Thoughts on what Bain and Company’s latest data says about age and elderly coworkers — with a quick cameo by Margot Robbie
This essay was originally published on my old Substack and moved here later. Some links may no longer work, and some references (to subscribers, past issues, or things happening at the time) may not make full sense out of their original context. I’ve left the writing as it was.
Hello friends,
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the weekly newsletter. Before we jump in, I want to pre-invite you to comment your thoughts when you’re done reading. I am just beginning my Substack journey and any feedback you can give me would be greatly appreciated. I would also like to tempt you to subscribe and get each newsletter directly to your inbox. I think you’ll enjoy today’s subject and I assure you there is even more satisfying writing in the works. Either way, thank you for reading and I hope to keep seeing you around.
Sincerely,
Bradley Andrews
“You know, there are a lot of experienced workers in this industry. They’ve been around a long time. Sometimes they can get a bit cranky — especially if you’re trying to convince them to do things differently. How would you handle that? How do you maneuver these things?”
By experienced, my interviewer was implying elderly. By cranky, he was implying, well… cranky. This question can sound a bit ageist, but I want to reassure you that the interviewer was intentionally baiting a hook. He wasn’t betraying a secretly held prejudice against older people. He was trying to see if my answer would betray a secretly held prejudice against older people. This is because my interviewer really does work alongside an above average number of retirement-age individuals; and according to a new study released by Bain & Company, they’re coming for your workplace too. So the question remains:
How are you going to handle that?
The article from Bain & Company predicts that a combination of longer lives, employment gaps, rising retirement ages, and other factors will bring over 150 million older workers into the workplace by 2030. Their research not only dives into some of the primary motivations for being in the employed space, but lays out some data for how employers can better understand and best transition this unique demographic into companies. I am especially intrigued by their assertion that the companies which integrate aged workers into their organization are proven to experience higher levels of productivity and decreased turnover.
This publication wasn’t the only piece to prod my thinking around the topic of growing old. I also stumbled across these articles from the Atlantic, which engage thoughtfully with the tropes and realities of aging. I confess, however, that the first nudge on this topic came from conversations about the mega-popular Barbie film. There simply hasn’t been enough content around this movie and I am appalled that no one is sufficiently engaging with it on an intellectual level.
Humor aside, please allow me to touch on the Barbie movie very briefly before moving on to some meditations about age and what it means to share work-life with older folk.
There was one moment in Barbie that stood out to me as particularly lovely. It felt imbued with the cinematic magic I have come to expect from director Greta Gerwig. It was the scene where the titular character sits next to an elderly female at a bus stop (or at least a car stop). It’s implied that this is the first time Barbie has ever seen someone that was physically un-youthful, but it is also the first positive encounter Barbie has had since entering the real world. The two meet each other’s gaze which then inspires Barbie to whisper, “You’re beautiful.” The woman responds with a smile and says, “I know it.”
This interaction between glitzy Barbie and the visibly aged woman was poignant to me for two reasons. The first reason was the simple power in acknowledging that youth does not have the monopoly on beauty. The second reason, and more personally emotive, was the reminder that the future — specifically old age — is a shared destination for human beings. Barbie’s perpetual youthfulness is embedded in her status as an icon, but it is also a prison that keeps her arrested and has prevented her from being truly touched with the feelings of human experience. The fact that this interaction was taking place at a bus stop and that Barbie notably does not get on the bus was perfect. It wouldn’t have made sense for them to journey together. They had to go separate ways because Barbie isn’t headed in the same direction as this woman. That path is one that only another human could traverse.
Translating this back into the workplace, it’s a pertinent reminder that old people are not other people. Old people are us. Elderly is a destination that we all share, provided that we get the chance to live a while. This means that Bain and Company’s research is not just an issue of optimizing workplaces for your parents or grandparents, but about creating hospitable futures for our elderly selves, our friends’ elderly selves, or even our children’s elderly selves. Talking about older people as though they are a different breed is a convenient fiction to excuse us from the passage of time. It’s a racket we deploy to distract from the reality that we are, day after day, becoming old.
, in her book What Can A Body Do? makes a similar observation from the perspective of disabilities. She points out that at least 15% of the human population is classified as “disabled.” That’s over one billion human beings; and a vast portion of these disabled individuals are elderly. This means that disability, like age, is not just a minority issue — it’s a collective fact of life.
Furthermore, the basis of Hendren’s book is that the perceived disadvantage of many disabled populations is not always caused by the disability itself, but caused by an artificial mismatch between a certain community’s needs and the design of their environment. Some “handicaps” are only “handicaps” because the built world was forged in a way that excludes people who don’t fit into traditional categories of embodiment. Hendren traces this through recent history and exquisitely demonstrates how designers and architects can create societies of greater thriving when they build environments free of unnecessary obstacles. The overwhelming result is not just that marginalized or disabled communities flourish, but even those within traditionally recognized categories flourish too.
With this in mind, I want to point out how often older people suffer under the burden of unsubstantiated stigmas. Many of the faux paus attributed to them are not inherent artifacts of age, but the byproduct of a world that is increasingly hostile to anything that is not speedy, youthful, or ambitious. Consider the most classic act of altruism. Since I was an infant, the archetypal demonstration of heroism has been helping an old lady cross the street. While this is a good thing to do, I think this story subtly primed me to see older people as objects of rescue rather than regard; as slow impersonal units incapable of keeping up with the modern pace of technique. Sure, their advice might be pragmatically useful sometimes, but it is only allowed to be seen as such when we ask for it.
Truth be told, physically working alongside older people is the fastest and surest way to disabuse yourself of most, if not all, your prejudices. I will be the first one to admit the way that many of my aged coworkers outmaneuver me when it comes to raw industriousness, intelligence, or competence. However, history shows us that false stigmas and erroneous stereotypes can still diminish the fullness of what a stigmatized individual is able to bring into the world. This is especially true when these stigmas are codified systemically. This is a problem because workplaces that serve as hospitable destinations require us to respect the elderly as equals in the realm of ideas.
Bain and Co’s solution is to implement training programs which catch them up to speed. I endorse this, but only to a point. What if an aged individual is unwilling or incapable of adapting? Can they still contribute relevant ideas without being on the cutting edge of their industry’s strategies? I would argue, yes. In fact, the presence of these types of individuals is eminently desirable. To explain my argument, I am going to cut and paste some lines from C.S. Lewis’ inimitable prologue called On the Reading of Old Books:
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions…
To reiterate, we should avoid all forms of discrimination and not fall into the erroneous assumption that old people are incapable of changing with the times. But I also love Lewis’ observation that the presence of old viewpoints can be a wonderful bulwark against the seductive power of contemporary trends. If you read the above paragraph and substitute the word book for people, then you will immediately feel my excitement. But we aren’t done yet! Lewis continues:
The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.
While many of us may not actually notice the influx of retirement-age people coming into the workplace, it’s important that we cultivate an awareness about the dynamics of our environment — whom they inadvertently invite versus who they dis-include. Without this awareness, we run the risk of missing those voices which may be necessary for the challenge waiting around the next corner. Are our workplaces authentic oases for equity and diversity? Can the values of speed and efficiency really achieve eternal and indefinite scale for our companies? What does it mean to build a future that is hospitable for people who aren’t there yet? Is it possible to form a society bound in networks of living concern rather than fueled by markets of pure competition? These are questions that I don’t have answers for, but my instinct is that the solutions can only emerge from the interplay between manifold individuals who encompass the full spectrum of age, gender, life, and humanity. Individuals who are superficially different, but ultimately share a similar destination.
So if Bain and Company is saying that the old people are coming, I say prepare a space and invite them in. Perhaps we will find that their impressiveness is not just their ability to become young, but their ability to make something in us grow up.
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