‘Championing age’: how business can win back older workers

Eco­nom­ic inac­tiv­i­ty in the over-50s took an upturn dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, revers­ing the down­ward trend of the pre­vi­ous 10 years.

Accord­ing to the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics (ONS), the num­ber of peo­ple aged 50 to 70 years who moved from eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty to inac­tiv­i­ty between the sec­ond and third quar­ters of 2021 was 87,000 high­er than in the same peri­od in 2019. That is con­tribut­ing to the more than 1 mil­lion drop in the size of the work­force and why unem­ploy­ment is at a low of below 4% while job vacan­cies are at near record lev­els.

Some 75% of these old­er work­ers who left employ­ment did so of their own accord, cit­ing vary­ing rea­sons such as feel­ing under­val­ued, seek­ing ear­ly retire­ment or sim­ply not want­i­ng to work any­more. But there is a need for their return.

Ear­li­er this week, John Lewis CEO Dame Sharon White linked the exo­dus of over-50s from the work­force to ris­ing infla­tion, claim­ing that the com­pe­ti­tion for tal­ent to replace them had pushed up wages. 

Speak­ing on the BBC’s Today pro­gramme, she added: “There’s not a busi­ness in the UK that’s not find­ing it very dif­fi­cult to recruit at the moment because there are so many more jobs and far few­er peo­ple look­ing for work. It’s a big issue.”

As a result, White called on the gov­ern­ment to “real­ly think much more about how to encour­age more peo­ple back into work”.

Can over-50s plug the recruitment gap?

Fig­ures from the ONS also reveal that two-fifths (39%) of those aged over 50 who left the work­force dur­ing the pan­dem­ic would con­sid­er return­ing to paid work in the future. 

With the UK labour mar­ket remain­ing extreme­ly tight – the num­ber of unem­ployed peo­ple per vacan­cy is at a record low of 1.0 – there is a need to expand the work­force. Entic­ing back those who have left is seen as a way to bridge the gap.

Yvonne Smyth, group head of equi­ty, diver­si­ty and inclu­sion at recruit­ment firm Hays, says: “Organ­i­sa­tions are def­i­nite­ly more aware of old­er work­ers being an untapped and poten­tial­ly over­looked tal­ent pool.”

How­ev­er, she advis­es that many busi­ness­es will need to adapt their work­place poli­cies in order to entice the over-50s, in par­tic­u­lar, back. “It’s very unlike­ly that you will be able to tempt some­one who has retired back to work five days a week in an office, for exam­ple,” she says. “Employ­ers need to be offer­ing and adver­tis­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty at the point of hire – and this includes part-time work­ing.”

Trav­el and insur­ance firm Saga has had par­tic­u­lar suc­cess in this area and man­aged to avoid the exo­dus of old­er tal­ent from its work­force that many oth­er busi­ness­es wit­nessed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Its chief peo­ple offi­cer Jane Storm attrib­ut­es this to the organisation’s focus on being a “cham­pi­on of age in the work­place”. To demon­strate this, Saga has held lis­ten­ing groups, intro­duced age train­ing, and improved flex­i­bil­i­ty. It has also intro­duced new poli­cies catered specif­i­cal­ly to this group, includ­ing its grand­par­ents leave pol­i­cy, which gives staff one week of paid leave when a grand­child is born.

Storm says: “The UK is fac­ing one of the biggest head­winds in our his­to­ry, with low unem­ploy­ment and a short­age of work­ers. Attract­ing and retain­ing this work­force is crit­i­cal. There is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all organ­i­sa­tions to step for­ward and edu­cate their col­leagues on gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences and extend their diver­si­ty and inclu­sion strate­gies to focus on age, espe­cial­ly where it inter­sects with oth­er pro­tect­ed char­ac­ter­is­tics.”

How to encourage older people back to the workplace

Vic­to­ria Tom­lin­son is chief exec­u­tive of Next-Up, an organ­i­sa­tion that helps employ­ees pre-retire­ment. She believes the over-50s are gen­er­al­ly over­looked by busi­ness­es and agrees that offer­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty is key.

“Employ­ers have to take up the onus. Every­one is so focused on mil­len­ni­als that they’ve tak­en their eye off the ball with what’s hap­pen­ing with the old­er gen­er­a­tion,” she says. “What they need to do is make work flex­i­ble, to give peo­ple pur­pose and to invest in their skills in exact­ly the same way busi­ness­es do when peo­ple start their careers.”

With the cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis weigh­ing heav­i­ly on people’s minds, many retirees could be per­suad­ed back into employ­ment in order to pick up addi­tion­al income. But it is not the only perk the over-50s are look­ing for from an employ­er.

A sur­vey byre­cruit­ment com­pa­ny Robert Wal­ters shows that flex­i­ble hours, citied by 55%, train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties (34%) and bonus schemes (30%) are the most pop­u­lar perks among this demo­graph­ic.

Tom­lin­son says that while some for­mer retirees are just seek­ing an extra bit of mon­ey, “they need pur­pose and to feel val­ued as much as any­one. A lot of peo­ple strug­gle with socia­ble loss when they retire; they like to still feel part of some­thing”.

Ageism is also an issue pre­vent­ing old­er gen­er­a­tions from return­ing to work. The Con­fed­er­a­tion of British Indus­try found that only 24% of HR lead­ers between the ages of 25 and 30 say they felt moti­vat­ed to recruit work­ers in the 55 to 75 age brack­et.

David Bernard, founder and CEO of behav­iour­al assess­ment firm Assess­First says: “The impli­ca­tions of ageist hir­ing prac­tices are mul­ti-faceted, but their effects have undoubt­ed­ly been felt by many job­seek­ers with­in old­er age groups. Biased hir­ing prac­tices are exac­er­bat­ing the labour short­age and caus­ing busi­ness­es to miss out on a huge por­tion of tal­ent­ed work­ers capa­ble of real­ly mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.”

He advis­es com­pa­nies that are look­ing to be more inclu­sive to eval­u­ate the effi­ca­cy of their recruit­ment prac­tices and to focus on an individual’s skills and qual­i­ties when hir­ing, rather than any oth­er fac­tors which are irrel­e­vant to the job.

He adds: “If an organ­i­sa­tion has built teams pre­dom­i­nant­ly com­pris­ing younger indi­vid­u­als, they should con­sid­er ask­ing them­selves whether they have – con­scious­ly or sub­con­scious­ly – avoid­ed hir­ing those with­in old­er age groups — and why.”

Although the recent­ly retired may seem appear to plug a hole dur­ing cur­rent recruit­ment chal­lenges, it is clear com­pa­nies have work to do to to tempt them back. And these changes need to be for the long term, kick­start­ing a change in the way busi­ness sees the val­ue of old­er work­ers.