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This article is the first of a 3-part series.
Longevity and shifting gender roles have dramatically redrawn the face of workforces across the world. Now the workplace needs adapting, especially in how it defines careers. The Covid crisis and its rapid-fire explosion of how and where we all work has dramatically accelerated the shift towards tech-enabled flexibility. But flexibility isn’t just about hot-desking and work-from-home (WFH). It’s also about the very definition of what the shape of a successful career looks like over decades.
The metaphors will need to broaden from the rather masculine heroism of alpine peaks (a la Second Mountain, a book about late careers by David Brooks) to the rather longer view of the multiple rises and falls of a pregnant leader’s stomach bulge (think Jacinda Ardern) – and the ensuing multi-stakeholder demands of a long and generative life. Good transitionist skills will become a key part of the marathon a modern manager’s career is becoming.
As the map of our lives morphs by its stretch towards 100 years, the map of our working lives urgently needs a rethink. The still-dominant workplace model of linear, up-or-out, 24/7 career trajectories with standard steps at prescribed ages and stages was designed by (and for) men with wives at home who didn’t work. That marriage model became a minority model some time ago, but the career track it defined still dominates in many organisations – and eliminates an ever-increasing proportion of highly valuable (and often female) talent.
A decade or so ago, companies may have thought it wasn’t worth fundamentally adapting career models and partnership tracks that had proved themselves over decades, just for a minority of women. But yesterday’s minorities are fast becoming today’s majorities. Women are increasingly the majority of many companies’ younger workforces, reflecting their educational advantage. They are now the majority (51.5%) of managers and professionals in the US. And this is happening at exactly the same time that a lot of Boomer men are beginning to think that retiring at 65, when you may live to 80 or 90, leaves a little too much time for golf. Who would have thought that the solution to flexible working might come from the very same workaholic men who inhabited the old model with such devotion?
The graph below shows an aggregate profile of what some of our client companies’ management populations looks like, by age and gender.
Representation of an average client company's management workforce
The new reality of our workplaces for the foreseeable future? A lot of senior, older men, and a lot more high-potential young women. Getting the best out of both and getting them to work together well is the challenge ahead. It’s also a huge opportunity. Research shows that both gender balance and generational balance contribute to team performance.
Preparing For The Age of No Retirement
The over-50s are the fastest growing group of workers in the UK – rising by about 300,000 every year. Twenty years ago, this age-group represented a fifth of workers, now it’s closing in on a third. In the US, the over-65 group of people working has doubled to 20% since 1985, and soars to 53% of the college educated. The likely default in reorganising work post-Covid is to let older, expensive employees go to ‘make room’ for younger, cheaper fare. This trend is already clear in the data, where unemployment has often hit our eldest and our youngest hardest. But instead, there is an opportunity to add both a gender and generational lens to rethinking and redesigning work and career trajectories. And to help individuals manage fast-changing and confusing realities.
Fastest growing labor force segments are the 65+
“Many people would value help around clearer rules of thumb and interventions to help them navigate mid and later life,” says a report from insurer AVIVA calling for more management of mid-life employees to extend their working lives (Case Study in Part 3 of this series). People weren’t saving enough for retirement before COVID, had little interest in discussions about pension pots, and half of people in the UK admit to having retirement dreams they know they won’t be able to afford. People are starting new careers and new companies in later life, with workers over 65 having the fastest growing labor force participation, even heading to coding bootcamps in droves.
Are Companies Responding?
In Part 2, we’ll look at how companies are responding (or not) to the shifting demographic and talent realities and opportunities of a workplace made up of five generations and entirely new gender ratios. In Part 3, a case study of how one company is proactively managing longevity by planning for it from mid-life.
Part 2: Building Back A Workforce With Generational Balance
Part 3: You Car Gets An Annual Check-Up, What About Your Life?
