Unretiring on 3AW 693 AM Radio Melbourne with Jacqui Felgate
Topic: Unretiring
Date: 25 September 2023
Media Outlet: 3AW 693AM Melbourne https://www.3aw.com.au
Broadcaster / Interviewer: Jacqui Felgate
Producer: Bianca Johnston
Duration: 00:06:37
Time of show: 14:07
Audio Recording: 6MB
YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lgDRfXi9OA
Topics Discussed:
✔ unretiring and not leaving work
✔ older workers and younger workers
✔ retirement age and pension age
✔ training budgets for older and younger workers
✔ supports available for business to hire older workers
✔ attitudes to having a job across generations
Transcript:
Now there is a growing trend and I wonder if you’ve heard it or you’ve done it have you unretired 133693 exactly what is it but I guess from my point of view I’m wondering have you ever started a new career later in life and how did it work out for you 133693 Sue Ellson is a career expert Sue good afternoon to you
Hi Jackie how’s it going
Good. So what is UN retiring mean is it exactly what the name suggests?
Yes basically either people go back to the workplace or they decide they’re not going to leave it
Okay so then what do you think for people when they get to a certain age I guess and they decide to go back in the workforce what is it suggesting does it work out for them does it not why do they do it?
Well I think it falls down to a lot of different reasons for different people the interesting statistic from the Australian Bureau of Statistics about the average age of retirement is actually 56.3 in Australia and I don’t know about you but I’ve always thought retiring was for over 65s uh the pension won’t come in until you’re 67 so there’s either a lot of people self- funded up until that age or they must still be working at some level but the other thing that I’ve noticed is a lot of people find well they clean the oven they sort out the photos update their garage whatever go on a holiday and then what I mean life get what else do you do with your time
I’d love Sue just to clean out my garage
See it’s been on my list for a long too
Do you think people need fulfillment and when they’re not working they don’t feel as fulfilled?
I think we get a lot of our social interaction and engagement from work back in the day you might have had a much more regimented regime with family and friends and weekly activities that you would do but as we get older some of those things sort of fall by the wayside and a lot of our social needs and we’re all social animals do get met at work but also the intellectual challenge and the variety and back to your point about changing careers.
I was listening to a podcast recently and it was actually saying that if you’re in a job and it doesn’t provide a continuous challenge you’ll actually get sick of it and move on so the same kind of thing is going to apply as why you would leave a job uh so yeah there there’s lots of different reasons and there’s plenty of opportunity out there the Job Mobility rate in Australia is also the highest that’s been in the decade so it’s 9 a half percent at the moment uh but if you get to the over 65 category it’s only 2.1% so those people don’t actually change jobs very often but if you imagine those younger people changing jobs all the time um a lot of employers are grateful for somebody older coming back into the place workplace because they know they’re not going to leave in five minutes
I once had an old boss tell me he loved employing mothers because they worked harder to get their stuff done you know they were really efficient with their time they needed to get back to their kids and he thought that they were very productive but another thing that interests me Sue is this younger generation and I I’d love to know from our listeners too that they don’t so much you know we were always bought up that you were lucky to have a job and you worked very hard and you should be grateful for the opportunity but nowadays younger people feel like well you’re lucky to have me in many ways and there’s you see it on Tik Tok all the time and on social media that they might do a job for a little while and they put strict parameters around what they’ll accept in the workplace in terms of how many hours they’ll work um what their deal breakers are to accepting a job have you noticed that as well?
Oh definitely there’s lots of that microlearning that happens on social media and those messages are put out in very seductive ways and of course people spend so many hours per day on the social media devices naturally they’re going to hear about it but I think there’s another discrepancy here in that employers will spend money on training a younger person how to do a job but they won’t spend a similar budget on training an older person and there’s a really big shortfall in that area because if you imagine if an older person didn’t have some technology skills then they could easily get those with a little bit of training and I often use the expression you can teach an old dog new tricks just one trick at a time.
The other component of that is uh an older person will have learned the theory behind how to do something so let’s say they’re a carpenter they’ve got to cut a hole measure twice cut once and yet the young person will say yeah I’ve seen that on a video I’ll do it and then they’ve done it wrong and then they’ve got to get go back to the shop and buy another piece of wood and so on and so forth so if you think about yes a young person could do something quicker but they don’t have that wisdom and experience so in terms of employers being able to get these people back in I think they’re really good people the only thing that the younger workers have worked out is this concept of flexibility and they’re really good at that
I’m fascinated by this Sue
Yes and I think I would love to see employers offering more flexible opportunities for older workers because there’s a friend of mine who is a car mechanic and he’s nearly 60 and he can’t find a younger worker to work for him and I said why don’t you just get two old blokes to come back in two days a week and you you’ll get the job done
Mmm I think I’d love to know from our listeners 133693 do you employ younger workers I actually um have two younger women who work for me I’ve never seen two women work harder in I I adore them I love young women I love their work ethic but you do hear about younger people wanting you know they want their 2 or 3 days working from home they want the flexibility to choose how they work when they work and employers now that push to get them back to the office well they’re just not having it are they they’ll go find another job where they can work from home Sue
It is a deal breaker in most situations now but if you have the right systems in place and a level of trust it can absolutely work whether that person is younger or older and back to your point before about a mother being organized I remember before I had children I thought I was efficient but after you realize what’s important and what’s urgent right so urgent the baby’s screaming it’s got a dirty nappy you got to do it uh dusting could probably wait so you know it’s the same kind of philosophy in the workplace and having a mixed age group in my view is the best of both worlds and having an environment that suits all ages and there’s actually a number of government incentives and programs to help small businesses fund older people coming back into the workplace as well there’s little tests that they can do to make sure they’re age friendly so there’s there’s lots of ways to make all of this work
Sue Ellson is a career expert Sue lovely to chat thanks for talking to me this afternoon
Thanks Jacqui
Further information:
Jacqui Felgate Twitter / X
https://twitter.com/Jacquifelgate
3AW 693 News Talk Afternoons
https://www.3aw.com.au/show/afternoons
Podcast Recording of the Show – starts at 01:15:10 – 01:21:44
https://omny.fm/shows/3aw-afternoons/3aw-afternoons-with-jacqui-felgate-25th-september
Australian Bureau of Statistics Job Mobility
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/jobs/job-mobility/latest-release
Australian Bureau of Statistics Retirement and Retirement Intentions
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/employment-and-unemployment/retirement-and-retirement-intentions-australia/latest-release
Benefits of Mature Age Workers Hub
https://www.dewr.gov.au/mature-age-hub
With so many of us choosing to “unretire” there’s a huge opportunity for Australian business
https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/with-so-many-of-us-choosing-to-unretire-theres-a-huge-opportunity-for-australian-business
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