Ireland’s life expectancy is on the rise. According to the Central Statistics Office, last year there were more than 806,000 over-65-year-olds in the State – up from just 629,000 in 2016. By 2051, that figure is expected to surpass 1.5 million.
That is going to have a significant impact on the workplace as more people choose to – or, for financial reasons, have to – keep working.
It’s already happening. “It’s now normal to see people staying on until 70, if not slightly longer,” says Paul Mannion of Green Fox Selection, a boutique recruitment service.
“I don’t know whether it’s our lifestyles or healthcare system but older people are definitely ‘younger’ than they were and companies are reluctant to let that value go because it’s knowledge walking out the door. And, on the other side, the bills don’t go away at 65.
RM Block
“Added to that is the fact that for every job vacancy in Ireland right now, we have 0.8 of a person, which means we have a 0.2 per cent deficit, which is why we can’t fill the jobs we have.”
That fact is particularly marked in sectors such as retail and hospitality. “It’s why, when you go out for a meal or go to a hotel, you so often feel the service hasn’t been up to scratch, because recruitment and retention is just so challenging right now,” says Mannion.
That should make it a golden time for “fourth age” workers, with decades of skills and experience under their belt.
But for employers and employees there’s a lot to unpack when it comes to navigating rights and entitlements.
It’s a topic addressed in Keeping Older Workers Engaged, a working paper published by Eurofound, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.
“Ensuring sustainable employment for older workers has been identified as a crucial challenge for both the Irish economy and the welfare state”, writes author Franz Ferdinand Eiffe.
While the state pension age is currently 66, many employment contracts still have a retirement age of 65. A new bill is being drafted which will allow, but not compel, an employee to stay in employment until the state pension age.
Other policy changes are helping too, including changes that allow individuals to defer their state pension until age 70. The compulsory retirement age for many public and civil servant roles is already 70, up from 65.
Employers can accommodate people who wish to work for longer in other ways too, such as by offering flexible or reduced working hours.
“The trend for people staying on beyond their 65th birthday is certainly happening,” says Mary Connaughton of CIPD Ireland, the professional body for human resources managers.
“It’s driven both by people having work that they can continue to do and are happy to do, and by finances – not everyone has a robust pension in place,” she says.
Remote working and the ability to work from home is also making it easier to work into older age.
But how employers view this trend varies. “Some are fine with it; some are less comfortable. At the end of the day, it often boils down to what has been put in the employee’s contract of employment and what’s in the pension policy,” says Connaughton.
Often, where people who are in important jobs or jobs where skills are hard to get, employers are keen to keep them on.
“Where there might be pressure on headcount or where the skills are plentiful, employers are happy to see them go because if the skills are available, they can generally get them at a lower cost. If people have been with the organisation for a while, they’re more likely to be at a higher pay point. So, cost comes in too, and they do want new blood in the organisation.”
One increasingly common option is to provide a fixed-term contract that extends the employee’s working life for a fixed period.
Despite this, more cases are being taken to the Workplace Relations Commission by employees whose employers tell them they can’t stay on.
Until relatively recently, employers typically won. “But there have been a couple of interesting cases in recent times that are challenging that trend, so now employers are having to pay more attention to it,” says Connaughton.
