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Not retiring: career transition is for everyone
Chances to try something new should be available to people throughout their career.
A report out this week from Teach First focused on making the profession more flexible in order to attract younger people. It recommended, for instance, secondments to other sectors. But it’s not just young people who might want greater flexibility in their workplace, whatever that might mean for them, and opportunities to take time out and try other options.
As we live – and work – longer, we will all be moving around more and so we need to be open to trying new things. Our workingwise.co.uk surveys continuously show that older people are keen to learn new things. Many complain of being stuck in a rut or being undervalued. It can be difficult to move if you have additional responsibilities, such as caring for elderly parents or paying for university bills, but midlife is a time of great turbulence too, just as early parenthood or teenage-dom is.
Often it is a time of personal change – divorce, health issues, caring issues, bereavement, menopause, redundancy, grappling with your own mortality and more. There is no shortage of things going on and changing jobs or careers can either be necessary, as in the case of redundancy, or a welcome shift from a career you may have fallen into and stayed with just because it was easier when the kids were young.
But you can change career at any time, if the opportunities are there. There is no reason secondments couldn’t work for older workers, just as apprenticeships have been enthusiastically embraced by some. This week on our sister site workingmums.co.uk we have been hosting webinars on a whole range of different jobs and sectors. The aim is to give people ideas and inspiration for what they could do.
Yesterday, for instance, Kimberley Cook from codebar, a charity which offers free one-to-one coaching for those looking to get into coding, outlined how they are looking to help underrepresented groups into a tech career. Cook mentioned women, LGBTQ+ and non-binary people and those from ethnic minorities, but said the organisation is very flexible about who it helps. Older people are surely underrepresented in tech roles and these are often the roles that are better paid. There’s no reason why they couldn’t switch to coding. Other sessions covered working in British Transport Police, at BAE Systems, for SLR Consulting or AWE, on social media marketing or in early years. There was also lots of general careers support.
It’s never too late to start over and there’s more advice and information out there to help than you might think. Employers should also take note. We’re all learners now.
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