Shelley Alward-MacLeod 0:00 You're listening to within our reach a podcast by reachability association that focuses on accessibility, inclusion and leveling the playing field at work and in your community. My name is Shelley Alward MacLeod, and my co host is Blake Hunsley, and today we're joined by reachAbility's one step closer facilitator, Colette Williams. In today's episode, we'll be focusing our conversation around an article entitled work in the era of no retirement, which appeared in the March 2022, edition of Harvard Business Review. A link to the article will be included in the show notes. Enjoy the episode. Thanks

Blake Hunsley 0:37 for that introduction. Shelley, and welcome to our guest, Colette. Why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners? Okay,

Colette Williams 0:43 oh, well, about me, let's see. I am a mom, I am a grandmother, I am an employee, I am a human on this earth. I am a daughter, a sister, a friend, and I just look, I enjoy life. I enjoy everything it has to offer. And I'm going to take advantage of all of that.

Blake Hunsley 1:05 That's a good self description. I like That's very nice, and we're really happy to have you here today, as Tova talked about in the introduction, today's article is all about work in the age of retirement, so and it focuses heavily on ageism. So I did clear this question before we started. I'm allowed to ask everybody's age. So I'll start. I'm 43

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 1:25 okay, I'm 62 well, sort No, I'll be 62 in August. There you go, August, because I do celebrate birthday month.

Blake Hunsley 1:37 Okay, sounds like I'm 61 and nine months. Very cute.

Colette Williams 1:42 What? What we're in, August, 4, August 2. All right, Leo's here in the house. I am 66 Okay,

Blake Hunsley 1:49 great. Well, since we're talking about work in the age of retirement and you are working, I am, yes, I first question, because the article does really differentiate between people who are returning to work because they have to return to work because of economic circumstances, and people who are returning to work or staying in the workforce after an age that might be traditionally their retirement age because they want to be in the workforce. Where would you put yourself on that sort of spectrum?

Colette Williams 2:18 Yeah, fair question. I am working, because I love to work. Okay? I love to keep busy. So the thing is, I if I can go back, I was stay at home mom for many years, and that was my absolute joy. But during that time, you want to get out a little more, and there's that whole conversation I want to speak with an adult please at some point. So I became a fitness instructor and did that sort of as a side gig, as they say now, right? Because I could control my days. So fast forward, my children grow up. I get them out the door, get them educated, get them on their way, and now there's me and my spouse. Okay? Now what? And I felt the need, what to be needed in a different way, right? My children need me, my family needs me, and I treasure that, but I, I, I believe that I have so much more to offer, and my confidence is built through the years. My experiences have built through the years, and it was a little bit of me wanting to get out there for me, but me wanting to share that too.

Blake Hunsley 3:29 So How long had you been, How long had you been out of the workforce when you when you returned to work outside the home,

Colette Williams 3:36 right? So other than the fitness pieces I did, and that was sporadic, it would be, oh my gosh, Blake, very easily, probably 30 years okay. And then what I did, I actually started volunteering. You're taking me down my path. Now, I had applied for a job because I wanted to work, and it was at a museum at home in our area. The very week I did that, I had also applied to work at another place, which was suggested to me by my daughter, who volunteered. I volunteered with them. A job came up. They contacted me, which was kind of neat. So I volunteered with them. It was Community Justice Society, I can say that as as a case worker and a facilitator, and I went in, they invited me in after my volunteering. So they saw something. Said, there's a job here. You need to come in and apply. And I did, and they hired me. So I did do that after being at all that time as a stay at home mom. So we'll say 25 years. I did that for like, eight years, and then I left again, and it was a number of years again, probably 10 years out, when I saw this job, okay and decided to go back. But yeah, my love, oh, I always sort of directed myself toward working with people or helping people how I could. It's always. Been my joy. And that goes back to when I was a teenager, and I said that I recognized it. I was very involved in sports. I played varsity basketball, volleyball every year. I wasn't the best player, there's no doubt about it, but I was on the on the first trig every year at our awards banquet, I won Team Player of the Year. And I remember saying to him, Coach, what does this even mean? And he said, Well, you kind of make sure everybody's doing okay as a teenager, so through my years, that's that's where I fit. But yeah, the the it led me to where I am today. And I just believe that all of that experience and that love and that growth allows me to do my job really, really well, and something probably that I couldn't have touted as a younger person, because it sounds like boasting. I'm owning it what I do, right? And but I'm always ready to learn more, too, right?

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 5:53 So you're so there this, this segment today is quite interesting, because there's, it's very different, the error, because at your at your age, okay, previous, in previous, let's go back. 15, 20, I don't even know how many years, right? And still, in many retirement policies, like pension plans and those kind of things. 65 is the age of retirement. Like that was the golden age, and, oh, if you work for the company for a long, long time, you could early retire at 60 like that was, like a So, so you're one, you're you're one. There's, I think there's different groups of the population that that I, that I'm seeing that has gone back, has gone back to work later in life as another chapter, right? Because the kids have grown up and so forth. And they may or may not even be working in the area for which they might be educated for they may be using their lived experience, but they're now doing something they're passionate about, because they can right then, then there's, I'm I'm going to talk about, in my case, I've been working all the time, And I'm 61 and nine months and and the pandemic kind of threw a bit of a bit of a, I don't want to say like a hiccup, because I'm I could retire like I have had the means, but it shone a bit of a different light for me, because during that time when people had to stay home and we weren't allowed to go anywhere. Now I was fortunate enough to be able to continue working from home, but I was about to retire. I would have been retired at the end of the pandemic, but that led me to the like, oh my goodness, I can't stay home. Like if I was had to stay in my house and didn't see anybody and wasn't involved in anything, right? So it made me change my business model. So for the next few years, like I cut out doing certain things and I only work certain days of the week. So maybe you would call some people would call that semi retired. I don't call it semi retired. I call it that I've now just I'm selectively picking because semi retired means I'm sitting at home with my feet up and I'm

Blake Hunsley 8:25 working. Sounds like you got one foot out the door.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 8:28 But then there's a whole group of individuals that that so I'm, I'm maybe a hybrid. Okay, you're, you're working because you, you want to work. I'm maybe a bit of a hybrid. And then there's the people who are working have had to come back into the workplace, even Yes, because they have to, right? So that's made a very, I, a very different demographic, right? And at, at at at at our age. And I, I feel comfortable saying that, since we're born in the same month, and I'm all very similar in age, there's often that term ageism, right? That's used. And, you know, because we talk about, well, in our generation, right? In our generation, we did this. So what do you what? What has been your experience with that,

Colette Williams 9:29 with ageism itself? Yeah, like,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 9:31 what have you had people saying, saying that to you, like, you know that you know you're you're ageist, or you don't know like, you don't know what it's like now,

Colette Williams 9:46 no, the thing is, it's interesting the term itself, or your generation does if it comes up, it's respectful, because it was my generation. My generation is another generation, right? That's not a bad word. It's not a dirty word when it's done respectfully, if it's done with this, you know, snarky attitude, I'm probably going to address it in the moment. It's generally not. It's, I think, who you surround yourself with as well, Shelley, right? I have wonderful people around me, of all generations. So when somebody does refer to that, they're asking a legitimate question and want the answer to it. And I love that. Okay, so, you know, I think I'm speaking on this topic. I'm trying to figure out how it's affected me in a big way, and I don't feel that it has Now, mind you. And we talk about different types of ageism, and I was, I was doing a little bit of research before I came in today. And there are three levels, okay, that are addressed. So there's the micro level, which is the individual themselves, and I think it's more about how you think about yourself, and how you project yourself is going to be huge, right? Then there's the meso level, which is the social networks, people you bring into your circle. And then there's the macro, which is the institutional, which is where we work. So a couple of things I it took. It took time. It takes years, it takes experience. But I I am very comfortable with who I am and what I have to offer. I like myself the next level, I have surrounded myself with the most amazing people of all generations, and that can work. She's talking about us. I am. She is, look, I Blake and I, I always told Blake that he is sort of the male version of me. We are different generations, but I see such similarities in us. And I love the fact that he is just open to to me as an individual and a person, not an age, not coming to me, you know, to, you know, put me in my generation. He answers my questions. He's he's just lovely. So he's an example of the people. He's an example of the people I have in my life. It's respecting who I am. And if I have a question about technology, then I go to them and ask them, and it's usually me being harder on me saying, oh, I should have known that, or I should have googled it and and it's like, no, no, no, you're not the only one asking.

Blake Hunsley 12:17 I'd love to touch on that for a second I was I was laughing so hard reading this article because it's talking about the technological aspect, which does come up a lot in age, in ageism related discussions. And it was calling it a trope, and saying it's not really based in reality. And the funny part is, you do come to me with technological questions. I don't think that much more than a lot of other people in the office, but you are harder on yourself about asking those questions than say, you know, okay, we have Liv, who's gonna come on eventually and talk about the Gen Z perspective. Liv, I believe, is 22 you and Liv probably ask a similar amount of technological questions to me, and I never get any of the commentary directed towards herself from Liv, which I do from you, right? But the part of the article that really kind of stuck out to me, which I think describes you perfectly, is it's talking about the willingness to learn. It's like there may be a bit of a gap there, but the willingness to learn, as long as you have that you're fine, you definitely have a willingness to learn, which is great. I have worked with people from every generation who have a technological barrier and they do not have a willingness to learn. I don't think that has anything to do with age. If you somehow haven't gotten those skills and are not comfortable learning them, I don't know how you function in a modern workplace at all. It doesn't matter your age. If you're coming in and saying, Hey, can I can you show me how to do this? I may write it down and ask you two times today how to do it, but I'm like, fantastic. You're showing me the initiative and enthusiasm. You're not afraid to learn that. I think a lot of people think workers over a certain age are just afraid of technology. I think that's the real trope. I don't think that that's true at all.

Colette Williams 13:57 I agree. I don't think that's true at all. And the other thing is, when technology came out, you have to understand when it was new to us, because it was new to everybody. We were the ones saying, show me right. You are sort of, there's another age group growing up into it and assuming they know it all. That's why we ask the questions, oh,

Blake Hunsley 14:17 I'm fascinated by this, because, let me tell you, there's a whole different generational divide happening is you have people like me, and again, I'm 43 I grew up, you know, we were getting the first computers, and first personal computers in our house when we were kids, it was just becoming a standard thing. Nothing was an app. Nothing was press a single button. It was always okay. Well, this is broken again, so now we're going to figure out how to make this work. You really have to dig deep in there and figure it out you have the youngest generation coming up that doesn't have that experience. That's why I use Liv as an example. I don't tend to get many tech questions from people, say, in their 30s and 40s. I will get them say, from people 50 plus, but especially also from people in kind of their early 20s now, right? Starting to that that cohort of people who grew up figuring out the deeper, weirder bits of technology is is starting to pass up through and there's a younger generation that's coming on that does not have that

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 15:12 right? Well, because they use apps more than they use actual software packages, right, which

Blake Hunsley 15:19 I'm realizing sounds a little ageist, young people on my own here, but this is just from my personal experience of what I see here in this office as the main port of call for technological help. And we're allowed to just as common, yeah, well, yeah, and that's part of it. It's okay

Colette Williams 15:32 to do that, but you're absolutely right. The other piece is, for me, having children, I sure was going to know everything that came up. I wanted to know how it worked, and I'm a very curious person. On another note, I'm a very capable person, and we have to that's one of the things we have to believe about ourselves. It's okay to ask, it's okay to root around a little bit and find out. The other thing is that I love working, where I work at this wonderful organization with just an amazing CEO. I I asked the questions, and then a new hire will come in, and I'm delighted to sort of go down and say, Oh, this is how you do it. So I retain that. I remember it by golly. I'm going to, but now I can help. I can help you. You're a new hire. You may be younger than me, but I know our system. Oh, I can help you with that glitch. So it's delightful to be able to do that, but absolutely, I wanted to be aware of everything out there. Just a little anecdote. As a fitness instructor, I would go to the mount to some of our seminars, or we'd have a full day of information. And I sat in this room with various ages, but a lot of younger people. And a person was giving us information on, you know, on the technology, on what was available, and he was asking questions, well, who's on Facebook? Because Facebook was kind of thing until, and he kept going through them, I won't go somewhere, who's on Snapchat? And the hand sort of stayed down, and he sort of chocolate looked over and I said, Yeah, I have kids. I have kids who live away from me. It's like, what is this about? Tell me about it, and now we can keep in touch in the moment. So I was covering everything where some were sort of stuck or staying with what they needed. But the curiosity takes me further. You were

Blake Hunsley 17:16 on Tiktok before I was on Tiktok, I think, like true. That's

Colette Williams 17:20 the other piece, talking about the pandemic. Shelley earlier. So at home, and it was, I remember this winter, was a really cold winter, and again, at home thinking, what am I going to do? And I made a commitment to myself every Monday and Friday, I'm going out my veranda, no matter what the weather. That was just a part of my shtick. And we're going to, I'm going to, you know, put together a Tiktok, I'm going to do it. And I did it, and it was just and I wanted to be positive. It was generally positive little moments. And so when I was, when I was going through an interview from for my present day job, they mentioned that came up, and they said, We don't, we don't know about Tiktok, the two people. And I said, I can help you with that. And so yes, I wanted to be aware, and I do make them, and it's quite fun.

Blake Hunsley 18:08 I think if I can, if I can offer a guess here, first of all, I'm very happy that your experiences with ageism in the workplace are negligible. That is, that is very relieving to hear. But I think there might be two. There's two there's two reasons from what you're saying so far today that I can kind of suspect that might be the case. One is your general approach that you've just really done a great job of outlining you include people from different ages. You refuse to be pinned into certain activities that might be age specific or kept out of them. You're not letting anyone, anyone's preconceptions, keep you out of that. But also you started back into the workplace through volunteering first, and then got a job through that. And I think a lot of times when people are re entering the workforce after a long time away, or certain time away, and at a certain age, just the applicant applying for a job where it's it's kind of a cold, cold call, sort of application that people don't know anything about you except you know. They can see from your dates of experience, all your dates of education, what your age is. Maybe they meet you when you come in, you went in and volunteered first. And I mean ageism, when it comes to volunteers, is, in my personal experience, not a thing. I mean, volunteers tend to be over a certain age, and we rely on them desperately. So no one's going to be being an ageist jerk towards volunteers

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 19:28 Or they're there because they want to be exactly regardless of the age. But that got

Blake Hunsley 19:31 you in the door. Let you show them all of your expertise, your enthusiasm, your ability to engage with people of different ages, and I'm sure that was a massive help. I wonder if that's some advice that would just be good for anybody trying to re enter the workforce. It's if you're fortunate enough to be able to take it. I know we talk about people coming back away from retirement because they have to economically. It's not really quite such an option for them, but I'm glad you were fortunate to be able to do that right, because I would imagine that was a huge Kickstart to. Getting you employed. It was, it was a soft launch sort of thing,

Colette Williams 20:04 yeah, and I think you're at that time as well, Blake. It was, I should say, I dabbled in between. So much my spouse has has a company, so I would do admin work. I was always sort of dipping in, right again, understanding like learning keyboard. I can, I can type like anybody, where I see hunting and pecking going on for some of the younger ones, right? It's kind of cute. But again, having my children, it, and the way that happened even it's like, you know, you need to do something. You do. You need to. We're human beings. We need that social interaction, many of us, and it was my daughter. She was in university. They had to volunteer. She volunteered for this community justice, and after she had started taking it, and it had to do with restorative justice, she said, This is so Colette. Those were her words. So Colette, and she told me, so I went in, and that's exactly I got in. I ended up being a facilitator, and they saw what I could do. They saw my work, so then I ended up taking courses on it, taking more through St Mary's, and then that was we need to bring her in, which was delightful. So with them, I became a case worker in restorative justice, and I became an educator with them. So I taught people from, again, all walks of life. Why could I was very comfortable with all fields, and it was delightful. But you're right that stepping through and trying to volunteer in something, and with volunteering, we can choose our passion, like you said, Shelley, we're not assigned somewhere. Let's pick something we love to do, and if we can turn that into something more, be recognized for that, so be it. Yeah, Shelley, we

Blake Hunsley 21:39 haven't really touched on your personal experience. If this is something that you've had to deal with for yourself or I mean, in your capacity of your work, I'm really curious about that, because one of the facts that was given in the article here too was that it pointed out that three out of five older workers have either seen age based discrimination, obviously occurring in the workplace, or they've experienced in the workplace themselves, but only 3% of older workers have ever made a formal complaint about it. So I'm wondering if, is this something that you see in your capacity as an HR professional, do people bring this to you as a formal complaint, or do you are you aware that it's happening, but maybe it's not being reported the way it should be?

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 22:15 So that this is a great and I was, I was thinking about that. You know, Colette's experience is, you know, very different from some people's experience. If we were also having this session, this podcast, 15 years ago, okay, I think our conversations would be very different, because the world and in most cases, you know, not because there was a willingness to, because they were forced to Okay. Has had to embrace the, you know, 60 plus generation Okay, to come back into the into the workforce, right? But yes, very much, I would have experienced ageism because I came up through, you know, the law profession for a very short period of time before I went off to work for corporations. But even that, like, there was a very much an ageism, like there was a specific time you had to have so much time in like, you were expected to be a certain age before you would become like a full associate before, you know, then, and you needed to be, if you were a success, right, then you needed to be on the partner track by this age, right? And then, even in corporate Canada, you people were already planning your retirement, you know, at at 60, from an HR perspective, because I was always the head of HR and legal, like we would be, we would get reports that, you know, you know, Blake's coming up on his 60th birthday next year, and we that was an Automatic plan that we would start talking to him, okay, about when's he planning to report knowing that he'd be eligible with pension deficits, okay, at 60 right? When's he gonna retire? So from a succession planning point, so we're already there's, there's no thought that you're staying past 65 it's just an assumption. It's an assumption whether you can afford to or not, okay, you're an and there were some huge barriers. People couldn't get insurance coverage like you look like insurance carriers Okay, for the workplaces wouldn't cover workers after 65 so you might be working full time and you were not covered, right? So a lot of those things have changed right where in the workplace now, I think that for the most part, what I see is that's not like the biggest issue in life. We're we're embracing people's skill set. People. People's lived experiences, and we're inviting them to come back and either consult with us. We're inviting them I'm hearing and you and I were talking, you know, Blake, about some stories of people who thought they were going to retire, and then retired, and were like, Oh, this is boring. I don't have any I can't sit home every day, and now they've gone back into the workplace to either work one day a week or to offer consulting. And they're loving it, because the beauty is, they go to work in the moment, and then they go home and they enjoy their golf or their knitting, or they're sitting with their feet up watching the, you know, soap operas, and so they don't have that same stress and all of that kind of stuff. And the employer, let's not forget about the employer side, is really benefiting from that, because in a workplace where we're struggling to retain people well, to get people first off and to retain people, employers have lost, okay, a significant piece of knowledge base, right? When you have somebody who's leaving at the age of 60, okay, you're me, even if they've only worked for you for five years, okay, you're losing probably 40 years of work experience, right? Yes, and that cannot be replaced. It

Blake Hunsley 26:34 can't and there's institutional experience in that particular job

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 26:38 too. That's, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Like, you know, you there, I, I'm a big believer that, you know, people can be a manager at 18, right? Like, people can have, you know, response responsibilities based on their experiences. They're wanting to do it, right? So I'm not, I don't see myself, like, from a just in that perspective that, oh, you need to be 40 and have 20 years experience, yeah, what I do see now, right, is an actual okay recognition, okay by employers who 15 years ago, wouldn't have had this same thought process, who are saying, Oh, my goodness, right? What can we do? We need to start talking to Blake to make sure he's not going to retire like fully retire. Fully retire. What can we do to encourage him if he wants to retire? Can he come back one day a week? Can he offer us some consulting services? Because his skill set in the area of podcasting, you know, is going to be a deficiency for us, right? So I think we've come a long way. I think there's a ways to go. But if you were to ask me, where the way to go, where what we're still deficient in, I think it's more some of the big and I don't, I don't really know what to call that, but I think our federal, provincial, okay, and let's call it insurance programs, okay, haven't caught up with what's happening in the real world, yeah, because there's still some mandatory retirements. Are there still some while they've extended benefit, you know, cutoff period like now they're still saying that at 72 in some cases, the person you know, can't be covered anymore by by benefits, right? And that's a that's a problem.

Unknown Speaker 28:33 That's a problem, I think

Blake Hunsley 28:34 too. There is just an assumption that at 65 let's say everybody, and again, using air quotes on an audio podcast is my favorite thing. I apologize, but everybody wants to retire. And like you were saying, the amount of people that I know that have retired and just been miserable for six to nine months before going partially back to work, finding a whole new career, maybe a part time career correct. The only downside I've seen, because you're right, it works for that person. It really works for the company. I mean, we saw during COVID, how much knowledge just in the medical field that we needed to bring back in. It was like, No, we need you back. The only downside I've seen, and it's very unfortunate, is I've seen ageism bubble up from the younger people trying to get into certain sectors of work, because people aren't leaving when these people consider it their time to get out. And I'm going to talk about teaching in particular, because we talked before the show. My dad was a teacher for 40 odd years, and then he retired, got very bored, and then went back into substituting. Really, really loved it. Did he need to be working financially at that point? Not necessarily. He wasn't going back to work full time. It was more because it was something he enjoyed. He was getting all kinds of other value from it, right? And it was telling this story to a friend of mine one day, who I knew was an education graduate, and he was livid, because he was. In his early 20s, early to mid 20s, and he was the last on the list to call for substitutes, because they wanted all of these people with all these years of experience. And so jobs were tight in this sector, and this was in this person's eyes, making the problem even worse. So that's my only concern, is that it works for almost everybody. But does it potentially exacerbate ageism among the younger cohort coming in?

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 30:26 I'm, I'm, I'm gonna call like, BS on, okay,

Blake Hunsley 30:31 I love when you do this. We can swear on this podcast too, by the way. Well, I just

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 30:36 used the nerd it could talk about brilliant, you know, success, brilliant, substances.

Unknown Speaker 30:42 That, in

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 30:44 fact, right? You use teachers. So I'm going to call that like.

Blake Hunsley 30:51 My dad will be thrilled with this. Okay,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 30:55 if there's people on a long list of substitutes, right, that's because it's their choice in this province, in Nova Scotia, there are significant right holes, okay, where there's full time positions, right? The person just needs to remove themselves from their current space of living, okay, and move to another part of the province, right? So

Blake Hunsley 31:18 1,000% this was someone trying teaching in HRM, exactly. So there's people

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 31:22 who put you're good, there's people who put parameters around with what. So I'm, I will have to say I work with employers in across all different, you know, not for profit agencies, through to huge corporations, through to small family run businesses. I don't see and I've not heard, okay, where people are saying, well, I don't think I'm getting a job because they're keeping their old people right, even

Blake Hunsley 31:54 with an excuse from somebody who doesn't necessarily have the requisite skills they need, not even experience so much as, potentially, just the skills I want

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 32:02 to, I want to play a bit on, you know, on on, on Colette's experience, in the fact that she's self aware of, like, What can she do? Her her and doing some volunteer experience, so she'd be a known quantity. Sometimes people have grandiose expectations, right? Yes, when, when I, you know, graduated from university after going to university for eight years, right? You might think that I had a lot of smarts. I had a lot of textbook smarts. I was still life stupid, okay, and right that I didn't come out of university thinking that I was going to be the CEO of the organization the next day. And I think it's, and I'm, you know, I'm swinging the pendulum both ways, right for more of an exaggeration piece, but I do see many people who come in because I get asked to sit on on hiring committees, and I have people tell me that, well, I'm expecting this and this and this, and I feel like I'm looking at the resume. Have I missed a page? Yeah, right, because you are one minute out of university. Yeah, right. You haven't even worked. Because that's the other thing. We're seeing a lot of graduates of university, right? And their first job ever is going to be their real life job, like that they're looking for. So they have literally no experience. So I think that that's why I'm calling a little BS on that. Like I there's lots of work out there. There's lots of ways to get work. I'm, I'm not, I'm, I think this, you know, the piece of this, no retirement is more the barriers from insurance getting dinged by, you know, CPP, like some of those kind of things getting dinged by your pension, because you have to take it like It has to roll over at like 70 or 72 so then you get dinged if I'm going to be working. And who decided at age 65 okay, that I no longer have the cognitive ability All right, or that I'm a risk on your health insurance, or that my brain power is going to make

Blake Hunsley 34:39 or that you just have no interest in working because, sorry, your retirement age, that must be what you want

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 34:44 exactly. So that's my mic drop. I'm draw. Well, I literally did drop my mic but I wasn't at the end, and I'm sorry for going on and ranting a bit about that, but I do think that, and we. I you know, this is the beauty of having these conversations is, I mean, it's obviously my opinion, but I'm seeing a lot of this, and we're hearing from, you know, Colette, that that's not her experience at all, either,

Blake Hunsley 35:13 right, when you bring up something interesting too, because from what you're saying, it sounds like this person is picking up ageism as a lazy, easy excuse for what's happening in their job prospects right now, which, yeah, kind of felt like that at the time, to be totally honest with you, but it does lead into one of the things that this article talked a lot about, was that ageism is the last acceptable ism to casually pick up like that. You know? Why? Why do you think that is because I would argue that that is true based on my experience of seeing people not at reachability. I'm going to preface this in past jobs where there's been, you know, people dropping off resumes for a position that really does not need to be filled by someone in their 20s. There's absolutely no no physical barriers, no nothing. It could be a job filled by anyone. It's an entry level job, per se, and someone will come in, who's say, 63, 64 with an application, and you'll see the eye rolls, and you'll see them quietly, just put it at the very bottom of the pile. Whereas I like to think that at this day and age, you would not see someone come in who, say someone from a racialized community. You wouldn't see them so casually and openly toss that resume on the bottom of the pile in Nova Scotia. I would love to pretend that we wouldn't see that, but I certainly have seen it. But ageism really just seems to be in that respect, seems to be blatant and casual to me still. And I don't know if I'm Is that something that you think I'm wrong on, or do you think that it is still the last sort of casually acceptable.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 36:40 I absolutely, I think the P I think there's people out there who are doing that, like that, absolutely rolling their eyes, okay, oh, 63 like, what are they coming back into the world where they gonna work for me for two years, okay? But those are also still the same people, okay, that are marginalizing. People are looking at somebody with a disability, okay? And saying, well, they can't work here, right? They have, you know, they're in a wheelchair, they can't do anything for me, right? Or they right? I think that that's, uh, that that's a whole other conversation, conversation about those particular

Blake Hunsley 37:16 employers. It's a red flag for bigger issues.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 37:19 I think because that that's tends to be what what we hear from ageism when we say the last acceptable ageism, the in my practice, right? The only complaints I get are not about the employer, per se. It's not about the employer didn't hire me. It's more about I'm going to get cut off of my benefits. I'm gonna get right. So it's more of a human rights it's the systemic issues that are in place exactly, yeah, something that the employer actually can't control, because they've got these other, these other things, okay, institutions telling them, well, we can't insure you, we won't insure you, right? So that, that piece, I believe is, is correct for that reason, not because I don't think people are hiring. I think there's, as I said, I think there's been a really big turn the pandemic. One of the really, you know, good things coming out of the pandemic is employers who had their eyes shut, okay, had their eyes open, and had to go to some of these creative measures, calling retired nurses to come back and work, right? And it's been successful, calling retired people to come back to work.

Colette Williams 38:32 And the interesting thing just so much was said, and my head is just, you know, I have, I just want to jump in your first conversation, the first question about this young person and your father going back to work, my thought was, and Shelley covered it beautifully, was an older person would figure it out if there's something in front of us, we're not going to complain. We're going to figure it out, right and make that move. Do we need to move? What do we need to do? So there's that difference. We're not going to blame we're not going to pick an ism up and run with it. The other thing is, you just sort of tossed in there. What's that person going to work with me? For me for two years? All right, so they work with you for two years. Doesn't

Blake Hunsley 39:13 where's the assumption that someone 25 is going to stay even two years? My God, nobody stays at the job anymore.

Colette Williams 39:19 might be there. You know, they're going to jump through. And the other thing is, what the Government of Canada, we have lower birth rates since the 70s. So we've got a, you know, people aren't having as many babies, or none at all. That's a choice now, which, again, women's movements in the past have brought us to this, to be able to make those choices, and Canadians are living longer. Then this is according to the Government of Canada, the gains in the last decades have been particularly remarkable. Factors such as improved living conditions, better hygiene, preventive health care and medical advances partly explain the rise in life expectancy. But the thing is, we are living we're we're living longer, we're living healthier, we're more fine. Vibrant, and we do have that to offer. And for those places that roll their eyes Blake, there will always be. Those places absolutely

Blake Hunsley 40:09 always been, they'll always find a reason to roll their eyes at someone, whether

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 40:13 it's age, and wonder why things aren't going their way. And

Blake Hunsley 40:17 honestly, those employers would probably roll their eyes at someone coming in who was, you know, too young in their eyes. Just the same way, yeah, exactly which we are going to do a future episode on where we're going to speak to, we talked about this earlier. We're going to speak with a couple people who are in the Generation Z, Generation Z, whatever they want to call it, cohort, yeah, because I do still hear casual age isn't directed against younger employees, I'm sure. As well, exactly, of course, yeah, that has to be

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 40:43 there, yeah. And I think that's it. That's probably more prevalent than ageism at

Blake Hunsley 40:50 honestly, on my own experience, 1,000% true. I and maybe it's because people are more willing to say that part loud, because they feel less bad about it, I don't know, but ageism. I don't want to say it strikes me as funny, but I'll get to why it strikes me as funny. Here is the same reason that we talk a lot about here, about people who who are uncomfortable with people living with disability. We're like, if you are lucky, you will have a disability one day, because that means you have lived long enough. We say everybody either has, has had or will have a disability, correct? Ageism is equally hilarious. If you are lucky, you will live long enough to be the recipient. It's coming for us all. Why would you indulge in this when there, if you are lucky, is where you are headed is to be the recipient. And

Colette Williams 41:37 you're right. And jumping into that, just going back to Tiktok, which has sort of started out with the kids, and it's delightful to see, because I'm still on it. I still enjoy it, because lots of lovely things and conversations come up. But somebody might be throwing a dig at someone. Let's say there's a creator who's a mature creator, and the comment might be, you're old, and I had commented on something once, and this was on Twitter, actually, which I'm not on anymore for various reasons. Anyway, it was there, and I was making a comment about something that was like, well, that comment came up, and I thought, I guess it was based on, I put my picture up, and I went back and said, Aren't I lucky? And I left it at that. And then we actually started a lovely engagement back and forth, because she was it came down to her having difficulties as a mom with children, we, I started chatting with her about it and giving ideas. But the thing is, we, we don't get as upset, and I hope we continue along the way, but, but be clear, aren't I lucky to be the age I am? Not everybody has that gift, and not everybody has, you know, the lovely experiences that we have in life at reaching this age. So, yeah, I think we are starting to own it. I think that the changes are happening. I hear you Shelley, talking about the mechanics behind it, the insurance pieces and that that I didn't even really know that

Blake Hunsley 42:57 wasn't something I had ever encountered.

Colette Williams 43:01 I always believe, for every cause, there are some that I'm really good at, there's someone staying away from the thing, and you've got this. I hope there are people like you who are saying we're fighting for this change. I don't know where to begin with that, but I believe there are people out there doing it, and I hope so,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 43:16 yes, there, there are, but, and I think that that's part of why, you know, doing some of these things, that we have misconceptions, or just lack of information on, on, on what's happening, so that that's probably more facing the the generation. I'm eager to talk to, the Gen z's. I'm looking for concerns about that, and you know, how they're treated. Or my you know, like you know younger, younger age, where you know my, you know, nephew will say to me, oh yes, let me guess, when you were walking to school, holding on to the telephone line, right? So, of course, I exaggerate that up really,

Colette Williams 43:56 No, we walked up the hill well, and it was our parents doing this. It's like walk to school uphill both ways. This

Blake Hunsley 44:04 is the awful part about tick tock. Is, if you're over 30, is the bar on tick tock where you're it's you're the Oh yes, when you walk to school through the snow, oh no, I'm so far past the life delightful can be eye opening, that is for sure.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 44:17 Age is all in the in the eye of the beholder, because when I just when I just think about it, I just heard this story. I sit on another on another board, and the the CEO is telling us that she was into, you know, one of the clubs, talking to, you know, one of the little kids who was six or seven years old, and something came up about age, and she said, Well, how old do you think I am? And you know, the CEO would dangerous question. CEO would be 40 if she's a day. CEO said, oh, like 65 so it's per se, right? Perception, because when you're six and you're just starting over 20 as a senior, striving to get to be seven,

Colette Williams 45:08 we've got, like, live is actually 24 is, well, a little one, they're going to you're old. I remember looking, I remember thinking to my teachers, I remember being in certain, you know, grades, and thinking, well, they're older, and they're like, oh my gosh, you know, they weren't, but it is. It's all about perception. And I think we can kind of change that with our energy. Yes, we're going to own our ages and and actually, a lot of people in the media world, where there are more women, whether talk shows and, you know, are out there more as anchors and are owning their ages, because it's, again, it's not a dirty word, my dear sweet friend, who is a few little bit older than me, yeah, who let her own it also, I'm up. You own it. You don't have to tell anybody anything, right?

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 45:51 And I think, I think that the you know, something that we said here is that there's always going to be, you know people who agree or or disagree and to each their To each their own, but I personally am very much like you, like I am thankful every day okay that I wake up right because It's another day to get to experience something. It's another day to get to purchase another pair of, you know, Nike Jordan shoes. I only started collecting when I was 60. I started becoming a sneaker head, and I learned that title, and, you know, and that to me, I, you know, I, I embrace that. That's something that some people look at and go, really,

Blake Hunsley 46:51 which is another delightful form of agency. Yes, we're gate keeping our own generation from enjoying something for the youth,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 46:58 right? I'm excited that I have the confidence, right? And that was something that, you know, Colette talked about, is I have the confidence, okay, in myself. I'm happy to be alive. I'm grateful. Like it to one of your points that you brought up Blake, that I'm still alive at 61, and nine months, and I'm getting to experience all of

Blake Hunsley 47:21 Age is just a high score, since you're still in the game, congratulations.

Speaker 1 47:26 And we move and, you know, we go on there. And when you talk about getting your Nikes and that you were a sneaker head,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 47:31 yeah,

Colette Williams 47:34 I didn't know that, right? But also with what we wear, you know, as I said, it's changed. Once upon a time and through the decades, it was like this. This is your outfit. This is your hairstyle. We talked about the Golden Girls. Thank goodness this change that I can wear a messy bun and my jeans at my age and own it. But there's the thing, we have to own what you're wearing. Wear it with confidence and own it right, and you know, you're going to power through beautifully. Nobody's going to question that. And if they do, I mean, there's the other that's right

Blake Hunsley 48:06 back to, that's right back to, I think why you haven't had to deal with much ageist nonsense personally is because you do have that confidence and that openness with engaging people, I think. And that sounds like I'm blaming the recipients of ageism for the ages, and that they encounter no because if that person who I was talking about earlier, who wasn't getting into the teaching field had that confidence in their own skills, they wouldn't be taking the lazy route to blame it on people not retiring either. And I

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 48:31 don't, you know, and I don't want, because I believe there is ageism. I think it's pointed at some specific things. But we talk a lot on, you know, these shows about self awareness, yes, right? And I think that's key here as well, like, if you're aware of yourself, of your needs, of your abilities, right? What you can do, okay? That brings you a level of confidence, right? And you probably show up okay in a very different than a person who has the whole negative attitude, okay, or the defeatist attitude, perceived or real, right? And you know, because that is also true, right? In this world of social media, right, people's opinions aren't always their own. People's their opinions have become what they've read, yes, on social media, right? And, you know, that's a perception, right? That's not always true, so just put that out there. I think that, you know, from an ageism point of view, I think you know, we're doing a much better job than we have been doing, and there's still still some bureaucratic or political, or, you know, institutional, if you will, things that are in the way that we need to improve. For everybody, yeah, and because, again, according to the birth rights, okay, it's going to be even more important that we keep people in the workplace longer, or invite people to come back. And we need to do so so that there aren't the barriers of, well, that pension or that money that you work so hard to save, you're going to lose all that if you come back to work right? Like one hand taketh away from the other. So I think there's some things that we need to change, but I'm very excited to continue this conversation with the, you know, the Gen Z, the Gen Y, like their perception on ageism. Because I would like to, I would like to ferret out some of that.

Blake Hunsley 50:46 I'm legitimately curious, and I can't wait to find out if the youngest co workers among us are the ones experiencing more obvious right now, which, on the one hand, I'm like, well, well, yay. We've made progressive change on one end, but on the other hand, oh no, we've just lumped it over onto the other end, exactly.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 51:03 And I think that that's going to be a great conversation. Very eye opening, yeah. And

Blake Hunsley 51:08 honestly, social change going two steps forward, one step back, sounds about right, too. So, well, not right. Just normal it.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 51:16 Well, it kind of is normal because, you know, you can't every change, okay, always has some consequence, positive for some, neutral for some, and negative for some. Because not everything's 100% perfect,

Blake Hunsley 51:31 nope. And next time I think we're gonna have to air that one after this, because I'm fascinated about this, how these are gonna stack up against each other. So

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 51:37 we get excited.

Blake Hunsley 51:40 We're not even done this episode right

Colette Williams 51:42 now. Shelley, we are feeling the power.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 51:45 It feels good. And I just, you know, I did think like, you know, in closing before you we thank Colette for being here it. You know, it really is too bad that we're not on video because we are talking about ageism and, you know, like our generation, and clearly, we've set our age, but we look 35

Blake Hunsley 52:08 Absolutely, oh, I look my age. I'm just incredibly handsome. On that note of object honesty, we're not

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 52:15 closing. I'll be okay if you cut that part. I just

Colette Williams 52:20 want to add one more thing, sure we are not closing without saying why we should hire older skilled workers right at home. So here it is, number one. So here's from the Government of Canada, there's a need to increase the labor for the labor market with older adults, to support businesses economic growth and continued improvement in Canada's standard of living, that's from the government itself. And what do we get when we hire someone right who's older? Universally, they found that older workers bring a level of experience, critical thinking and sheer knowledge that cannot be taught.

Blake Hunsley 52:57 The last little extra because it was from the article that we base this on today, and I completely forgot to mention it earlier too, is just in terms of marketing. Marketing agents have always focused on, you know, the 18 to 25 demographic, because it's been such a key economic generator. But now you need to market to people over 65 because that is the biggest cohort, and you cannot do that without people in the room who can tell you what those people

Colette Williams 53:21 want? Yes, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. That's perfect. That's a wonderful example.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 53:26 You're missing the boat if you're not marketing to those individuals, absolutely. And

Blake Hunsley 53:31 if you can tell a company, no and it's skip your altruism, it comes down to money, they will always jump on board so fast. Of course, I don't care. I say it all the time. I don't care why you're jumping on the board to do something good, just come on board if it's because it's making you money great,

Colette Williams 53:45 right? The other thing that people notice in companies as well older workers, and it might be that we are more aware, and you're right, maybe I do when I have to ask you for to explain something to me, and I get angry with myself. We are aware also of our age we are but it's like older workers will show up earlier, stay later if they need to, but we're gonna work life balance is a thing that I'm embracing, but they will show up. They will really dive in and work their full day. You're gonna get the most from from these people, I'll tell

Blake Hunsley 54:15 you, though, and we'll talk about this on the youth episode. In my experience, the youth do too, and I think that is one of the I think that's one of the ageist things that gets kind of shoved against there,

Speaker 1 54:25 and the age spectrum those studies are going to be great to look at. Yeah,

Blake Hunsley 54:29 I'm excited about this. Well, Colette, thank you for joining us. If you listen to our episode, we do it with the Gen Zs, and you vehemently disagree with everything they have to say about ageism in the workplace for a second time where you can write us some viewer mail our listeners. Thank you for joining us as well. If you have ideas for future episodes, if you would like to join us here at the reachability office to record a future episode, or if you vehemently disagree with something we've said on today's episode, or kindly agree, we'd be happy to hear from you. Either way, Colette, thank you so much for joining us today.

Colette Williams 55:00 Thank you for having me. It's been a delight. Thank you both. Thank you.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 55:03 Thanks for listening to within our reach. We'll be back in two weeks with our next episode. If you have an idea for an episode, topic you'd like us to cover, or if you'd like to join us as a guest on the podcast, reach out to us at withinourreach@reachability.org.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai