.

“There’s no question that over 50s face challenges when trying to get back into work,” he said.

“Family pressures and age discrimination can all make it tough for those trying to hold down a job, particularly if they’re re-entering the workforce after a while out.

“With an ageing population, it’s never been more important to ensure older Australians are able to get into the workforce..

“Whether it’s volunteering, doing a course at TAFE or enrolling at university, keeping your skills and experiences up to date is always helpful when it comes to looking for a job.”

The MP encouraged Ipswich business owners to employ people over 50.

“Having over 50s engaged in the workforce is not only good for employers; it’s good for Ipswich as a whole,” he said.

“They can contribute unparalleled skills, bring a life time of experiences, and help mentor and train younger workers.

“They make our workforces smarter, more productive, and more experienced.”

Source: Queensland Times

Age discrimination still rife in workplaces

One in two hiring managers have witnessed age discrimination in their organisations’ recruitment processes, according to research released today.

The Robert Walters whitepaper, based on a survey of more than 930 hiring managers and 1,500 professionals in Australia and New Zealand, shows many professionals also reported experiencing age discrimination during their careers.

Some 74 per cent of Baby Boomers said they had been discriminated against in a job interview because of their age, followed by 36 per cent of Gen X workers and 34 per cent of Gen Y workers, the research found.

And on top of the 50 per cent of hiring managers who had seen age discrimination in their organisation’s recruitment, 58 per cent said they had seen colleagues overlooked for career progression because of their age.

Gen Y claim to be the most hard done by in this area, with 84 per cent claiming they were discriminated against, followed by 54 per cent of Baby Boomers and 33 per cent of Gen X.

The whitepaper blames unconscious bias, saying an example of this is the disconnect between the different age groups’ stated work preferences, and how hiring managers view them.

Source: Generation gaps? Mythbusting assumptions about age in the workforce

Ageism ‘too salient to ignore’

Another study, conducted by University of South Australia academics, found nearly a third of people had experienced some form of age-related discrimination while employed or looking for work in the past 12 months, according to researcher Justine Irving.

Irving told HR Daily that while studying retirement intentions, the researchers found significant evidence of ageism, which was “so salient that we thought, ‘we can’t ignore this'”.

In their resulting survey of 2,100 people aged 45 years and over, the researchers found many believed they had been on the receiving end of negative assumptions regarding their skills, learning abilities or cognition.

“There was a perception of older workers that because they were a certain age they would struggle to pick up new work systems, particularly technological-based systems,” Irving says.

There was also an assumption they would take longer to learn new things, and work more slowly, she says.

Negative generalisations about employees’ work capacity as they get older is “quite systemic”, she adds, noting ageism isn’t specific to the workforce. “It actually crosses all different levels of society, so I think that in the workplace, you just see it because it’s something that affects people’s ability to maintain and retain work.

“I believe it is slowly changing, but I think it’s just one of those things that will take time.”

The researchers also found participants experienced limited opportunities for training and promotion, Irving says.

“There was an assumption that ‘they’re a bit older, they’re likely to retire in the near future, it’s not something they would be interested in’.”

Participants reported that when they were asked to act in management or supervisor roles, they were often not considered for the position permanently – “they were always looked at as temporary or stop gaps, rather than actually being considered as somebody appropriate for that role into the future”.

Another finding was that when people decided to change careers or move state, for example, and had long work histories, higher education levels, and extensive experience and qualifications, they would suddenly “hit a wall” in their careers.

“So they would put their applications in, everything would go along swimmingly, until they got to the interview stage, and they said that they would see the [recruiters’] faces change once they saw them, and they put that down to their age,” Irving says.

“A lot of recruiters would tell them, ‘oh you weren’t considered, I’m sorry, because you’re overqualified or too experienced’, but how these people interpreted that – because they heard it so often – was ‘this just means you’re too old’.”

To ensure age discrimination doesn’t occur in the workplace, HR professionals must first identify whether employees have conscious, or unconscious, age-related assumptions, Irving says.

“Some people don’t think they have ageist attitudes, but if they looked at the way they judged a particular applicant or looked at their own policies, or their recruitment break up, perhaps they might see there are patterns emerging,” she says.

Educating and training managers to “rebut age-related negative assumptions and generalisations”, and having policies that encourage diversity and inclusion in the workforce, can also help, she adds.

Robert Walters recommends employers help managers and employees identify unconscious bias and factor this into their decision-making.

Source: hrdaily

Eighty-nine-year-old lands a job after claiming he was at risk of “dying from boredom”: Should your business do more to find older workers?

Employers have been encouraged to consider older job candidates, after an 89-year-old man in the UK who claimed he was “dying from boredom” successfully found a job.

The Guardian reports Joe Bartley, an elderly resident of Devon, England, posted a job advert in the local newspaper last month seeking 20 hours of work a week.

“Senior citizen 89 seeks employment in Paignton area. 20hrs+ per week. Still able to clean, light gardening, DIY and anything. I have references. Old soldier, airborne forces. Save me from dying of boredom!” Bartley wrote.

Read more: One in four older Australians experience age discrimination at work: Study

Just two days after The Guardian’s article, Bartley received two offers of part-time work and has accepted a hospitality role with a local family-run café.

The café’s owner Sarah Martin told the Guardian, “no matter what your age or your background, you deserve a chance”.

“A lot of people who come here don’t just come for coffee, they come for a chat, so Joe is perfect,” Martin told The Guardian.

“How often do you get an 89-year-old person approaching you and saying he wants to work? Usually, we have to go out and find people, and when we get them, sometimes they don’t even want to work.”

Bartley also received a job offer from a bakery in a nearby town, but reportedly turned it down, as he could not easily travel to the business.

Psychologist Eve Ash believes businesses everywhere should consider hiring older workers, saying many of them a “defying expectations”.

“We typically don’t associate working with older people, we typically associate them with sitting around and taking it easy,” Ash says.

“We need to see fewer age judgements. There’s a perception once you hit 70, it’s time on from then on.”

“A whole new workforce”

Ash believes a whole new workforce exists in people over the age of 70, with older workers having “a different type of determination and stamina”. Ash’s own father still works as a land surveyor at the age of 92, with no plans to retire until he hits 100.

Some concessions do need to be made when considering older workers, Ash says, as “40 hour, nine to five jobs” are generally not suitable.

“At any age over 70 there are certain things need to be tested, like driving skills. Older workers are also more suited to shorter weeks and irregular working hours,” Ash says.

“There’s a wide range of things older people could be doing, like customer service or minding things.”

“We need to remove these concepts of age [limiting] employability potential.”

Ash says more evidence is needed to see exactly what sort of jobs are suitable for older workers, but firmly believes they are more likely to “have the time and the care to do things”.

“We might discover they have amazing positive mood characteristics, and in the workplace, this is extremely important,” she says.

It was not reported how many hours Bartley would be working at the café, but on Sundays, he will catch a lift with his boss to work, while catching the bus the rest of the time.

“We think about these things all the time. We are never going to be rich, but we like to give something back, so when we saw the advert there was no question – the minute we saw it we knew we’d give him a job,” Martin told The Guardian.

Source: Startupsmart

Older Hazelwood worker to lose more of redundancy in tax, calls for change

Denis Clough sitting at his kitchen table

Photo: Denis Clough was shocked to find he would not qualify for a genuine redundancy payment. (ABC Gippsland: Nicole Asher)

A Hazelwood worker has labelled tax rules that stop him from qualifying for a genuine redundancy as unjust, and is calling for the rule to be reviewed.

Denis Clough, 66, will not qualify for what the Australian Tax Office (ATO) classifies as a genuine redundancy when the Hazelwood power station shuts its doors in March, because of his age.

Workers who receive a genuine redundancy do not pay tax on part of their termination payment, but payments to workers over the preservation age of 65 years — the age from which a person can access their superannuation — are called employment termination packages (ETP) and do not have the same tax benefits.

Mr Clough has worked in the industry all his life, and started work at Hazelwood 36 years ago.

Older Hazelwood workers get less

He described the moment a colleague pointed out he would pay about $80,000 of his nearly $330,000 pay-out in tax as “shocking”.

Mr Clough said although the smaller payout would not put his plans of being a self-funded retiree at risk, he was angry he was being treated differently because of his age.

“I would have retired in a couple of years and basically ended up with the same money I’ll get by going a couple of years earlier, but I would have preferred to go to work a few more years,” Mr Clough said.

“It’s really just the principle. It’s as if the ATO is being made redundant, not me.

“I’m one of the lucky ones that I could have retired anyway, but there’s people, I don’t know what they’re going to do for a job, how they’re going to pay their debts.

“My real complaint is I just think this is morally wrong, that what they’re doing taxing this as an employment termination package.

“I just would like some politician explain to me how he can morally justify it.”

Australians working longer and retiring later

Financial planner Ben Lancaster has backed Mr Clough’s call for change.

Mr Lancaster said with Australians working longer, it may be time to reconsider the age cut-off.

“It does seem unfair in terms of being over 65, all of a sudden the whole amounts to an ETP,” he said.

“The reasoning behind it would seem that it would assume that it’s not a bona fide redundancy because at 65 you might be retiring, but it does seem with Australians working longer it seems like a bit of outdated legislation.”

Mr Lancaster said there would be more over-65 redundancies as people continued to work later in life.

“The age pension age is lifting, so people will work past 65 to reach the age pension,” he said.

“It would seem logical that 65 seems a bit of an off age in today’s day and age.”

Source: ABC Gippsland

Our assumptions about old and young workers are wrong

Our Assumptions About Old and Young Workers Are Wrong

November 14, 2016

It is almost second nature to create stereotypes of people based on age. If someone is in their twenties then they must be technologically adept, obsessed with keeping fit, prepared to change jobs frequently whilst obviously searching for meaningful work. Those in their sixties and seventies must be less interested in work and are probably exhausted and anticipating the leisure time offered by a long retirement.

These are seductive and easy to understand behavioural labels. But are these assumptions either real or helpful? Might they obscure even more important similarities?

We believe this is a crucial question to ask right now as working lives – shaped by technological innovations and extended by growing longevity – are undergoing profound transformations. To understand how people are responding to this transformation in their working lives, we developed a survey completed by more than 10,000 people from across the world aged 24 to 80.

We found far fewer differences between the age groups than we might have imagined. In fact, many of the traits and desires commonly attributed to younger people are shared by the whole workforce. Why might this be the case?

One reason is that we are simply living longer. This means we’re also working longer, and working differently.

For our recent book The 100 Year Life we calculated how long people will work. Whilst we cannot be precise, it is clear that in order to finance retirement many people currently in their fifties will work into their seventies; whilst those in their twenties could well be working into their eighties. That means that inevitably people of very different ages are increasingly working together.

This long working life, coupled with profound technological changes, dismantles the traditional three-stage life of full-time education, full-time work, and full-time retirement. In its place is coming – for all employees regardless of their age – a multi-stage life that blends education, exploration, and learning, as well as corporate jobs, freelance gigs, and time spent out of the workforce. Inevitably the variety of these stages and their possible sequencing will result in both greater variety within age cohorts, whilst also providing opportunities for different ages to engage in similar activities. In other words, work activities will become increasingly “age agnostic” and these age stereotypes will look increasingly outdated.

Right now people of every age are becoming increasingly aware of the transformation of their working life. They are reinvesting in their skills, looking after their health and thinking about options, transitions and career switches that weren’t a reality for previous generations. Viewed in this light, there is less discontinuity between different ages – and instead a shared, and growing interest in the tools to cope with a longer working life in an age of profound technological disruption.

Our survey highlighted these commonalities. While there may be some selection bias — the 10,000 people who completed our survey online are already interested in the topic of life and work changes — their experiences and attitudes highlight how misleading simple age related stereotypes can be. Consider six fairly common age-based assumptions: the young invest most in new skills, they are most positive and excited about their work, and they work hardest to keep fit; the old are more exhausted, keen to slow down, and less likely to explore. The people in our study overturned these stereotypes.

It is not just the young who are investing in new skills. We asked people whether they felt their skills and knowledge had plateaued, and whether they had recently made an investment in their skills. After the age of 30 many people are concerned about plateauing skills. Indeed there is no difference between those in their 30s, 40s or 60s – almost two-thirds worried that their skills and knowledge were not keeping up with changing work demands. What is fascinating is how many people were countering this by actively investing in their skills. Certainly a higher proportion of those aged 18-30 (91%) and 31-45 (72%) felt they were investing in new skills but after the age of 45 almost 60% of all ages said they were actively investing. In other words, the majority of people keep maintaining skills and this does not significantly decline with age.

It is not just the young who are positive and excited by their work. This is a crucial attitude as working lives elongate. If indeed being positive and excited about work declines sharply with age, then long working lives will become a terrible burden for the older. What was striking was that whatever their age, those feeling positive about their work was a constant at just over 50%. Just as striking is the proportion of people of all ages who don’t feel positive about their work.

Older people are working harder to keep fit. We know that vitality is central to a long productive life and it is easy to imagine that it’s only the young who really care about their fitness. Yet we discovered that it is the older who are working hardest to try to keep fit. About half of those under 45 actively try to keep fit, rising continuously across the ages with a peak of 71% for those aged over 70.

Older people are not more exhausted. One of the reasons corporations often prefer the young to the old is the assumption that with age comes exhaustion at work and therefore a lowering of productivity. We found no evidence of this age related exhaustion. In fact, more people under the age of 45 (43%) said they were exhausted than those over 45 (35%) – the least exhausted are those over 60.

Older people don’t want to slow down. The stereotype is that as people age they want to slow down and are looking forward to retiring. We found this not to be the case. More than half of those aged 46 to 60 want to slow down, whilst only 39% of the people over 60 and less than 20% of the people over 70 say they want to slow down.

Exploring is not just for the young. When you think about “gap years” you probably think about 20-year-olds taking time out after full-time education. But why assume that it is only the young who want to take time out to explore and learn more about themselves and their world? Crucially, we found no significant age difference in people’s excitement about exploring their options.

The six assumptions we have explored here are probably just aspects of a much bigger tapestry of assumptions about the young and old that are spurious, wrong, even damaging. We use the word damaging with care. When corporations believe that older workers invest less in their knowledge, are less excited by their work and exploring their world, and are on a path to physical decline and exhaustion, they make the wrong decisions about whom to select, promote and develop, and whom to retire.

There are undoubtedly some differences across the age groups that are important in the workplace. However, the over-simplicity of age and generational labels decreases our understanding of individuality; it masks the commonality of the task we are all facing as we strive to achieve a productive and enriching longer working career; and is in deep conflict with the imperative to develop age-agnostic working practices.

As every one of us is faced with living and working longer it is absolutely crucial that, whatever our age, we face up to and question unfounded assumptions and stereotypes about ourselves and about others. Only then can we create workplaces where people are accepted for themselves.

Lynda Gratton is Professor of Management Practice at the London Business School where she teaches an elective on the Future of Work and directs an executive program on Human Resource Strategy. Lynda is a fellow of the World Economic Forum, is ranked by Business Thinkers in the top 15 in the world, and was named the best teacher at London Business School in 2015. Her most recent book is The 100 Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, co-authored with Andrew Scott.

Andrew Scott is Professor of Economics at London Business School and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University and the Centre for Economic Policy Research. He has served as an advisor on macroeconomics to a range of governments and central banks and was Non-Executive Director on the UK’s Financial Services Authority. He is the co-author, with Linda Scott, of The 100-Year Life: Living and working in an age of longevity.

People over 40 should only work 3 days a week, experts claim

People Over 40 Should Only Work 3 Days A Week, Experts Claim

Written by Sara James

If you are over 40 and thinking that your ability to focus and remember facts is deteriorating, your work could actually be to blame.

Recent research by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research found that, whilst working up to 30 hours a week is good for cognitive function in the over 40s, any more than that causes performance to deteriorate.

In fact, those who worked 55 hours a week or more showed worse cognitive impairment than those who were retired or unemployed and didn’t work at all.

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The study looked at 3500 women and 3000 men aged 40 and over, and made them complete cognitive function tests whilst their performance at work was monitored.

Their ability to read words aloud, recite lists of numbers and match letters and numbers in speed trials was monitored throughout the test, known as the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (Hilda). The author of the test, Professor Colin McKenzie, said that both ‘thinking’ and ‘knowing’ were important indicators. Reading tests is the ‘knowing’ part of ability, whilst ‘thinking’ captures memory, abstract and executive reasoning.

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Whilst some intellectual stimulation is thought to be good to retain cognitive function in later life, with brain puzzles such as Sudoku and crosswords credited with sustaining brain power in older people, excessive stimulation works the other way.

Professor McKenzie told The Times that many countries are aiming to raise the retirement age, forcing people to work for longer as they will be unable to claim benefits until later. He believes that the degree of work may have an important bearing on this.

The degree of intellectual stimulation may depend on working hours. Work can be a double edged sword, in that it can stimulate brain activity, but at the same time working long hours can cause fatigue and stress, which potentially damage cognitive functions.

He believes that part time work may be beneficial in retaining brain function in middle aged and older people. Should those who can afford to do so reduce their hours, then? And is the type of work you do a factor?

You would think that a job you love which is less stressful would be less damaging on your stress and fatigue levels. The Hilda survey doesn’t look at the type of work and how that affects results, so this is something to bear in mind.

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Professor McKenzie reasons, “It’s very difficult to identify the causal effects of the type of work on cognitive functions. People may be selected into certain occupations according to their cognitive abilities.” Certainly, high stress factor jobs with long hours in competitive, demanding fields will play havoc with a person’s health in general.

As most people have to go on working after 40, or even return to work after a break to have a family or for other personal reasons, taking care of your health, maximizing your down time and taking restful holidays becomes more important. Professor McKenzie says that, “Working full time – over 40 hours a week – is still better than no work in terms of maintaining cognitive function, but it is not maximizing the potential effects of work.”

A balance seems to be needed, then, especially as the government are planning to bring in full time work requirements until that age of 67.

What do you think? Do you feel that a reduction in hours would be beneficial?