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We are living longer, which should be a cause for celebration. But in fairness, the lede is being buried deeply.
Over the past thirty years or so, life expectancy has increased significantly. For example, Canada now approaches 83 years, the U.S. is just under 80, and the European Union is close to 82 years. While it’s wonderful to see us living longer, beneath this lies a minefield of sober issues that few leaders are ready to face.
Birth rates are plummeting, workforce structures remain steadfast in twentieth-century cultural and performance assumptions, and the shape of talent itself is shifting underfoot.
The workplace once resembled a church bell in its demographic distribution. It was broad at the base, with an ever-steady stream of younger hires at one end and predictable retirements at the other.
Before our very eyes, it is now morphing into the shape of a light bulb; slender at the base and swollen in the middle and top. That shift is not a future problem. It’s arrived. For example, today more than 21% of the European Union’s population is aged 65 or older. Only 10 years ago it was less than 18%.
Age Debt is Afoot
Age Debt is the term I use to describe an organization’s failure to plan for and value aging. Think of it as a silent tax on demographic denial. It materializes in both visible and invisible ways, such as skills erosion, rising replacement costs, and fraying workplace continuity. You may not yet see it on your balance sheet, but it will inevitably corrode your talent infrastructure if attention is not paid to the matter.
Consider the demographics.
In my home province of British Columbia, birth rates have dipped below one child per woman—well beneath the 2.1 needed for simple population replacement. Across all G7 economies, demographic growth relies almost entirely on immigration.
In the United States, only older workers are propping up labour force participation, and are expected to represent nearly 9% of the workforce by 2032. Conversely, Europe’s working-age population is set to shrink by nearly 10% by 2030. And if you live in South Korea, the birth rate sits at about 0.75. Within five years, a quarter of its citizens will be over 65 years old.
And yet, most talent systems remain calibrated to yesteryear, one grounded in early retirements, strict age-based exit norms, and linear career ladders. Succession planning still assumes orderly exits. Promotion systems reward an ever-narrowing pool of “high potentials.”
Age, too often, is treated as a liability rather than an asset. The fallout will include, but not be limited to, knowledge drains and wisdom atrophy.
The Human Cost of Neglect
Age Debt itself is amplified by ageism, perhaps the last socially acceptable bias in many workplaces.
Older workers are quietly edged out of challenging assignments under the assumption that they are nearing the exit. Entry-level roles for younger workers are increasingly contested against automation and artificial intelligence. In the actual workplace, feedback or performance conversations can subtly equate age with rigidity, complacency, youthfulness, or irrelevance, all morale jabs to personal engagement and commitment.
The irony is impossible to ignore.
Employers lament talent shortages even as they marginalize the very people who could fill them, whether they are young, middle-aged, or older. Knowledge exits, or does not arrive, workloads intensify, burnout accelerates, and the point of employee engagement becomes ever more moot.
Leaders who ignore this trajectory aren’t avoiding turbulence. They are steering headlong into it.
The Experience Dividend Beckons
If Age Debt is the liability, then the Experience Dividend is the strategic payoff where leaders choose to treat age as an asset.
This more hopeful future emerges when organizations and leaders design systems that integrate contributors from all walks of the age spectrum, circulate knowledge intentionally, and allow careers to flow not just upward but also laterally, iteratively, and sustainably.
Consider the example of BMW. Facing a thinning pipeline of younger talent, the company created a Senior Expert Program that retained seasoned leaders in specialist and mentoring roles. They are not forcing the exit of their older workers; they offer continuity, context, and capability. The company’s strategy has paid dividends in terms of its institutional memory, innovation, mentoring, and knowledge transfer, while also future-proofing its long-term operations.
Another positive example comes from Fuller’s, a major UK pub and hotel group, which recognized an urgent need to address gaps in its age diversity. Teaming with Rest Less, a platform for workers over 50, Fuller’s rewrote its recruitment pitch to place more value on maturity, emotional intelligence, and customer service. That shift delivered results: the share of staff aged 50 and over doubled across 185 venues and now sits at about 12%of the workforce. By leaning into the later-career strengths of people—reliability, service quality, and mentoring—Fuller intentionally reshaped its team composition and reset the organization’s culture around age.
BMW and Fuller’s example is the Experience Dividend in motion: lived, measured, and future-forward enabling.
The Leadership Imperative
Peter Drucker once cautioned, “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” While Age Debt is an inevitable demographic turbulence that every organization must come to deal with, yesterday’s logic—career ladders, exit-by-60, a narrow view of potential—is not only obsolete, it’s foolish to think it won’t affect you.
The opportunity for leaders is to imagine careers not as ladders, but as canvases; to frame age diversity as strategic muscle, not a structural inconvenience; and to admit that the future of work may hinge as much on how we manage age as how we manage AI.
The crisis is here; it’s in your lobby.
The real question is whether you will let Age Debt drain your organization or whether you will instead unleash the Experience Dividend.
The future of work may be grey, but if we face Age Debt with courage and foresight, it will shine with a golden experience.
About the author:
Dan Pontefract is a leadership and culture strategist, Thinkers50 Radar, and the author of the upcoming book, The Future of Work Is Grey: The Untapped Value of Age in the Workforce. (May 5, 2026, Page Two)