United Kingdom: Call for Retirement Reform To Allow People To Continue Working Past Retirement Age

Under the auspices of the Social Market Foundation, former Civil Service Chief Lord Andrew Turnbull has issued a report that analyses a number of false assumptions which underlie thinking about retirement in the United Kingdom and that calls for a radical overhaul of employment and leadership models that will allow people to continue working past retirement age.

The report--"The New Demographics: Reshaping the world of work and retirement"--argues that current employment models, where you retire at your most senior position and leave the organisation completely, lack flexibility and are a result of widespread ageism in the workplace. Leadership models also suffer from a similar inflexibility with companies assuming they should continue to be led by their oldest employees.

The report’s author, Lord Andrew Turnbull, said:

“We need to alter fundamentally our assumptions about work and retirement and the transition between the two. A profitable decade of mixed working and retirement ought to be the dominant model of how to make the most of our flexible years, easing ourselves into a restricted income rather than plunging into it.”

Commenting, Director of Social Market Foundation, Ann Rossiter, said:

“Lord Turnbull’s report makes an important contribution to the debate about work and our ageing society, questioning the assumptions that see the skills and knowledge of older people wasted through the continuing use of outdated models of leadership and employment patterns.”

Source: Social Market Foundation News Release (May 16, 2007)