Equalities Act

The Equalities Act comes into force today. It's designed to draw together all the anti-discrimination laws with a view to simplifying and standardising the law and making them all easier to understand, that's the theory.

The Act continues to allow employers to have a default retirement age of 65 until April 2011 and then it will be phased out by October 2011. This means that employers really need to gear up their performance management processes and think long and hard about supporting older workers in making life:work decisions in their older years. This will be particularly important for organisations with an older age profile as it could help them with workforce planning.

The reality is most people will make decisions on when their pension is available, if they are lucky to have one. This may mean many will want to keep some form of work until annuity rates improve.

Another interesting aspect of the Equalities Act which could help older workers is that it is now unlawful to face invasive questioning about health and disability before a job offer stage in recruitment (unless intrinsically necessary for the role), IE effectively the end of the pre-employment health questionnaires.

Also, in terms of the provision of goods and services, the new Act protects consumers from age discrimination by making it unlawful to offer less favourable treatment on grounds of age without justification. Lots of exceptions too.

There's some pretty straight forward information summarising this all from the ACAS website

Bridging the World

The growing 50+ market is huge and still hugely under served. It is therefore interesting to note that STA, the Student Travel Agency, has recognised this is a potentially lucrative market segment and has launched a new travel agency called Bridge The World (see www.bridgetheworld.com). The spokesmen state that these are the people who are likely to have the time to travel because they are fully or partially retired. Another critical factor to their success has to be the fact that the 50+ are also more likely to have the money to enjoy long haul travel as the initial focus is on Australia, New Zealand, Asia and South Pacific.

It will be interesting to see how this business progresses. An initial observation is that the travel insurance only covers individuals up to the age of 70, which seems quite young and limiting. The other key aspect is what impact concerns about the environment will have on potential customers.

At least it is an example of a Business finally taking the older market more seriously.

Good news for Grey Hair

In the book called "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (page 63) he states, and I quote:
" I was amused to discover an evolutionary argument in mate selection that considers that women prefer (on balance) to mate with healthy older men over healthy younger ones, everything else being equal, as the former provide some evidence of better genes. Gray hair signals an enhanced ability to survive- conditional on having reached the gray hair stage, a man is likely to be more resistant to the vagaries of life. Curiously life insurers in renaissance Italy reached the same conclusion by charging the same insurance for a man in his twenties as they did for a man in his fifties...once a man crossed the forty five year old mark, he had shown very few ailments could harm him".

Maybe this could present a new marketing opportunity for manufacturers of grey hair dyes to expand their market to younger men!

Climate Change and Older People

A new piece of research has been published today by the Stockholm Environment Institute entitled "Older People and Climate Change- the Case for Better Engagement". As part of the report it categorises older people into the 3 Cs, Contributors, Campaigners and Casualities of climate change.

I haven't gone into the research in great detail but the report states that the baby boomer generations, as the first real consumer generation, have the highest carbon footprint. The current oldest generation have lower carbon footprint and when they die off (literally) they will be replaced by what the report calls the " replacement effect" ie the highest carbon footprint contributors will move into the oldest age.

While I can see that this would be a problem and a cause for concern the thing that struck me most about the report was the fact that the "culprits" had been segmented based on their age. My question is that surely it is chosen (or enforced) lifestyle that determines the carbon footprint? All age groups can be divided into the 3 Cs and that the approach taken is too simplistic and too general. The key aspect is to target and change behaviour of those whose life styles do the most damage to the environment, whatever their age.

I do believe that engagement is a key component of change, as the report suggests, and that effective social marketing is required to change behaviours but this requires a more sophisticated segmentation approach. I don't think the focus on age will prove effective in triggering the change required.

If we are going to categorise this by age then key factors often associated with getting older people engaged involve finding meaning, leaving a meaningful legacy and involvement with younger generations. A positive approach could be to engender inter-generational perspective and pressure. Younger people are very effective in teaching their grandparents, for example, how to use new technologies, maybe they can help with the environment too?

Olderpreneurs

23% of people starting a business are over the age of 55 and the term "olderpreneur" has been coined to describe them. Many are being forced into this option due to redundancy however there are some positive benefits of this key life change, not least the liberation of being able to make your own decisions.Luke Johnson, Chairman of the Royal College of Arts said last year that "Sustainable self employment can offer financial and social fulfilment. Not only can working for yourself bring material rewards, it is a great way to meet people and stay in touch with people from all generations- as customers, partners, suppliers or perhaps staff".

The case for older people continuing work in some form or other is also backed up by PRIME's Chief Executive Laurie South who states that "research shows that cross-generational companies seem to do better".

Working is not just about generating income but about social connectedness with other generations. Maybe if more and more people of us have to continue working as we get older we will have the added benefit of lower levels of social isolation and better inter-generational understanding.

End to legalised age discrimination

Today the Government announces that it will be scrapping the default retirement age of 65 from October 2011. This effectively means it ends from April 2011 due to the required 6 month notification process. This is a great step towards ensuring that employers manage the performance of all their workforce effectively and will provide the business benefits of helping them to retain relevant experience, skills and the talent needed in their organisations. It also means that the employee has a real choice in deciding what is best for them based on their individual circumstances.

In reality, most people will continue to think about retirement in terms of when their pension becomes available, if they are lucky enough to have one,so there won't be a lot of change.

The key thing is that this announcement will start to help us rethink how we plan for our older lives and help us to see that as we get older we can still have a very valid contribution to make to the younger generations,society and the economy.

Thank you for taking carers seriously

"Thank you for taking carers seriously" is how HRH Princess Anne ended her speech at the 5th International Care Conference held in Leeds in July 2010. 22 countries were represented at the conference and Princess Anne saw the conference as a real "boost" for carers. She was preceded by the Rt Hon Andrew Lansley talking about care reform with an emphasis on Prevention, Protection, Partnership and Personalisation. He stated that the new Government's vision for the future of adult care is to be announced in the Autumn.

However, the real visionaries, providing hope for the future,came from inspirational speakers representing the conference sponsor Intel with a video from Eric Dishman and in-the-flesh anthropologist Simon Roberts. While both represented this large commercial company which is investing heaviliy in research and development to gain long term benefits from this massively profitable market, what was striking was that, as individuals, they seemed genuinely (refreshingly) passionate and committed to changing the face of care.The key to this seemed to be a big emphasis on understanding, and not forgetting, that technology was there to help,support and enhance the lives of individuals recognising all their foibles, imperfections and what makes us human.

Simon talked about the "magic of ethnography" and the thousands of hours of videos that were used to discuss with engineers who looked painstakingly for patterns of behaviours and ideas so that they could test and then iteratively improve products.He talked about creating products that people "could fondle" and wanted. He talked about being able to "reimagine" solutions and the need to build tools that connect and drive a "careforce".

Princess Anne had recognised earlier that "no-one expects to be a carer" (and everyone hopes they will not need care)but the positive outcome of commercial companies like Intel getting involved in this area is that in the future if, and when, we do become carers or indeed need care, we are less likely to be stigmatised and excluded from society because we have a range of desirable, motivational and life enhancing products and services to look forward to.