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Age Against the Machine

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Age Against the Machine

New Rules for Working in an Ageist World

De Gruyter,

15 min read
7 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Get practical advice for finding meaningful work after age 50 and leveraging your company’s under-valued older talent.

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Ageism is rampant in the workforce, but performance data shows that older workers often offer a better ROI than their younger colleagues. In this engaging read, psychologists Lucy Standing and Maggi Evans and management expert Martin Hyde dismantle the myths around aging and work, showing how experience, emotional intelligence, and adaptability make older workers one of the most undervalued assets in business today. They offer practical tools and real-world examples for anyone navigating career change after 50 and for employers who can no longer afford to discount the older talent pool.

Summary

Older workers are undervalued assets that companies can ill-afford to ignore.

The idea of a predetermined retirement age is a relatively new social concept. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, British trade unions pushed for mandatory retirement primarily to protect younger workers’ wages, not to benefit older employees. In the United States, many employers began forcing people to retire at a certain age to avoid paying higher wages to experienced workers. When governments later extended pensions to people over age 65 or 70, few workers lived long enough to collect them. Today, with people living longer — and fewer young workers available to pay into retirement systems — it’s time to rethink the role of older workers. Rather than expecting everyone to move through rigid, age-bound stages of life — education, career, and retirement — companies and societies alike need to find ways to help people to continue learning, growing, and earning throughout their adult lives.

A 2023 study from the OECD and the nonprofit Generation found that half of the hiring managers surveyed “might not” or “definitely would not” employ people over age 55 — a clear bias against older workers...

About the Authors

Psychologist Lucy Standing spent a decade as vice chair of the Association for Business Psychology before founding the midlife career-coaching organization Brave Starts CIC. Occupational psychologist and executive coach Maggi Evans is the author of an award-winning book on talent liberation. Martin Hyde is a professor of management at the University of Leicester and the president-elect of the British Society of Gerontology.

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