Why more companies are recognizing the benefits of keeping older employees

Although age bias is still the norm, the value-add of longtime, experienced workers is beginning to take shape.

On the outskirts of Macclesfield, in northwest England, a branch of the UK home-improvement retailer B&Q quietly overturned one of corporate life’s most persistent assumptions. Faced with high staff turnover and uneven customer satisfaction, the company tried a simple experiment: In 1989, it staffed the store largely with older workers. 

The results were striking, according to one study. Profits rose 18 percent. Staff turnover fell to a fraction of the company average. Absenteeism dropped sharply. An experiment that started more than 30 years ago reshaped how the retailer approached age inclusiveness and led B&Q to open training to all ages and feature older workers in advertising, treating experience as an advantage rather than a cost.

In 2007, BMW began implementing 70 ergonomic, low-cost improvements in a specialized assembly line in Dingolfing, Germany, to provide better conditions for its many older and middle-aged workers. Key changes included adjustable-height workstations, improved lighting and specialized stools, resulting in a 7 percent productivity increase.

Evidence suggests that similar age-performance dynamics are not limited to the quirks of retail or to the factory floor and are increasingly relevant as declining birth rates and artificial intelligence investments reduce the inflow of entry-level workers. A white paper from Bank of America’s Workplace Benefits group argues that recruiting and retaining older workers is becoming increasingly important as populations age, framing age-inclusive benefits not as accommodation, but as a driver of organizational performance, especially for roles where judgment, experience and decision quality matter most. 

“The retention of these older workers is an idea that is becoming much more well-received,” says Cynthia Hutchins, Bank of America’s inaugural director of financial gerontology. Hutchins has been involved in implementing a workforce longevity policy that includes hybrid schedules, financial planning benefits, menopause support, grandparents’ leave and sabbaticals. “It’s almost a business imperative to institute those types of benefits” to retain older workers and attract younger ones, adds Hutchins.

Yet initiatives such as these are rarely framed as strategy or as signals of a deeper shift. Most corporations continue to design careers as if effectiveness peaks early — as if speed, stamina and innovation belong exclusively to the young. If experience improves outcomes, why are so many organizations structured to push people out just as their value peaks? 

If experience improves outcomes, why are so many organizations structured to push people out just as their value peaks?

The Albatross or the Wise Man 

At the heart of corporate resistance lies a fundamental disagreement about value. Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi framed the debate in Aging and the Productivity Puzzle, a 2018 analysis delineating two schools of thought. The “albatross theory” holds that workers above the age of 65 drag down productivity due to resistance to change and outdated skills. The “wise man theory” tells a different story: of workers who possess judgment, institutional knowledge, emotional intelligence and expertise that younger employees cannot replicate. 

Zandi and his colleagues analyzed state-level ADP data in the U.S. and concluded that post-retirement-age workers slowed wage growth and productivity, largely because they tend to be averse to adopting new technologies. Yet several major institutions reject the idea that older workers are a productivity “albatross” — and most look at the effects, not of those above the age of 65, but of the 50-plus age workforce, often the first in line for layoffs. 

More recent research from AARP and the OECD shows that firms with more 50-plus workers are more productive, not less: a 10-percentage-point increase in older workers is associated with roughly 1.1 percent higher productivity. The 2020 OECD analysis also finds that age-balanced firms benefit from lower turnover and stronger team performance, driven by experience and knowledge sharing rather than technology resistance. Similarly, a 2022 study from Boston Consulting Group found that cross-generational teams outperform homogeneous ones when older workers’ judgment and mentoring are combined with younger workers’ digital skills. A 2022 meta analysis also pushes back against the idea that older workers are less effective, and found that teams perform better when members have a long tenure at the company, irrespective of workers’ ages. 

Still, Zandi says that the value of older workers may depend on how AI in the workplace unfolds and what impact it has on productivity growth. “If AI turns out to be a bust or doesn’t live up to expectations, and you have other demographic forces that are restraining labor growth, then I think older workers should fare well,” Zandi says. He notes that so far, older workers have “navigated things reasonably gracefully,” while younger workers and mid-level managers are so far taking the brunt of AI-related impacts. 

People Peak Later Than We Think

Population aging is often treated as a future problem, something to be managed later with technology or policy tweaks. In reality, it is already reshaping labor markets in the U.S. and across advanced economies. Birth rates are lower, people are living longer and the share of workers above the age of 50 is rising steadily. This is not a forecast. It is arithmetic. 

Across advanced economies, there appears to be a persistent pattern of early exits that are less about individual choice than organizational design.

Yet organizational assumptions about performance have not kept pace. Modern careers are still built around the idea that effectiveness peaks early. Recent research challenges that view. A 2025 study in the journal Intelligence, analyzing age trajectories across 16 cognitive, emotional and personality dimensions, finds that while processing speed does decline after early adulthood, many of the capabilities most relevant to complex work continue to improve well into midlife. When these traits are combined into a composite measure of overall functioning, performance peaks between ages 55 and 60.

But if proficiency increasingly peaks in late midlife, then why are so many careers ending before they can be fully realized? Across advanced economies, there appears to be a persistent pattern of early exits that are less about individual choice than organizational design.

In the U.S., analysis by the Urban Institute of survey data of older workers from 1992 to 2016 showed that more than half above the age of 50 were pushed out of long-held jobs before they chose to retire, often through layoffs or restructuring rather than performance issues. The 2018 study — along with reporting from ProPublica — found that few ever regained comparable pay or responsibility, and hiring practices reinforced the trend.

The fact that more than half of U.S. workers above the age of 50 leave long-held jobs for reasons unrelated to performance and before they choose to retire is a systemic design failure.

Bill Greene, a longtime business consultant, is an exception to this layoff trend. Hired at 64 as principal of Mind Share Partners, a nonprofit in San Francisco, he advises companies on the importance of creating mentally healthy environments, and cautions that the workplace is a minefield of biases — and that ageism cuts both ways for older workers and younger workers.

Greene advises employers to be aware of the blind spots and inconsistencies. In the technology industry, he says, “it’s widely perceived that if you are 45 years old or over, you are a dinosaur,” yet in politics, “you can be 70, 75, 80, 85, and apparently that’s OK.”

Experience helps in an emergency. When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, Greene was consulting for a financial services firm, and he saw firsthand how worried his client was that younger employees were going to panic and quit because they hadn’t been through a crisis of that magnitude before.

“They realized that they had to coach their younger employees,” he says, comparing the pandemic to the 2008 financial crash to help the client’s staff understand the risks and path forward. “That kind of wisdom and experience can come with more depth of understanding and perspective from an older employee than from a younger one,” he says.

Small-Scale Experiments Miss an Urgent Challenge

Although several Fortune 500 companies have advertised their interest in hiring and retaining older workers, corporate commitments remain tentative and small-scale. UK-based Unilever launched its U-Work program in 2019, and now offers employees in nine countries a hybrid between traditional employment and gig work: a monthly retainer, benefits and freedom to choose which projects they work on and when. Workers can scale back hours, pursue other interests or transition gradually toward retirement. 

The program is innovative and, by all accounts, successful. Half of participants are above the age of 50. But only 140 employees out of Unilever’s 150,000-strong global workforce participate. This raises a question: Are these strategies of genuine transformation or sophisticated public relations?

Three converging forces make the case for urgency. First, premature exit creates value leakage. The fact that more than half of U.S. workers above the age of 50 leave long-held jobs for reasons unrelated to performance and before they choose to retire is a systemic design failure.

Second, the demand-side blind spot. Globally, spending by people above the age of 55 is projected to approach $15 trillion annually by the end of this decade, making older consumers one of the largest and fastest-growing sources of demand in the world economy. Yet many companies treat older customers as peripheral. 

There are exceptions. Alan Patricof, now 91 and still investing, launched Primetime Partners at 85 after observing that venture capital remained focused on millennials, despite obvious unmet demand among older adults. His fund has invested in more than 35 companies serving what he calls the “ageless market.” Consumer brands are adapting, too — L’Oréal has repositioned itself around longevity and healthy aging, treating later life as aspiration rather than decline. 

The silver economy is not a niche. It is one of the largest and least contested growth opportunities of the next decade — and one that many firms still underestimate. 

Third, longer working lives are inevitable. In Europe and the UK, effective retirement ages have been climbing, driven in part by financial need and policy changes. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the shift from defined-benefit to defined-contribution retirement plans incentivizes workers to remain employed longer. Organizations that fail to retain experienced talent will face labor shortages, while competitors benefit from workers who bring judgment, stability and institutional memory. 

The Role of Investors, C-Suites and Boards 

The mismatch between demographic reality and corporate behavior is beginning to register with long-term investors. Large asset managers increasingly frame longevity as a structural economic force with implications for growth, productivity and risk. 

A Vanguard study, The Economics of a Graying World, highlights aging and slower labor-force growth as a persistent drag on economic expansion, arguing that longer working lives are one of the few viable adjustment mechanisms. From this perspective, workforce age policy becomes financially material, not optional. 

When organizations push experienced workers out early, they forfeit peak judgment, execution capability and mentoring capacity.

Economist Andrew J. Scott of the London Business School argues in his 2024 book The Longevity Imperative that if societies see longevity primarily as an “aging problem” of more pensioners, higher health costs and fewer workers, longer lives risk becoming a fiscal drag. But if they invest in health, skills and age‑inclusive work, longevity can instead raise growth, employment and innovation. 

One hurdle to this shift in perspective is an ongoing lack of transparency and accountability by employers. Ageism in hiring, promotion and redundancy remains widespread, yet unlike gender or ethnicity, workforce age is rarely disclosed or scrutinized. The result is a growing governance gap. Misalignment with demographic reality creates execution risk — in talent, productivity and growth. 

The case for a longevity strategy is ultimately an economic one. When organizations push experienced workers out early, they forfeit peak judgment, execution capability and mentoring capacity. When they underinvest in older consumers, they leave vast pools of demand underserved. Value is forfeited on both sides of the business. 

In meeting their responsibility for long-term risk and growth, companies should begin with clarity. Map the age profile of the workforce by role and seniority. Identify where people in their fifties and early sixties are exiting — and whether those exits reflect performance or design. Treat age as a strategic variable in the same way firms now treat gender, skills or succession risk. 

From there, redesign follows. Build roles and career paths that assume longer working lives. Invest in mid- and late-career reskilling, not as remediation but as renewal. Structure intergenerational teams deliberately, so experience and speed compound rather than collide. Align product, service and brand strategy with the realities of an aging, wealthier customer base. 

None of this is about altruism. It is about reclaiming value currently being left on the table. As populations age, companies that learn to retain experience and serve longevity-driven demand will not just adapt — they will outperform. 

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Annie Coleman is Founder of RealiseLongevity, a consulting firm based in the UK, and is a Stanford Center on Longevity Ambassador.