Opinion: 'Age is your company's problem'

What age is old? Two hundred years ago, 60 would have been very old. Today? "Someone who is 60 years old today I would argue is middle-aged," says Sergei Scherbov of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna.

Mr Scherbov, deputy director of the institute's World Population Program, says we need a new approach to deciding when someone is old. Compared with their forefathers, people aged 65 are, today, generally healthier and more capable. They also have more of their lives ahead of them. The longer we live, the less quickly we age.

For societies, particularly those with ageing populations, longer lives raise two related worries: first, that families and the state will have to support those aged 60 and over for far longer and, second, that there will not be enough young people to do the supporting.

This has consequences for companies. While state retirement ages are creeping up, many companies regard employees in their early 60s as ready to go. Some employees may be happy with that. They could, like Norman Shaw, spend their time on hobbies such as ham radio, stained glass, gardening - and creating ExactTrak, a memory stick that self-destructs if it ends up in the wrong hands.

As the Financial Times reported last week, Mr Shaw's company has signed a contract with AMD, the US semiconductor giant, to incorporate ExactTrak in its chips - a potentially huge deal. Mr Shaw is 62.

Companies could take the view that there are not many 60-something tech innovators (or innovators of any sort), and that those few are too expensive. They worked for a long time and benefited from successive salary increases when inflation was higher.

Economically inactive seniors may be a problem for society, but companies may say that problem is not for them to solve. This is not sustainable. The decline in the number of young people means those retiring workers are going to be hard to replace. And those leaving in their 60s, who still have anything from 10 to 25 active years ahead of them, are taking their experience and knowledge into their long retirements.

Just as societies have been slow to adjust to a world in which 60 is middle-aged, so have employers. They need to think about how to manage their people's far longer careers. Women ready to return to the workforce full-time in their 50s could be an asset. So could staff in their 60s and 70s.

Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecoms magnate, last year offered older employees a chance to stay, but work three days a week. He was showing the way ahead.

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