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SageCo has been involved in several media interviews of late about the new pension age of 67. There has been quite a  hullabaloo about forcing people to work longer. Our experience is that people are happy to work longer, just not the way they’re working now.

With the average age of retirement at 59, I suspect the adjusted pension age may not have a huge bearing on the retirement intentions of most white collar or knowledge workers. For those whose work involves aspects of manual lifting and dexterity, it is a different story. They have the largest gap between when they want to retire (earlier) and when they feel they can retire.

Either way, the underlying issue is how workplaces need to break out of the traditional notions of role design, career, retirement and where, when and how people work. When we run our Create retirement redirection seminars, we always find ourselves in the midst of robust discussion about this very topic. Here’s a hint to employers; how about asking your mature employees about their working intentions (not retirement intentions). How about asking them about how they’d like to work over the next 15 years and see if you can adapt.