Sally’s ona mission She wants us to be
Proud of our ages and society to accept that
IN MANY ways 60-year-old Sally Evans’s personal life reflects her public career goals.
She is proud of her age, and proves it with the enthusiasm she expresses on gaining her Seniors Card.
At this stage of her life she is thoughtfully examining her own future lifestyle and, in doing so, is coming up with ideas that can benefit all seniors.
In particular, this dedicated businesswoman has focused her energy in the area of keeping seniors in the workplace and she is taking on this huge issue in the same way she created her impressive resume.
Across a 30-year career Sally has worked in the private, government and social enterprise sectors. She has management experience in aged care, health and investment management sectors, inclusive of holding executive positions with Opal Aged Care, BlueCross Aged Care, FTSE Compass Ground and AMP Capital.
Sally’s work excellence has seen her awarded the Telstra Business Award divisional winner 2002 and gain inclusion in the Australian Financial Review and Westpac 100 Women of Influence (2013 corporate division). Indeed, Sally is the type of person who sees a problem and finds a solution.
In her encore career she has identified obstacles impeding the employment of seniors. Her goal now is to support the seismic shift of consciousness that is needed to terminate ageism and discrimination against the older employee.
To end this ingrained prejudice, Sally has identified issues that must change, including decoupling the perceived link between seniority and pay, losing intergenerational stereotypes and seniors being willing to accept diversity in high performing teams.
Sally also wants people to wear their age with pride.
“When I hear others say they are not prepared to tell other people what their age is for fear of not being given an opportunity or for those biases that seem to exist about people of particular ages; when I heard that, I made the decision that I was going to do the opposite,” Sally says. “I was absolutely going to come out and talk about it. If we don’t talk about it, then we are just making the problem worse.”
She said opening up these barriers would help older Australians to continue to be “economic
‘‘ WHEN I HEAR OTHERS SAY THEY ARE NOT PREPARED TO TELL OTHER PEOPLE WHAT THEIR AGE IS FOR FEAR OF NOT BEING GIVEN AN OPPORTUNITY ... WHEN I HEARD THAT, I MADE THE DECISION THAT I WAS GOING TO DO THE OPPOSITE.
participants” well past their 60s and even their 70s.
“I want more people to be really proactive in talking about the benefits of what they bring,” Sally says.
Sally also shares her passion for encouraging mature age workers to stay engaged with the workplace, and for employers to get on board with the opportunities these workers present, in various sectors including human resource management and, her particular passion, aged care.
“Employers are missing two really important points,” Sally says of the broader work issues.
“If they don’t proactively address this age diversity in the workplace they are going to have enormous workforce constraints in the future, which is in their interests to solve, because if we don’t collectively and individually improve older workforce participation, our overall labour participation rates will fall and that will put pressure on wages and inflation.”
She was cautious about the Federal Budget announcements around aged care.
“We need to increase the workforce and retain people in that workplace. Because it can be a physically demanding role there is an expectation that at a certain age a worker will no longer be able to do a job.
“I am particularly interested in how we deal with those physical and mental health issues associated with the job, so we can have really healthy workplaces and older people working in those places.
“If we are really good at doing that for our employees, there’s a chance we might be really good at doing that for our residents.”