No don’t take this as pessimistic but it is unlikely you will return to that place. There will, of course, be exceptions and to those individuals I offer every best wish for good luck and success.

For the rest of us, I believe we need to create a New Model. In essence, we need to think, and be, more flexible. We need to offer our services perhaps on a contract work basis. We have to be prepared to take temporary or part-time work or maybe think in terms of periodic engagement.

If this sounds like `working for yourself’ then that is what it is, and remember no-one else will if you don’t. I hear you say”But I am not an entrepreneur! If I had been, I would have been the employer not the employee in that traditional model.” Fair comment. Again with some exceptions, perhaps more than I imagine, most of you are not going to go out and start some truly new business. But, if the traditional model has gone, our new model is going to be entrepreneurial almost by definition.

As it happens I believe intelligent people have creative potential and you may have more ideas in you than you realise. On your own you may not have the full resources to see them through — financial, human, technical — but together with others who is to say what is possible?

Even supposing you are devoid of inspiration, there are plenty of other sources for those enterprising ideas. To begin with there are other Members. Then public agencies, private businesses, charities, think-tanks and many others always have identified, currently unfulfilled requirements. T&E aims to provide a conduit through which such bodies, or individuals, can make known their needs or thoughts in a confidential way that can be picked up by appropriate individual or groups of Members.

The first thing, therefore, is to start thinking “New Model”. In some ways it is not new at all; a small percent of the economy already works this way. Many businesses, cahrities and other agents already outsource or take in contractors and interims.

Thinking ahead, we may need some new thinking from Government, maybe changes to employment and other law to recognise that as we grow older we approach work in a different way. Rules established for a workforce assumed to be homogenous and, in truth, written for the Traditional Model may need revisiting. But that is for another time and we are already thinking about it at T&E.

Meanwhile get on board. The more members we have, the greater the oppotunities we may discover and the louder our voice will be.

Vic Leader

08/04/ 2011

Julia, March 2011.

I have just received the notes from a small but high-powered seminar I attended in January entitled “Unlocking and utilising the mental capital of the ageing population”. The meeting was simultaneously stimulating, encouraging and depressing! Stimulating because the 25 or so delegates were from universities and Government offices across Europe, all of whom have a real interest in conducting research and determining policies to keep older people mentally active; encouraging because this aim wasn’t seen as purely a health issue but because the three themes of leisure, social  and work were seen as interwoven and in most circumstances equally important; depressing because TIME and EXPERIENCE was the only organisation there which is actually carrying forward the “work” theme among the people who could most benefit. U3A were mentioned more than once as the outstanding example of an organisation providing social and leisure benefits but other than T&E there were no comparative examples in the “work” category.

So the spotlight’s on us. Flattering but unnerving…

The seminar came up with seven good research questions and requests for evidence under the “work” theme. Five of them are on the edge of TIME and EXPERIENCE’s remit and capability. We might, however, look at the other two which centre on personal experience – why older people have little success in returning to (conventional) work and “later life careers”. We are a little too small and too young to conduct a survey among Members at the moment but this could be something we look at in a few months’ time. Any views?

This week to Cumbria and I’m looking forward to it.  I’m sometimes asked why I don’t concentrate on the city centres in Liverpool or Manchester. Answer – because I’m interested in where retired or semi-retired people live, not where they might have worked when younger. “Inward migration” means that there are a disproportionately high number of older “professionals and executives” living in rural areas than in inner cities (which, of course, attract the young); there are also fewer job vacancies but maybe – you can challenge me on this – there’s a better sense of community and a more imaginative attitude to possibilities?

Watch this space!

Julia