Midlife does not have to be a crisis for careers
As people live longer, postponing retirement is a more popular option
Jane Lockwood had a minor epiphany in 2018. She realised that her age — 54 — had dented her professional self-belief. “I tend to be less confident about going for promotions,” she says. “I’ve limited myself [and] thought that the promotions are for the young guys. I’ve always thought about getting my staff up the ladder but lost that aspiration for myself.”
The operations manager’s revelation came during a midlife review organised by her employer, UK insurer Aviva. It was part of a pilot scheme for 100 over-45 employees, covering three areas: career, wellbeing and finances. After the high take-up, the company will this year make the review available to all staff over 45.
Similar programmes alongside initiatives such as coaching, secondments and sabbaticals may help workers take stock and plan. Increased longevity and pension shortfalls mean that many will be working longer and retiring later. Midlife workers may feel squeezed between juggling work and caring for children and parents.
Initiatives targeting workers in their 40s and 50s may help to energise those who feel undervalued in a culture that places a premium on younger, cheaper workers. This attitude was memorably summed up by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that “young people are just smarter”.
For companies, the benefit is retaining key skills and expertise. Aviva, for example, will monitor attrition rates among the over-45s when the programme is launched.
Jonathan Rauch, author of The Happiness Curve: Why Life
Gets Better After Midlife, says that traditionally this has been a neglected period. After the Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques coined the expression “midlife crisis” in 1965 it became something of a joke. Yet Rauch argues that this period is a time that wellbeing slumps and anxiety peaks, so that those in midlife need support.
This is a hard case to argue, since older people may well have won in the housing market and experienced stable employment — unlike millennial colleagues. Rauch says: “The assumption is that in our 40s we are at the peak of our game. People are assumed to be mentally strong, we still have physical health. It wouldn’t be easy to say to an employer this is a difficult time.”
What is more, he says, those in their mid-40s have a misconception that their career is meant to peak and “after that it is going to be a decline. There is a pressure that, after 50, if you haven’t mastered anything you never will. That exacerbates the downward spiral.”
Alistair McQueen, Aviva’s head of savings and retirement, agrees. “There’s an unwritten rule that over 50 there is a flatlining to your career. We realised that we need to support these people, [we] need to keep them in employment.”
Aviva was one of four large employers, alongside Mercer, Legal & General and the Pensions Advisory Service, to test a midlife review in the UK. Such initiatives were one of the recommendations in the Cridland review of the state pension, published in 2017. Before that, the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education piloted a midlife review from 2013 to 2015 with employed and unemployed over-50s. It helped boost participants’ confidence, identify future training needs and plan for career development. The UK government is expected to make an announcement on midlife policy next month.
Yet no midlife initiative will help employees if they feel discriminated against because of age. In the US, a survey by campaign group AARP found that 61% of over-45s had seen or experienced age discrimination at work.
The UK-based Centre for Ageing Better researched age discrimination in the workplace in 2018 and found that many over-50s have been put off applying for jobs, thinking they were for younger workers. Almost a third feel they were turned down for jobs because of their age. About 24% feel they cannot talk to their managers about career plans and a fifth think retirement plans are off limits too. Almost a third say they have had fewer training and career-progression opportunities than in the past.
Aviva says its midlife programme does not breach age-discrimination rules that require all are treated fairly — it would not turn away a younger employee.
Patrick Thomson, senior programme manager at the Centre for Ageing Better, says the idea that older workers are “blocking” the top jobs is a myth, alongside the lump of labour fallacy. “It isn’t job blocking unless you have sectors where there is a fixed headcount.”
Because of discrimination laws, “people feel awkward about talking about age”, says Anne Wilmot, Age at Work director at Business in the Community. “A midlife review is a good vehicle for talking about employees’ future plans.”
There is a lot that employers should do to adjust attitudes on age, says Rauch. “Stop seeing older workers as less productive. They make workers around them more productive as they help them navigate social problems.” Thomson believes that midlife engagement improves staff wellbeing, but it is not taken up by employers as it’s difficult to make the business case for it. This might fade if you compare it with the costs of advertising, training, and on-board staff.
“Having an edge over competitors is [important] as well.” McQueen says that Aviva learnt quickly that messaging was crucial. “We prepared press releases that targeted older workers and were told quickly that no one wants to be thought of as old. We don’t use ‘older’. We don’t use ‘retirement’. This is an antiretirement programme. This is not about putting people out of the workforce but keeping them in.”
Jonathan Collie, co-founder of the Age of No Retirement, a social enterprise, says that a mid-career review is too late. Managers need to be better at performance reviews, helping people of all ages plan the next few years of their careers. “It’s trying to fix a problem we should be tackling earlier.”
For Lockwood, the sessions were a welcome boost to her career planning. She describes the midlife programme as an “awakening” for ambition. She has since spoken to her boss about a possible secondment.
Colleague Karen Ward agrees. Even at a financial services company, the programme reminded
employees that they might need to extend their working lives to bolster retirement savings. In her case, the process confirmed her aspiration to work for many years to come — and to look into new roles. “The culture is changing,” she says. “It’s OK to work longer.” Concept of threestage life is outdated
Midlife is a chance to reappraise career goals, says Andrew Scott, the co-author of The 100-year Life. He argues that as people live longer the concept of a three-stage life — education, work, retirement — is outdated, replaced by a multistage life in which education and skills are threaded throughout careers.
Rauch says: “It needs to become socially expected. If someone right now says they need to go back to school in their 50s it seems strange. It shouldn’t feel strange.”