Ageing Population Presents Unique Opportunity for Employers

Working life has for generations tread a very traditional path: education, career, retirement, gold watch. A sixty-odd year linear stretch from school-leaver to retiree and the finish line it represents. 

Nowadays, it’s less a hard stop and more of a transition, one brought about by the simple fact that people are now living longer. Quite a bit longer, too; across Europe, one in five people are now aged 65 or older, while in Northern Ireland, on average people today can generally expect to live well into their 80s. 

For employers, such a societal shift becomes a question of workplace planning so that recruitment and retention policies are reflective of a working world where people are available and indeed willing to work well past retirement age. 

Employers need not view older workers as having one foot in retirement, either, their value becoming vanishingly small, when the reality is that these individuals carry with them the kind of sage wisdom that only time can create – years of lived experience that are practically unrivalled. 

What we need is an age-inclusive approach to talent management so that workplace composition is adapted for a Northern Ireland trending towards a much older population. And we needed it yesterday; according to NISRA data, the number of people aged 65 and above here is projected to overtake the number of children by 2027. Not some far-off future date or in a generation’s time. 

What, then, can employers do to be fully prepared not just for next year, but for the next decade and more? How best can organisations tap into this unique talent pool of experienced professionals who still have vast amounts of value and leadership to offer in the latter part of their career?
Very often what we hear at Timely Careers is how women who have perhaps gone full throttle at their careers, now want to dial down and spend time either with grandchildren or caring for elderly family members – itself another outworking of the dependency ratio brought about by an ageing population.

At this age bracket, flexible, non-traditional working arrangements and reduced days are particularly attractive with the added upshot for employers being that seasoned skills and labour are retained when there’s still a palpable shortage of both. Indeed ensuring that skills transfer through mentorship or pairing older employees with their younger peers helps embed multi-generational expertise into a company’s culture. 

Which is why organisations like Timely Careers can be a critical cog in the future working landscape. Every day, we enable women of all generations to return to work through flexible employment that ensures they not only retain their own sense of purpose, but actively contribute to the workplace and wider economy for however long they’d like.  

For both employers and employees, the path towards retirement is now perhaps a little longer, and certainly non-linear. Rather than extending careers for the sake of it, this presents an opportunity to create multi-generational teams ready to thrive within a labour market forever reshaped by longer lifespans.