How the over-65s are shaking up the office

Trends

How the over‑65s are shaking up the office

Reading time:  5 Minutes

With the age of retirement steadily rising and millions planning to work into their later years, businesses need to adapt the office to reap the benefits of a more mature workforce, says James Bidwell of trend forecaster Springwise

Charles Darwin was 50 when he published On the Origin of Species in 1859. KFC founder Colonel Sanders was 65 when he used his first ever Social Security payment to open a fried chicken franchise in 1952. And Peter Roget was 73 when he produced the thesaurus that would make him famous.

If you’re cheered by the above, you’re not alone. It’s appealing to consider that we might have fulfilling careers into later life. And, for many of us, it’s our future. According to Pew Research, not only are more people aged 65-plus working now than at any time since the early 20th century, but more of them are working full time.

Around the globe, workers are pushing their retirement back. Almost 19 per cent of Americans of 65 or more worked at least part time in 2017, according to the US Jobs Report. A third of workers in Japan expect to work past 70. And, in the UK, the number of over-65s in work has almost doubled over the past 10 years, and is close to tripling over the next two decades.

Clearly, businesses will want to be prepared for this older workforce to ensure maximum productivity while offering the right levels of support and integration. So what should companies do to stay ahead of the curve?

More flexible working options

Without a doubt, the companies that most successfully utilise the experiences and skills of older workers will demonstrate one essential trait: flexibility. This includes providing options such as working from hub/satellite offices or flexible workspaces, working in virtual teams, using mobile devices and sharing office space.

For years, CVS Caremark in the USA offered a ‘snowbird’ programme, in which several hundred pharmacists and other employees from northern states would be transferred each winter to warmer climates. That initiative has since morphed into a set of broader arrangements, including telecommuting, job sharing and compressed workweeks.

Also in the USA, not-for-profit Mitre Corp has introduced phased retirement that allows older workers to transition slowly between work and retirement, while enjoying some of the benefits of both. It has also developed an on-call reserve programme to allow retirees to provide short-term project support on complex and highly specialised projects, and to mentor younger employees.

A psychological shift

When looking at ways to boost productivity among an older workforce, companies will turn to psychology. According to research by economist Mark Zandi, the ageing of the US workforce may correlate with decreased national productivity. Zandi examined government statistics and concluded that productivity was lowest where the workforce was the oldest, possibly because companies do less overall training or don’t update software and equipment because they think their older workers won’t be able to use them. All of this points to a need for innovation in training and re-education.

Some companies are already all on it. One is insurance company The Hartford, which encouraged its younger, more tech-savvy staff to share knowledge with senior staff through reverse mentoring. Younger staff had the opportunity to work closely with the company’s leaders, while older staff benefited from expert tuition in new media strategies. Mentors and mentees both reported that this helped them conduct business more productively.

How the over‑65s are shaking up the office

Businesses are embracing reverse mentoring as a way to engage older workers 

 

The use of technology and tools

The effective deployment of technology can also help to integrate and support older workers. Take the problem of background noise, particularly in an open-plan office. Sound Curtain by Future Acoustic uses a microphone and speaker set-up to transform distracting noise into more benign outputs based on orchestral music or natural sounds that aid concentration. Going one step further is Rain Curtain, an office partition that creates a physical wall of water, bringing calming sounds into the open-plan office.

Augmented reality (AR) can help older workers stay up to date. German tech company ioxp has produced an AR system that allows the creation of flexible, cognitive training manuals and handbooks that learn as they teach. The manuals place step-by-step instructions directly into the field of vision, delivering illustrations and animated annotations that guide the user through each step in a work process by showing the right procedures in a semi-transparent overlay. 

There are also emerging solutions to the challenges of prolonged daily computer use. Ai Squared, in Vermont, has developed software for people with macular degeneration. It transforms display colours to make them more legible, and people who have trouble with black type on a white background might see their email and web pages form in different colours that are easier to read.

The physical office will be transformed

Adapting the physical office space will be an important step in accommodating older workers. While general trends in office design show a shift towards open-plan and collaborative environments, a study by Davenport shows a preference among older workers for closed offices – particularly when undertaking solo work involving concentration tasks.

Architecture firm NBBJ helps employees find the optimum work environment. Its proprietary sensory system Goldilocks collects data on heat, light and noise via sensors around an office. Workers can use a smartphone app to choose from elements such as warm/cool, bright/shady, buzzy/quiet to find the part of the workspace that best fits their needs.

And work will no longer need to revolve around computer screens. Research shows that older workers benefit from alternatives to screen-based work for creating, processing and storing information. British startup Joto is building new ways to display digital content, with a connected whiteboard that uses a marker pen to draw in real time any image, message or sketch sent from any home or office around the world.

Office lighting will also require adaptation, as the eyes of those over 60 take in only a third as much light as those of a 20-year-old. The HealWell system, developed by Philips Lighting, uses dynamic LED lights to mimic natural daylight patterns. Light levels gradually increase to replicate the soft glow of a morning sunrise to the bright light of mid-mornings, and then steadily decrease in the evening.

It is clear that many older workers want, and indeed need, to work past what is often considered to be retirement age. At the same time, companies are reluctant to see their institutional knowledge walk out of the door when an employee turns 65. Through a wide range of work practice innovations, many of us will be able to continue working productively well into our golden years.

 


James Bidwell is the CEO of trend forecaster Springwise and author of new book, Disrupt! 100 Lessons in Business Innovation (Nicholas Brealey, 2017). Powered by a network of more than 20,000 springspotters in 190+ countries, Springwise shares the latest trends and innovation ideas from across the globe