Timestamps

00:03:10: What is meant by 'continuers'
00:07:06: Interview 1: Andrew Aitken...
00:07:31: ... importance of later-life careers
00:09:54: ... challenges faced
00:11:58: ... importance of networks
00:13:00: ... achieving longevity
00:17:37: Interview 2: Avivah Wittenberg-Cox...
00:18:44: ... benefits to continuing to work
00:22:58: ... the employer perspective
00:26:51: ... changes to consider
00:32:46: ... where to start
00:34:10: ... Avivah's career advice
00:34:50: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen. 

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.  This episode is part of our Squiggly Career Stage Series, where we're talking about five different career stages, and sharing some insights and some ideas that we hope will help you specifically succeed in these moments in your Squiggly Career.  We're covering career starters, returners, setbacks, changers, and today our focus is on career continuers. 

Helen Tupper: And I am passionate about all the stages that we've covered but I think today's topic of continuers is just one where I feel like there's still a lot of work to do.  Obviously, for individuals in this stage, that might be you if you're listening, there might be quite a lot of things for you to do and consider about your career, which is what we're trying to help you with.  But I just feel broadly, there is more work to be done here.  And I'm actually really excited about how Squiggly Careers can make that happen and be supportive to people at this stage.  So, maybe consider today's episode a start to our work on career continuers. 

We recognise that other people have expertise that we don't in this area and that is why we have guests on this episode to share some of that with you.  So, you are going to hear from my conversation with Andrew Aitken, who's an economist at the OECD.  All sounds very formal, we don't often have economists on the podcast.  But the OECD is the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.  They work with over 100 countries to promote policies that improve economic and social wellbeing of people.  They have done a really good report, which I actually went to Paris to launch, which is the report on promoting better career choices for longer working lives.  There is some very compelling research in that report about why we need to focus on careers in later life, both for individuals and their opportunities, and also economically why that is a good thing.  So, you're going to hear Andrew just give a bit of a summary of some of that stuff, I suppose, just set the scene for career continuers. 

Then, you are going to hear Sarah's conversation with someone that we are a fan of all of her work on gender and generational diversity, which is Avivah Wittenberg-Cox.  And, Sarah, what can people expect from that conversation? 

Sarah Ellis: You can expect Avivah to be as brilliant as she always is.  So, she brings incredible energy, she calls things out, she's very honest and direct and she will say what she thinks and where there are gaps.  She's not afraid to actually make people aware of those gaps.  But she's also got lots of practical experience from the conversations that she's having with people in later life career stage, but also with organisations too.  I could spend a long time listening to Avivah.  So, she is definitely worth spending some time listening to and learning from. 

Helen Tupper: And as well as the conversations we have today in this episode, we've also got the Career Continuers Guide.  That is a PDF document that you can download for free.  We will link to it in the show notes.  It includes coach-yourself questions, it's got a tool for you to try out so that you can reflect on this stage and what it means for you at the moment.  We've also got an additional interview with Lyndsey Simpson who runs a brilliant organisation called the 55/Redefined Group.  I think they are doing some great things with companies in this particular space.  So, please have a look at that, share this episode, share the guide with anyone that's in this particular stage. 

Sarah Ellis: And actually, one of the things that is interesting to read a bit about is how you describe and think about this group.  So, one of the things that people respond really well to is when we share our Squiggly Swaps.  So, these are words that we can use that are much more reflective of how work feels right now.  So, rather than saying, "Oh, careers are about ladders", they're about squiggles; rather than saying, "They're about titles", they're about talents.  And actually, this was an episode where we did find it quite hard to name, to come up with, well, how do we describe this in a way that feels like people will recognise it?  And we've kind of gone with 'continuers' but I think it was our best attempt, rather one that we felt was a right answer.  Because this idea of referring to people as 'older workers' I think certainly for me makes me quite uncomfortable, because I don't think people will find that particularly motivating.  Yes, you might be older than you were before, but do you really want to be described in that way? 

Helen Tupper: And at what point do you become an older worker?  Is that when I'm over 45, over 50, over 55, over 60?  Andrew will talk about it, but by 2050, one in five people will be over 65.  Is that an older worker?  I just feel like that doesn't fit this stage. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and quite a few people actually have got in touch with me about ageism and feeling like they have experienced discrimination because of their age, when they've been applying for roles, maybe because people are making assumptions about, I don't know, how good they are at technology.  And people are actually saying, "Well, I'm really good at it".  Or, "Why would you want to do this job?" because you've been maybe more senior in the past, but you perhaps don't want to be leading a big team now, or you want to work in a different way.  But then, people are second-guessing almost your motivations and what's in it for you, and that making it then much harder to get an interview or to get the roles that you're looking for. 

So, it feels like there's a real disconnect between actually, when I have spoken to people in this stage of their Squiggly Career, what they are saying to me, which is not often that different from any other stage.  For some of those people, they will want to progress by changing careers; for some of them, they want to develop their specialism.  So, I feel like the career conversation questions that you have with people at every stage in their Squiggly Career might be the same.  Actually, it's kind of age agnostic.  But maybe how you answer those questions does change as you get older.  But almost, the point at which they change is going to be really individual.  So, for some people you might get to 50 and nothing might change about your answer to those questions for another ten years.  For other people, maybe that will be a real tipping point to thinking, I don't know, "I do want to do something different, or I want to work in a different way".  And this idea that we can categorise people by, "Oh, well, when you're 50 to 65 --"

Helen Tupper: "You should be thinking this".

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  You kind of go, "But we would never say that about any other age".  So, it's that whole thing about, well, ask people what motivates them, ask people what they want from the work that they do, rather than assume, and I think there are quite a lot of assumptions about this group. 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I think this is a particularly important episode for people on both sides of this career stage conversation to listen to.  So, for the individual who might think of, "Well, I'm a career continuer, I feel like I'm facing into ageism and I feel like this is something that I need to address for myself", but also the person asking the questions, like the manager or whoever.  I think we all need to think about the language, we all need to think about how we talk and support people at this stage in the way that works for them.  And so hopefully, you'll hear why we need to do that from Andrew, hopefully you'll hear a bit about how you can do that from Avivah.  Just like this is a stage for continuers, I think this is also a conversation that Sarah and I would like to continue beyond this episode. 

Andrew, welcome to the Squiggly Careers podcast. 

Andrew Aitken: Hi, Helen.  Good to be with you. 

Helen Tupper: I'm really glad to have an opportunity to talk to you about later-life careers and to get your perspective, because I've personally found the research that the OECD has done in this space, I found it to be the most specific and the most useful research that I have seen.  So, I'm really happy that we're going to get an opportunity to dive into it a bit more deeply now with our audience.  Maybe let's start with a big question to begin with, which I think some people might think, Oh, Helen, we know the answer to this", but I'm really, really interested to hear it from your perspective and with the research as well, why is it important for individuals and organisations to focus on later-life careers?

Andrew Aitken: Well, it's important because older workers represent an increasing share of the labour market.  So, by 2050, it's projected that one in six workers will be over the age of 65 on average across OECD countries.  And of course, with declining birth rates, there are fewer younger workers to replace retirees.  And on top of that, you've got a lot of businesses which are facing skill shortages and worker shortages.  So, obviously, keeping mid- to late-career workers, so roughly this is 45-plus, engaged fully in the workforce can obviously help fill this gap.  And the other thing of course is that experience matters.  So, we know that older workers often bring stability, institutional knowledge, networks and also mentoring potential, which can really benefit companies.  So, there's a very strong business case for focusing on mid- to late-career workers.  And also, many people will need or want to work beyond traditional retirement ages.  So, for some, it's going to be driven by the need to move away perhaps from work that's physically demanding or mentally demanding, while for other people it might be just due to changing preferences or changes in health status or caregiving responsibilities, for example. 

It's really crucial for governments, employees and social partners to rethink work structures, which historically have tended to be quite linear.  You do your education, then you work, then you retire, and that's changing.  And of course, we're also seeing that employment rates have improved dramatically.  So, for example, in the UK, in the last two decades, among 55- to 64-year-olds, the employment rate has risen from 51% in 2000 to 65% in 2023.  And even more dramatically, it's gone up at ages 65 to 69.  So, the employment rate has more than doubled from just 11% in 2000 to 26% in 2023.  So, we're not talking about something that's going to happen in the future, it's already happened.  So, mid-career and older workers are taking up an increasing share of the of the workforce. 

Helen Tupper: And doubling employment rates make it sound like this is all happening very easily and very naturally and people will just approach these different milestones in their career and the opportunities will just be open to them.  But in reality a lot of people that I talk to don't find it that easy.  And I wondered if we could just talk about the reality for people who might be approaching this particular stage in their career and what are some potential challenges they might be faced with in the workforce today, and what they can do in response to them?

Andrew Aitken: There's definitely a lot of challenges.  So, I mean an obvious one is age discrimination, which remains persistent.  So, in a survey we did at the OECD with AARP in the United States in 12 OECD countries, we found that in the UK, just over 30% of workers over the age of 45 had experienced age discrimination in the workforce.  And it's not just about hiring, it's also about opportunities for training, for example.  So, mid- to late-career workers are more likely to be overlooked for training opportunities, for opportunities for promotion, for example.  That's a big one.  And of course, it's not also structural or institutional ageism, but it can also be self-directed.  And this is also related to declining confidence in job search.  So, as people get older, they tend to be less confident in looking for jobs.  They maybe haven't had much experience, because they've maybe been in one job for quite a long time.  And so, they're not up to date with the latest tools and things for actually finding work.  You can also have self-directed ageism, which is also important to take into account. 

So, at an individual level, I think raising awareness of how these ageist narratives can shape perception is important.  That really feeds into just broader discussions that we have in public in terms of the media, stereotypes and things about age, so it's not just about what happens in the workforce, but broader societal discussion is also important for that.

Helen Tupper: And I'm just thinking about the role of being an advocate or even an activist in this type of career, it's almost like there's a tension between that would take a lot of confidence, and your point is actually some people at this stage don't have the confidence.  So, the need to become an advocate and activist at the same time as, "I'm not really feeling very confident about making this change", it's quite interesting.  I just wondered whether the role in a community, feeling like, "I'm not making this change on my own, I'm connected to a group of people who are also part of this career stage and trying to create more opportunities", whether you'd seen anything in like the role of communities and how that could contribute to people?

Andrew Aitken: Yeah, that's important.  We do see in survey responses that we've done that often, people are looking for information on opportunities, and also just support to actually make changes.  Again, some older workers just don't have these networks, so building those networks can be really important to getting in the door to having a job interview, for example.

Helen Tupper: One of the bits in the research that stuck out to me, and obviously I'm looking at things all the time with like a Squiggly Careers lens on them, but there was a point that I saw about career mobility and people who are in later careers actually making a move, doing a bit of a change or a pivot or a squiggle, whatever you want to call it, but they're actually having lots of benefits in terms of their longevity, so mobility at midlife and beyond leading to longevity in their career.  I wonder if you could just talk about that a little bit more, because I think it's a really interesting point for people to think about, "Could this be the right time for me to make a squiggle, particularly knowing what the research reveals on that point?"

Andrew Aitken: I mean, when we look at people who have actually changed jobs or changed career and can compare what happened to their wages or characteristics of their work, like job satisfaction or different aspects of their working conditions, then we do tend to find they do improve.  We're not saying anything causal about this, just an association, but generally we do see that there is an improvement, so that's encouraging.  You tend to see much smaller wage gains compared to younger age groups.  I mean, obviously, at younger ages people are just moving around, finding a better fit.  You tend to see bigger wage gains at the lower end of the age distribution compared to the older workers, but we still do see them.  I mean, in this research, we're not advocating that everyone should change jobs or change career.  For many people, they're going to be happy where they are, and that might be best for them to stay where they are, and of course, that's fine.  But we're just pointing out that with longer working lives, it's just more likely that people are going to have to change job or career or want to change job or career later on in life. 

Helen Tupper: And if I'm a manager or someone in HR who's listening to this and wants to create an organisation that embraces later-life careers and that supports people, what are some of the things that you think organisations should be looking at in order for that to happen? 

Andrew Aitken: We've been talking to a lot of employers and we're starting to see employers implement some really good programs, for example, around training programmes targeted at mid- to late-career workers.  Also, in the area of age discrimination, there's some really good toolkits.  So, in the UK, the Centre for Better Ageing with CIPD has developed a toolkit called Good Recruitment for Older Workers or GROW.  So, that really gives some best practice in terms of what to do, in terms of advertising for jobs and so on, so that the language, for example, is age neutral.  So, these really practical tools are out there.  And as I say, targeted training programmes.  I mean, often employers overlook, or they think that older workers, because they're older, that they're going to leave the workforce.  But of course, actually, there's a good chance that a 50-year-old is going to be around in the labour market for another 15, 20 years, whereas actually younger workers tend to move around more.  So, often that doesn't really make sense. 

Really trying to tap into the potential of older workers is really important.  And research that the OECD has done actually shows that multi-generational workforces can actually improve productivity.  So, when you have younger workers and older workers working together, this actually improves productivity.  As I said at the beginning, I mean, this is already the workforce that they have.  So, the workforce of the future is already in their workplace now.

Sarah Ellis: So, I think Andrew has done a brilliant job there of setting the scene when we think about Squiggly Career continuers.  And I do think this idea of retiring retirement is one that's probably been around for a while.  I remember reading a really good Harvard Business Review article from Tammy Erickson called that, Retiring Retirement, 10 or 15 years ago. 

Helen Tupper: It's like 2004, that article, I think!

Sarah Ellis: Is that how long it is?

Helen Tupper: Yeah! 

Sarah Ellis: And I remember thinking, "Oh, okay, yeah, I can really see why that's changing from actually a financial perspective, people will work for longer, but also meaning and motivation.  People want to keep working, but probably in quite a different way".  And I think what Avivah will talk to you all about now is, this is something that we know, but there's probably not enough action.  There's a bit of a knowing-doing gap here.  And I think what she is really trying to prompt and provoke is going, "We've got to start doing things differently now.  We can't wait for other people to solve this problem for us".  And if there's anyone who's gonna pioneer and champion change, I think Avivah is a good place to start.

Avivah, thank you so much for joining us on the Squiggly Careers podcast.  I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: Always a pleasure to be with you.

Sarah Ellis: So, I was reading on your LinkedIn profile, you have a great statement where you say, "Careers used to be a 30-year sprint, and now they're a 50-year marathon".  And I was thinking, I can't work out whether that's motivating on a good day, or demotivating maybe on a bad day.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: I think it depends on your age.

Sarah Ellis: Maybe!

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: The younger you are, I think the harder that is to hear.  The closer you get to 50-plus, the more attractive that idea becomes, because people don't really like the idea of stopping, doing nothing, going and playing golf.  It might be momentarily interesting to some who've been tired out by many decades, but for most of us, what I call Q3-ers, or the people over 50 and under 75, it sounds a little dull. 

Sarah Ellis: And I was looking at some stats.  So, by 2050, 25% of the OECD population will be over 65.  When you look at the latest McKinsey reports, there's some interesting McKinsey research, you look at the work of somebody like Tammy Erickson, who actually I came across years and years ago, where she wrote this article for Harvard Business Review on Retiring Retirement, this idea of, there just won't be this line in the sand in the same way anymore, where you aimed for an age and exactly at that age, you stopped, and then your life flipped into something very different.  So, if we've got people listening and maybe they are in that Q3, as you describe it, what are some of the questions you would encourage people to be asking of themselves about their work and their career?  Because my assumption is your work will look and feel different at that time, perhaps than what you've done before.  But I think this idea of, "Oh, but it will just stop", that seems to be the thing that we're moving away from for some very good reasons.  There's lots of benefits to continuing to work, whatever that looks like.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: There's lots of benefits and we will have no choice.  Let's talk brutally honestly.  The demographic changes that you're pointing to is basically, we're shifting from a human pyramid, where for all of human history, we've been a few old people and a mass of young people basically financing our pensions, to a complete square.  So, the pyramid's gone, we're now a square, where we're generationally balanced.  The workforce is actually going to be 50% over 50, 50% under the age of 50.  That's a very different ballgame.  And the younger people wake up to the fact that we cannot retire, our pension systems will not last, governments can't say that and continue to be elected.  So, there's this ridiculous truth that everybody in the pension space knows, is we do not have the financial wherewithal to retire at the ages our parents might have.  Wake up!  It really is a slightly terrifying thing.  We're not ready, we don't really know that, it's not being said very clearly, and the earlier you know that, it's even better if you understand that at 20, because it means you can then pace yourself and start saving and preparing for these marathon lives and careers where, yeah, you can have multiple careers. 

We have this idea that we have one career and 20-year-olds are desperate to find out which one is the right one.  There is no right one.  We are multiple, multifaceted, multi-talented.  These new longer careers, hopefully, on the upside, just giving you the really dark downside, the upside is that we can do and be many things over time.  And I think we can try our hands, and young people already are.  They've got side hustles and multi-potentiates, in the language of one of my young friends, and that's great.  I think we will have richer and more varied careers and developments than we used to.  It's very hard to learn this at 60.  Like, "Oh, at 60, I want to reinvent myself".  It's harder than realising at 45 that actually, post-50, I'm much more intrinsically driven.  And generally, and I'd say especially women, come 50, it's like, you know what?  I've given, I've done, I'm done pleasing others, I am now going to listen to my own motivations.  What do I want to become when I actually grow up?  And people over 50 are very much in the same parallel journey as a lot of people in their 20s.  It's a journey of self-discovery, it's what do I want to be?  What do I want to learn?  How do I want to reinvent?  And forget recreation.  We want to go into recreation, and that's a lot more exciting than a couple of years on the golf course. 

Sarah Ellis: I was with a group last week, and everybody in this group, and it was hundreds of people, over 500 people, were going through restructures and redundancy in their organisation.  And I definitely heard from some of those people who were older, who were saying, "I am concerned that the job market works against rather than for me.  People don't want to hire me because I am older".  And actually, what I was hearing from those people was not a lack of confidence in themselves, in their skills or in their ability to use tech.  Often, these things are much more mindset, in my experience, than they are to do with your age.  But their worry was how they were going to be seen by other organisations, the judgment that might come their way because they're not in their 20s or in that mid-period of where you're really going for it maybe in your career.  I just wondered what your observations were more from a company or an organisation perspective; and are you seeing organisations thinking more innovatively and proactively about this idea of a balanced workforce?

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: Not yet.  Early days, right?  So, this whole phenomenon of longevity and new demographics is not exactly new, but it's newly hitting reality.  So, the rubber now is hitting the road, I'd say, post-pandemic.  We understood a little bit what was going on and what was happening to older people.  So, I think there's a lot of waking up gently.  Now, we're on the same thing with the older, is that the increased labour force of the last 10 or 15 years has been almost entirely older people staying in work longer, with a few companies that are welcoming that trend.  But on the whole, no, the workplace remains extraordinarily ageist, and companies and employers and especially recruiters don't really care if you have 20 years' experience or 5 years' experience.  Five is usually better because the stereotypes, you're younger, you're hipper, you're faster to learn, you're tech-friendly, none of which is true or proven. 

The OECD has done some great studies on the fact that if you hire people in Q3, you actually have more loyalty, more better performing teams.  You have people who have an extraordinary amount of knowledge that they can train and develop the next generation.  There are a lot of upsides to intergenerationality, but you have to get through and in the door.  And that is still a bit of a challenge when hiring managers have been proven to be incredibly ageist.  So, the work when you're in this position is to accept that reality and prepare yourself for it.  They don't really care about experience.  What they care about is credentials.  So, show that you're open to learning, that you're open to tech, do the AI course, do the upskilling, do the certification.  Even if it's just stuff on LinkedIn Learning, or it doesn't have to be you have to go back for an engineering degree of five years, you have to be able to demonstrate, just to overcome stereotypes, that you are open to learning, open to technology, very willing to adapt, and very skilled at doing so.  And that will reassure and overcome some of the barriers to entry.  And then all of the strengths that older workers have can be brought to bear in the workplace.  But I think it's just for us to calibrate where we are in history and that it's going to take. 

Sarah Ellis: This is a systemic challenge that we're talking about and as you've described, not something that is going to change overnight, so this will progress over time.  But what would you like to see change quickly that you think, "I've seen that there are some maybe small actions that aren't going to transform everything, but that do make a difference", whether these are things that individuals can do or that organisations can do; what are those changes that we should all be considering?

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: Entrepreneurship for one.  Again, remember women, when we couldn't get into the corporate world or we couldn't get promoted?  We started an awful lot of businesses and you and I are pretty good examples of how that worked out for us.  So, a huge part of entrepreneurship these days is the over-50s, who are seen as for all kinds of reasons.  I'd say one is entrepreneurship.  Just consider it, explore it.  And the other thing is, take a bit of time.  What a lot of people don't do, especially if they've been made redundant, or -- it's an extremely emotional time.  Huge issues of status and identity loss, and you're lonely and alone and we don't always share some of these issues.  So, I'd say take a pause, find a group, don't go it alone, and use the opportunity of time to actually see this as an opportunity to do something you might rather do.  Who are you now?  Who have you become?  Take a little bit of time to digest the past. 

People are very often in too much of a hurry in midlife transitions.  They think it's going to be a question of months.  It is sometimes a question of years, because we have a lot to digest and to think about, and use the time and the opportunity and hopefully a good peer group or training programme or educational resource to meet others in the same situation, and explore who you want to become next.  And see that as an adventure and an opportunity to become even more or do something that you might believe in more, that you might be more interested in, that you always wanted to do but didn't have time for.  These are the moments, the gifts of these crises is to give us a chance at reinvention.  Grab it.

Sarah Ellis: And what's one change that you want organisations to make?  Lots of people working in organisations and can often create change or influence change, or are in positions to lobby for some of these changes to happen.  So, in an organisation, what do you want to see that might be different that would support this balance of intergenerational work?

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: Well, I'm still at the first step, which is wake up!  Organisations need to wake up to the new demographics.  The fastest way to do that is measure what percentage of your employees are over 50 and under 50, to realise that the future is not the young in our new weird, square demographic shape.  The future is the older, as consumers and as talent.  And so, the question is, if you're completely youth-oriented and think that you've got to move these young people in and through your structures the way a lot of professional services firms, for example, are structured, the idea is, what if there are no more young people?  What if there are a lot fewer of them?  And what if a lot of the knowledge actually exists in people older than you're expecting, and they're about to walk out the door, or you are kicking them out?  So, wake up to the fact that, yeah, your future lies in this generational, this new, entirely new generational balance, which will take some attention to design back in.  We are absolutely not designed for generational balance, we're designed on the old pyramid.

Sarah Ellis: And if you want to see that very starkly, I was actually reading the McKinsey report that we'll put in the toolkit to support this podcast, and they have done the diagrams.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: That's a pretty dire one, isn't it?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and they show how the pyramid is reversing, and they show different countries.  But in every place across the world, the shape is changing.  And I think the simplicity, we often talk about the metrics that matter, or measure what matters, I think the simplicity of your recommendation of going, "Well, just what percentage are under 50 and over 50?" I think that's something that every organisation would have that data readily available, whether they're choosing to use that data or choosing to share that data.  But I think that's also a brave thing for organisations to do.  Like you said on gender, before you had to do it, there were those organisations that were like, "Well, we're choosing.  We're not being made to do this, but we're going to choose.  And we might not be where we want to be today", but actually by choosing to share it, you show that you are giving it the attention, exactly as you've described.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: And just to add, because some companies will do that on the talent HR side, you also want to do it on the consumer side, even more on the consumer side, they're youth addled and youth-focused, when all the assets, all the money, all the purchasing power is in the over-50 Q3 client.  And understanding that and adapting to that reality, which is also increasingly female, because that's another overlap between gender and age, is women are set to be inheriting and making a huge wealth transfer in the coming decades.  Companies might want to keep an eye on that too.  There's a huge amount of opportunity in this longevity economy for companies that will be one step ahead of the game, just as there was in gender.

Sarah Ellis: If somebody is listening now and they are thinking about re-imagining what retirement's going to look like for them, so they're in this transition period, and maybe they are not sure where to start, so they know where they are, but they're like, "Where do I go first?" where would you point people to just start learning a little bit more, whether that's something to read, watch or listen to?

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: They can come and do my short, three-session online course, called the Midlife Rethink.  I'm running one in April.  They can look up the #careerscanchange, which is something organised by Phoenix Group, an insurance company in the UK, that's brought together over a dozen companies that are all working on midlife transitions.  And they can look up, even in the UK, there's a national programme of what's called the Midlife MOT, which is a service in job centres to help people rethink and reevaluate where they are and where they want to go next.  If they've got a bit more money and a bit more time, they can check out Oxford has a new six-month programme where you can go and spend the six months with a group of mid-life professionals thinking about their next steps.  A growing number of universities around the world are adding in these kinds of programmes.  So, there's more resources coming.

Sarah Ellis: And we always finish our expert interviews by asking you to share your best piece of career advice with our listeners.  So, these could be your own words of wisdom or something that someone has shared with you that's just really stuck? 

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: My usual career advice is listen to everybody, read everything and then ignore it all and do what your gut tells you. 

Sarah Ellis: I like that!  Stay curious and then true to yourself at the same time.  Thank you so much and we always love talking to you and love following your work. 

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: My pleasure, Sarah, lovely to be with you. 

Helen Tupper: So, I hope you are feeling informed and inspired with that conversation with Avivah, which is always how I come out of any conversation with Avivah.  Please do follow and support her work, read the article the OECD have written, download the guide, because those things are there to help you, and please share them with other people that might be at this stage as well. 

Sarah Ellis: But that's everything for this episode.  Thank you so much for listening and we're back with you again soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.