How to thrive in work as we live longer

The current model of how people work is, quite simply, not working. Our latest Think Ahead podcast explores how rising life expectancy is reshaping careers, organisations and society, and what it means for leaders today.

Sergei Guriev, Professor of Economics and Dean at London Business School was joined by Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice at London Business School, and Andy Briggs, Group CEO of Phoenix Group, the UK's largest long-term savings and retirement business, for a lively conversation titled “Living the 100-Year Life: Leading and Thriving in an Age of Longevity”.

Lynda's upcoming book, Living the 100-Year Life, will be released in September 2026. This comes a decade after she and Professor of Economics Andrew Scott co-wrote The 100-Year Life, a best-seller around the world, where they looked at -- from a psychologist and an economist's point of view -- what happens when everyone lives to 100. It spurred conversations and opportunities for both Lynda and Andrew to advise governments, companies, and indeed talk to individuals about a subject which hadn't been much addressed beforehand.

"And so what I've been doing since then is to think more deeply about how could we live a great life when we know we're going to live longer," said Lynda.

As life spans grow, and populations live into their mid-80s or 90s, Andy is fighting to champion older workers. His job at Phoenix is to "help people secure a life of possibilities," he said, adding that the challenges in the UK, and throughout many developed nations, is that the pension system was designed 80 years ago for a life expectancy of retirement of about 10 years.

Given the current situation of retiring in a worker's 60s, only one in seven will have a decent standard of living in retirement, he explains.

This number gets even worse in 10-20 years' time. Calling it a "huge societal issue", Andy wants to help the 90% of the UK population who aren’t prepared as they journey to and through retirement.

Heavy lifting

If you look at manual work, in some countries, even in some advanced economies, that accounts for 30%-40% of the population. With an ageing population, unless people work for longer, the tax burden is just going to keep going up and up, explained Andy.

A third of working-age people in the UK are aged over 50, but people don't embrace them as potential workers.

But what we need is a step change in focus on reskilling and transferable skills. For example, Jaguar Land Rover in a lot of their cars hand-stitch the leather seats, but the company found that they had a workforce that was starting to struggle more with arthritis as they aged. Instead of asking them to retire, they retrained many of them as trainers of the next generation of leather hand seat sewers, said Andy.

Similarly, BT has addressed the same issue with their engineers as they age. As customers find a phone or connectivity problem, often with current technology, it’s something that can be handled via a phone or video call.

So they've retrained a group of engineers to be telephony-based, video call-based in order to respond and help and support customers, explained Andy.

"Good work is good for you," he said, adding "it's better for your physical and mental health.

The multi-stage life

So how can you reskill workers in areas that might not have quite the same demands as manual work?

Lynda’s advises that we need to rethink the current three-stage life which currently looks like this: full-time education, full-time work, and then full-time retirement. This traditional model needs to be shifted into what she calls a “multi-stage life”, where education comes through in stages, and the retirement also goes back in stages.

Lynda and Andy both agree that unemployment can have a negative impact on one’s well-being. “When people are unemployed, lose their jobs, they lose much more happiness than would have been predicted by the loss of income,” said Andy. “People want to be engaged and involved in society, in the economy, and losing agency and purpose hurts their own perceived well-being.”

Lynda advises we need to acquire new skills but also “write our own life,” she says. “It's a life where you take time out, you spend time with your kids when it's important, you go on adventures, but you also work, you might start your own business. You might work as a freelancer. When you're building a multi-stage life, you're actually making it yourself, and there's a lot more transitions.”

One thing that she and Andy have both found is that by the age of 50, lots of people just didn't have the skills to carry on working. Lynda suggests asking oneself what actions should I take now, but also what promises should I make to my future self?

Age diversity should be valued

Andy agrees and says that businesses, organisations, and employers have a critical role to play in this as well. Age diversity helps companies better represent customers and communities, and we make better decisions from a broader range of perspectives.

“If you are age diverse in your workforce, then you will perform better. You'll better represent customers and communities in which you operate and work,” he says.

Losing the over-50s, says Andy – the least likely to come back into the workplace— means the company is “losing a massive amount of talent.”

The UK government has outlined eight key sectors as part of its industrial strategy, critical to boosting economic growth. Every year, those sectors are losing nearly half a million over 50s coming out of the workforce, costing the economy £31 billion per annum, said Andy.

Lynda says governments can make decisions right now to encourage companies to recruit people over the age of 50. Organisations need to really help their workers go through what she calls “squiggly careers” and work with them as they navigate different paths in life.

These type of changes will benefit everyone and will be great for the individuals, business performance, and great for the broader economy, agreed the panellists.

As life expectancy rises and careers lengthen, sustaining energy and purpose throughout our long careers is not just recommended, it is essential.