With lifespans increasing, why are productive experienced employees forced to retire at a particular age?

This question has always puzzled me. The closer that I get to retirement myself, the more absurd that a fixed retirement age becomes.

From an Employers point of view, there are possibly two reasons why this is great practice. The first relates to the fact that certain employees are “on autopilot” awaiting their retirement. This is especially prevalent in the public sector where most civil servants are already computing the number of years to retirement whilst still in their forties. Clearly this is indicative of a soul destroying working environment where lack of initiative counts for more than excellent work performance.

Even in the private sector, certain people are afflicted with this attitude long before retirement but that percentage is significantly less as this is less prevalent.

Possibly a more intractable problem is the salary cost aspect. Being at the end of their careers, these employees are by virtue of their long service, the most expensive employees on the payroll. In spite of years of experience, the cost differential between them and less experienced employees is in many instances is so huge that the differential often cannot be justified.

Apart from these obvious impediments to extending the retirement age, there are numerous benefits chiefly being the unaffordability of having people sitting at home for half their lives.

The reason why this issue has raised its head again is due to the fact that the Australian government has taken the audacious step of increasing the Mandatory Retirement Age to 70 years of age, the highest level by a wide margin apart from in the Third World where the elderly work until they die or alternatively starve to death.

Before the twentieth century, like the Third World today, for the vast majority of the population there was no such concept as retirement. With no savings and no pensions system in place, people literally worked until they dropped dead. With the average lifespans up until the twentieth century being of the order of fifty years, retirement was never a consideration. The breadwinner was more likely to die prior to the last of their dozen children reaching their majority, whilst an early death of their father resulted in penury and an early introduction into the workforce of their offspring.

It was the Germans under Kaiser Wilhelm which first instituted the concept of a pension. The first consideration was to ensure that the State did not have to fund the Pension for a lengthy period of time. In order to obviate this need, the pensionable age was set as 63 based on the premise that the average German lifespan was then 65 years of age. The resultant cost to the Exchequer would never be huge as it would amount on average to two years earnings.

Other countries were quick to embrace this as a social policy. In the First World, this meagre expenditure by the State rapidly ballooned as living standards improved and with it the life expectancy.

By the 1960’s the ability of First World governments to fund the ever increasing expense became problematic. The rational solution would merely have been to gently increase the retirement age to reflect the new demographic trend. In Europe this solution was overturned on numerous occasions especially in France where the Unions were intractably opposed to it.

Faced with bankruptcy within the next decade or two, this solution will unwillingly be forced upon most First World Countries albeit if they have to take their people along shouting and screaming at the same time.

The reality is that one cannot fund 35 years of retirement based on a maximum of 40 years of work. The sums simply do not add up.

The reason for many employees anxiously awaiting retirement is not so much the prospect of year long beach holidays, but rather sheer boredom. The human being is rather peculiar in that it is basic need to grow and to be stimulated. Imagine the case of a highly skilled person such as a GP – the ubiquitous General Practitioner. By age 60, they have probably diagnosed 100, 000 cases of colds & flu. Here we have the situation where a highly trained professional is being bored stiff by not being mentally challenged.

At age 40, I was faced with a similar conundrum: what was I going to do with the next 20 years of my working life. The prospect of doing 12 Financial Month-ends per annum, one financial year end and one tax return did not fill me with great joy. Indeed, it was singularly depressing. Perhaps that is the time when people have their mid-life crisis as they question the basis of their assumptions about life and even more profoundly, its meaning.

This quandary has puzzled me for the past 20 years. The only solution is something which will appeal and suit the human psyche and that is to have two careers, much like I have been fortunate enough to pursue.

I envision this operating as follows. One’s initial career will span the period of one’s mid-twenties until one’s mid-fifties. The driving force of this career will be to establish oneself mentally but more importantly financially. Money will be the ultimate arbiter of what one does. This consideration will apply until one has raised one’s children and set them free in the world.

If one is lucky, one might have been able to satisfy the greater human yearnings and desire and that is to obtain meaning from life. Most jobs in the cut-throat corporate environment do not allow for this ephemeral desire. Instead it is overridden by the necessity of survival not in a primal sense, but rather a psychological sense. Most corporate jobs represent a figurative drought as they never assuage the soul. Feelings and emotions – perhaps one’s very soul – is estranged by the work requirements.

That is a reality which will remain unchanged in the future.

But what one can do to address this deep human desire to achieve some deep-rooted meaning in one’s life is to adopt a second career after the monetary pressures have subsided.

This will require a mind-shift as the primary goal will be deep resonant type of job satisfaction; that is a job with personal meaning. No longer will the pecuniary considerations drive one’s career choice other than it should be sufficient to adequately cover one’s modest financial needs.

This decision will be an intensely personal one based upon what motivates one. It will not necessarily be earth-shattering but rather something that will involve “creativity” in its broadest sense or the uplifting humankind in whatever manner possible.

In our innermost being, humans are creative creatures. It is merely the need for volume and speed which subsumes that need during a normal career. Creativity is an extremely broad concept and could merely be the design and building of one’s own house like Clive Cameron has just done. He might have cursed at the Builders on numerous occasions, but one could feel the sheer joy and pleasure as his creation gained form. Likewise it could be the setting up of a specialised furniture manufacturing facility which is able to manufacture bespoke designs.

Many friends have expressed the desire to play the piano or to take up painting or learn a black language.

Why not do all three?

It would be extremely difficult as a 60 year old, to attempt to study for an alternative profession such as being a doctor unless one’s spouse supported one but it is not impossible. Perhaps when life expectancy reaches 100 years, this possibility will be forced upon society.

In principle I wholeheartedly endorse the move to higher retirement ages both from a cost and a psychological point of view.

However without a clearly defined strategy of the older employees’ career path, this will surely rebound back on Employers and Society itself as a whole new cohort of disaffected dissolute employees will be created.

Forced to exist in a barren creative environment for a further dozen years will not be the solution: only a new and inspiring second career will do that.

Maybe some are lucky to be inspired in their current jobs for a further ten years, but most will not be.