By Contributor,Dan Pontefract,Graeme Robertson
Copyright forbes
Photo by Graeme Robertson/Getty Images
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Victoria Tomlinson did not set out to become a provocateur of age. She built a career across corporate, agency, board, and advisory roles, then, at the age of 63, launched Next-Up to help employers and professionals rethink retirement.
When Tomlinson talks about “unretirement,” she is not selling a hobby; she is diagnosing a leadership blind spot that corrodes culture and intergenerational trust.
As Tomlinson put it, “Frankly, I never thought about age,” yet the work at Next-Up “opened up all sorts of issues and opportunities.” When age became a significant issue for her, Tomlinson admitted to becoming obsessed with it.
You should be thankful she did.
The modern workplace has turned “retirement” (the ‘R word’) into a taboo that leaders ignore and employees try to avoid. The consequences can be far-reaching because adults do not understand what they are planning for or, worse, in the case of some leaders, pushing people toward.
Tomlinson’s description is painfully on point: “Any conversation with the ‘R word’ has to be age-related, but people completely avoid it.” She tells of peers and partners who floated the topic as a three-year horizon, only to cry, “I was at my leaving party before I could blink.”
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Avoidance does not make the identity shock vanish for individuals either.
On the other hand, “unretirement,” a term Tomlinson advocates, has a significant meaning. “It’s a great time of life, but for most people, it’s a very difficult time because they don’t know who they are anymore,” she says, urging leaders to normalize retirement planning long before a farewell cake appears.
If you look closely, governments around the world are adjusting statutory retirement ages—see France, Denmark, and South Korea as examples—while employers employ a soft power headcount reduction strategy to filter out talent in their fifties and sixties.
Tomlinson’s verdict is equally blunt. “We’ve created a very strange world,” she warned, “where governments are increasing the pension age yet employers are not employing the 50-plus.” That mismatch gives way to financial strain for households—let alone emotional stress—alongside a capability issue for organizations. It really is somewhat ironic.
Leaders possess an opportunity to turn this predicament around.
As Tomlinson notes, treat the ‘R-word’ of retirement like any other career inflection—promotion, lateral move, sabbatical, or portfolio shift—and build opt-in pathways that preserve status. From there, these older workers can pass on wisdom to clients and peers while sharing their know-how.
Maybe Culture Eats Age For Breakfast
If the concept of “unretirement” is rational, why the resistance?
Tomlinson says, “There’s a real culture issue here, around age, and it’s horrendous.” Back on the irony front, she has seen many corporate boards full of older people while those same organizations “are not recruiting or retaining the 50-year-olds.” The hypocrisy is not subtle.
“I think we need reporting,” says Tomlinson, “from larger organizations of how many people they employ each year. She calls it the ‘three R’s’—recruitment, retention, and redundancy by age—as a means to track what organizations are doing with people in their 50s through their 90s. It’s no witch hunt, just a visibility marker not that different from an annual report that contains its CSR data points.
If an employer reports that nobody is employed over the age of 60, that will, as Tomlinson notes, “begin to look odd” and require an explanation. Metrics do not fix culture on their own, but they can focus our attention and invite better questions.
Leaders also need to challenge lazy myths about capability.
Tomlinson laughs at the caricature that older professionals “don’t do tech.”
Victoria Tomlinson
Giles Rocholl Photography Ltd www.gilesrocholl.com
“I don’t know a 50-, 60-, or 70-year-old who isn’t using a smartphone or technology day in, day out,” she notes, arguing that confidence, not capacity, is often the constraint. This scenario is especially so if a senior leadership team is more likely to under-invest in training for older workers. If you want higher adoption, why not invest in upskilling for all and stop treating curiosity as a birthright solely of the youth?
Tomlinson’s touchstone example imagines David Attenborough on your payroll. “Would you be going, ‘Oh, got that old codger in the corner?’ You want to go and get everything that he’s got in his head for your business, wouldn’t you?”
That is an example of the ‘wisdom wheel’ in action: crystallized expertise, captured and circulated. More David Attenboroughs in our organizations, thank you very much.
The Intergenerational Dividend
The intergenerational dividend is the real prize for an organization that welcomes older workers into the employee talent pool.
Tomlinson loves the mix precisely because it provokes. “You become old if you don’t mix it up and get your headspace changing,” she says. When organizations pair young workers with both middle-aged and older team members, a two- or three-way apprenticeship arrangement can flow.
Leaders can accelerate that sense of agency with a newfound structure.
Consider Tomlinson’s “three R’s” reporting scheme, which can create an honest view of what an organization is truly made of.
Consider flexible load levelling so mid- to late-career contributors can rebalance their time without surrendering their lives to overburdened schedules.
Consider paired partnerships of formal mentoring responsibilities that respect and value each person and their crystallized knowledge.
Most of all, stop treating the end of one full-time chapter as the end of contribution. As Tomlinson reminds us, the goal is not to keep bodies in chairs; it is to keep wisdom and purpose in circulation.
Watch the full interview with Victoria Tomlinson and Dan Pontefract on the Leadership NOW program below, or listen to it on your favorite podcast.
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