Unexplored potential of work after retirement

Our institutions should reflect the changes in life expectancy, enabling retirees who wish to contribute professionally to do so

I recently attended a roundtable on the potential opportunities of cryopreservation, i.e. preserving the human body at low temperatures in the hope of future revival.

While the conversation was riveting and sparked lots of debate, scientifically and ethically, I was struck by the question not being discussed: What kind of society do we need to make a longer life worth living?

This question is the central blind spot of the longevity movement. Its proponents are focused almost entirely on the biology of ageing, which are in and of themselves not trivial. But they rest on an assumption so large it goes almost unexamined: that if we extend the quantity of human life, the quality of social life will somehow follow; it may not.

With geopolitical, climate, and technological changes, and the institutional strain, society may not be able to navigate a much older society.

Human institutions, work, retirement, education, marriage, and the welfare state were largely designed in an era when life expectancy in advanced economies hovered around 65 to 70 years.

The modern pension system was conceived when workers were expected to draw from it for a decade at most. The standard arc of a career, study, work, retire was premised on a roughly linear, time-limited life.

Even the structure of higher education, compressing learning into the early twenties, reflects a model of human development calibrated to a shorter existence.

We are already living beyond those designs. In most OECD countries, life expectancy now exceeds 80 years. And by 2050, there will be 52 people aged 65 or over for every 100 working-age adults in the OECD. Nonetheless, our institutions have barely moved, and retirees feel it today.

A survey of over 1,000 experienced professionals and retirees aged 50 to 80 across India, conducted by WisdomCircle in partnership with Dalberg, reveals the scale of the mismatch.

Approximately 70% of respondents are either currently working or actively exploring opportunities post-retirement. Nearly half identified professional engagement as the activity they most look forward to ahead of travel, education, volunteering, and spirituality.

Moreover, 62% reported feeling fully prepared to adapt to new roles. The aspiration, the energy, and the capability are present. The institutions to absorb them are not.

A problem of supply, not demand

The gap is not one of motivation. It is one of design. On WisdomCircle’s platform, there is currently one available opportunity for every 40 professionals seeking one. That is not a typical market failure; it is a sign that the economy has not reoriented itself to deploy the productive capacity of its elderly.

An interesting insight the survey revealed is that organisations do not provide much support for one’s transition to retirement. And while one could debate whether a firm should provide such support to former employees, it reveals a lack of incentive to support this cohort of workers.

In fact, only 2% of respondents experienced any form of gradual transition programme. As one respondent put it: “They could have given me opportunities to mentor younger employees. My decades of experience just walked out the door with me.”

This is not a peripheral concern. An HBR study cited in related research estimates that within a single organisation, approximately 700 retirements result in the loss of around 27,000 years of collective experience, spanning client relationships, institutional memory, and the kind of pattern recognition that no onboarding programme can replicate. When multiplied across an economy, the scale of this knowledge haemorrhage becomes difficult to fully account for.

Perhaps the most important single finding in the survey data is a pattern that emerges with age. After the standard retirement age, i.e. 60 years, the proportion of older adults in formal employment declines sharply. But the desire to explore opportunities does not. It persists, and in some age cohorts, it rises. Among respondents aged 75 and above, two-thirds describe themselves as actively exploring opportunities while none are in full-time work.

The gap between access and aspiration is a consequence of how our institutions are calibrated to a retirement age tied to a shorter life expectancy. The retirement cliff was designed for a world that no longer exists. Longevity aims to extend this further, without rewiring society as a whole.

Although many reforms, from pension plans to the nature of employment matter, the bigger question is around purpose and meaning. Work, in this context, is not merely an economic variable.

Participant interviews reveal that the primary reasons for older professionals seeking work are purpose and identity driven, and centred around connection, not financial gains.

Japan, facing the most acute ageing challenge of any large economy, has moved to keep older citizens embedded in community and social functions as a matter of explicit policy.

Singapore’s SkillsFuture programme reframes education as a lifelong process rather than a front-loaded credential. These are important efforts, but they remain at the margins of a much larger institutional inertia that has yet to be seriously confronted.

Millions of people want to contribute, feel prepared to do so, and are finding that the institutions meant to facilitate that contribution simply do not exist.

The science of living longer is advancing rapidly. The architecture of living differently has barely begun.

(The writer is a senior policy advisor at WisdomCircle, an AgeTech platform connecting experienced professionals with organisations globally. The WisdomCircle–Dalberg survey covered 1,067 respondents aged 50–80 across India)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.