Rethinking retirement
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 615 Ratings
🗓️ 29 February 2024
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A typical career, for many, involves some kind of progression, or at least the expectation of it, until we stop and retire. But is there a better model?
Evan Davis and guests discuss whether more of us should think about easing into retirement by taking more junior roles, going part time, or switching profession altogether, instead of stepping off a career cliff edge when we reach pension age. Could this expand the number of job opportunities for older workers, whilst also helping younger workers push through the ranks?
Stepping back isn’t an option open to all, though, and there could be big implications for pensions, so how should older workers begin to calculate if, or when, it might be possible? Evan is joined by:
Matthew Rideout, founder of Knead & Desire Bakehouse; Sir Howard Davies, chairman of NatWest Group; Zoe Ashdown, head of culture and people engagement at AXA UK and Ireland.
Thanks also to the listeners who sent in voice notes, and to everyone else who emailed bottomline@bbc.co.uk
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Producers: Simon Tulett Researcher: Paige Neal-Holder Editor: Matt Willis Sound: James Beard and Rod Farquhar Production co-ordinator: Rosie Strawbridge
The Bottom Line is produced in partnership with The Open University.
(Picture: An older man laughing and looking at a laptop with a young woman in a workshop. Credit: Alys Tomlinson/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.1 | This is the podcast version of the programme. |
| 0:07.2 | It's got some extra goodies in it that we didn't have room for in the radio broadcast. |
| 0:11.0 | I hope you enjoyed. |
| 0:13.2 | Hello, welcome to the programme. |
| 0:14.9 | Now, a typical working life started anything maybe between 18 and 22. |
| 0:19.9 | Work your way up through some kind of career ladder |
| 0:22.4 | if you can. Retire what at 60, 65, maybe 67. Now of course there are many jobs that don't have |
| 0:30.1 | much of a ladder built into them. And many people, most often women, take time out of work and |
| 0:36.0 | disrupt their career ascent. So there is no real typical. |
| 0:40.1 | But for many, there is an expectation that work is a kind of progression and then you stop. |
| 0:46.0 | And today we wanted to challenge that model, asking whether more of us need to rethink retirement, |
| 0:51.8 | perhaps moving up and then trading down in a later career. |
| 0:56.5 | Or at the very least, can we expand realistic job opportunities for older workers? |
| 1:02.8 | So they have more choice about whether to wind down into retirement |
| 1:06.5 | and not be shut out by employers who might assume that younger workers are better. |
| 1:12.0 | Now, we do seem to be needing more workers these days, |
| 1:15.5 | so there's a public interest in this as well as a personal and a corporate one. |
| 1:20.2 | Now, a couple of weeks ago, we asked you, our listeners, for your experiences in this area. |
| 1:25.6 | And we've had a dozen of emails emails and we're going to feature a selection |
| 1:28.6 | later in the program but one of them was very intriguing to us so we just had to invite the |
| 1:33.3 | centre onto the show and he is the first of my three guests Matthew Rideout founder of need |
... |
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