This is how to get midlifers back to work...

The column I wrote in the Telegraph today, but without the paywall for you lovely Queenagers

Hey Queenagers, I wrote this in the Telegraph today and I’ve been asked for a non-paywalled version so here you go… Els

Telegraph column – How to Get the over 50s back to work.. Eleanor Mills 4.10.2022

Over fifty? Don’t have a job? It’s time to get off the sofa and back into harness. No more mooching about in the garden or sliding off for a midweek siesta.  The post-pandemic Big Lie Down (the retirees version of what millennials call The Great Resignation) has gone on long enough. According to Victoria Prentice Work and Pensions Minister at the Tory conference this week, the 360,000 50-64 year olds who have left work and will not come back are “a big worry area. We need their skills, we need their experience and with the tightness of the labour market we desperately need them back at work.” Get the gist? Your country needs YOU! Forget chopping back the wisteria. Cancel that post school-hols mini break. Dust off that CV and get thee to a recruiter!

Of course, it is not as simple as that. The majority of midlifers who left work during the pandemic are not just sitting at home twiddling their thumbs and scrolling through Netflix. Some have taken early retirement, sure, but the data shows many are off sick themselves or looking after an unwell family member. It’s all very well for Prentice to say “that just because people have family responsibilities such as looking after children or elderly parents it doesn’t mean we can’t work and it doesn’t mean we can’t work full time”. Well that might be true if employers were understanding about caring responsibilities or allowed older workers flex time; but the reality is most don’t. And worse it’s not even on their agenda! We hear a lot about diversity and inclusion but the reality is that age is the protected characteristic most firms forget. Our culture’s obsession with youth means hardly any companies have an ageing workforce strategy which values the institutional memory older employees have and plans the later years of their careers by for instance letting them work more flexibly. Instead they get whacked, made redundant, let go. As one of my Noon community put it at a dinner last week: “I put everything into my job for 25 years, I put it above my kids, my family, my health. My reward? I got sacked for a younger employee. Not so much as a farewell dinner. After all that loyalty I was just a number on a spreadsheet.” The other queenagers round the table nodded. Many had had spectacularly successful careers but all had either been made redundant, pushed out, or left their places of employment, not because they particularly wanted to, but because the world of work no longer had any use for them.

 Many leave bruised and bemused but after licking their wounds for a while start a new chapter; 60% of retired midlifers own their houses outright and are debt free. An Aviva survey earlier this year found two thirds of early retirees are much happier not working. As a fifty-something mate put it to me the other day, “I have a fraction of the money to spend that I used to, but I have my time and my freedom and that is priceless.” He works a bit as a consultant and is on the board of a charity. He spends time with his wife and grandchildren and goes out on his bike a lot. He is happy.

So how can companies lure skilled workers like him back? Well the first thing they could do is change their recruiting algorithms. Speak to any older job hunter and you hear the same story; endless online applications and they can’t even get an interview. Lisa Unwin who runs a specialist recruitment company which gets professionals back into their old careers after long breaks says many of her successful candidates had already been rejected online. Often applications from oldies go into the void; it’s humiliating and dispiriting and puts even those who might want to go back off.

Rather than blaming midlifers, companies and employers need to examine their own – and our society’s – ageist attitudes. Less than one per cent of heads of creative at advertising agencies are over 50, older people appear in less than 12% of adverts (although they control 47% of spending). When we do appear it is as grey hair talking about incontinence or life insurance; in the culture we are not reflected as the vibrant, engaged citizens and workers that we are. Ageism is everywhere: when I told two younger guys the other day that at fifty I had set up my own digital media company they said: “How amazing that someone of your age can do that!” Why? Everyone is digital post-pandemic. Even 80-year-olds use Zoom. Older workers can be just as digitally savvy as anyone else. We just need a chance and a new script about what we are capable of.

Companies also need to start thinking about what older workers want. Earlier this year my organisation noon.org.uk, with the consultants Accenture, conducted the largest survey yet of ABC1 women aged 45-60. We found a massive disconnect between what women wanted and what they got. They wanted to feel valued, have agency, create impact and control where and when they worked. Indeed these aspects were 16 times more important to them than straight “Kudos” – the big office, the fancy title. Yet that is still how senior staff are rewarded.

What businesses need to understand if they are to lure midlifers back is that for many of us, it is not just about the money. We want to be treated as grown ups, we want autonomy, we want to do interesting work and be allowed to get on with it in our own time. We are sick and tired of office politics, sucking up to idiot bosses and being pleasing. We want purpose, flexibility, to make an impact and build a legacy – and we want to do that while also having time to look after our families. Many of us don’t have to work – if you want us back, try a bit of tenderness!

It’s just banter…

In a super glam interview with Harper’s Bazaar magazine actor Cate Blanchett says, “I have been spoken to in ways that now I could probably go to HR and complain about but those conversations that were had with me early on in my career made me a better actor.”

Really Cate? I’m not so sure that the tough talk that was so much a part of the world we entered as young women was so good for us, even if we accepted it at the time.

The other day I bumped into an old friend at a party. At university he was always called “Bob” – now he uses his Indian name. We started to talk about why he’d been called “Bob” then. He explained that the boys at his Public School couldn’t pronounce his real name so called him “Bob” instead. And it stuck. He said that at the time he hadn’t really minded. Being “Bob” had made him one of the gang. He’d accepted it as banter.

I told him my own school story. I went to Westminster in the Sixth Form. I was one of 80 girls in a school of 800 boys. I have an ample chest. My nickname was, “Jugs” The boys would say: “Hello Leftie, Hello Rightie – oh, Hello Eleanor!” Always, several times a day.

When I tell that story now people are shocked but back in the “bantering” eighties and nineties just like “Bob”, I sucked it up. I almost thought it was funny. (I’m not the only one, a woman who is now the CEO of a FTSE 100 company had the nickname “Triff” – short for “Terrific Tits”.)  

Back then it was “just banter”. Being renamed “Jugs” was the price of being in with the lads, or belonging to the in group. It was the same, really, in my early days in newspapers. Not being “miss-ish” or taking offence at rampant sexism and other horrors was the price of entry into that macho culture. It was just “bantz” - it was a tough world. If you wanted to get on – and many of us did - you sucked it up. Otherwise you’d be out.

For our generation – Blanchett is 53, I am 51 – anyone who wasn’t a posh white man had to prove they belonged. We were told we had equality. We didn’t. What equality meant then was: you are in the room right? What more do you want? Shut up and be grateful. Fit in. Take the “Bantz”, have a sense of humour, fit in with the dominant crowd even when the very name they call you is a racist or sexist insult.

At that party the other day, “Bob” and I started talking about the banter.  In 2022 we can see the racism and sexism clearly. It hurts. It was not alright. But back then if we wanted to get on, we couldn’t complain. Putting up with it was the price of entry. We didn’t have the power to call it out.

Often “banter” is the term used to describe speech we know is wrong or unfair or cruel. That discriminates against a minority group, which ‘others’ or puts people down. That’s why I am not okay with banter. It’s a veil for verbal bullying. Call it out.  

Eleanor Mills is the Founder of noon.org.uk a platform for women in midlife

I love my electric car. I have a Nissan Leaf. It glides and purrs. It is so silent I can hear every note of every song. I love the way that it makes me aware of how much energy I am consuming and has stopped me driving like a boy racer. But – and it is a massive but – the glory of the electric car experience is severely tarnished by the horrific, unjoined-up nature of the electric car-charging network. This weekend I took my daughter back to University. My car has a range of 160 miles – London to Oxford and back is just beyond that.

I needed to stop to charge for about 10 minutes, maybe 20 so I could get home. We got on to the M40 feeling relaxed. The first services just outside Oxford is a friend. It has good coffee and a nice garden. We’re usually there for 30 minutes or so, I read a book or do my emails. Ha. Not on Sunday. There were three cars already plugged in and three waiting. Two of the electric chargers were broken.

 No worries, we thought, we’ll drive on to the next one, only 20 miles up the road. Here the situation was even worse. BOTH of the Gridserve chargers were out of order. There was a man in a van trying to fix one and several other irate customers. By this point we were down to only about 15 miles range. We were faced either with a very long wait (the machine needed to be fixed and there were two cars which would need to charge for 30 mins at least before we were allowed a go). Or we could set off across country to a small village which Google maps said had a charger. It’s been wrong before…

 We set off. We got to said charger. It said it was broken. By this time a journey which should have taken an hour was on about hour three. And I wanted to cry with anxiety and frustration. Luckily at the second attempt the charger worked. We had a coffee and ate chocolate and purred home.

But why is this wonderful planet-saving zero-emission green technology being let down by useless infrastructure and planning? And how dare the government encourage people to by electric vehicles when the charging network is so spectacularly useless? Tory conference – please sort it out!!!