Straight talking: about aging at the workplace

Aging at work – is “50 plus” the end … or just a beginning? In this contribution, I look at my own challenging experience. Are you in a similar situation, can you relate – or are you in another age bracket, as yet unconfronted with thoughts of the kind? 

Becoming a stranger in my own body

Aging is a process that during most of our lifetime goes hardly noticed. We turn our aging process into a topic only selectively, episodically, or periodically – until the tipping point comes around. I remember that moment well: it happened when I looked into the mirror and frowned at the reflection which did, and does, not look at all like the woman I see myself as. This aging woman is no longer me.  

I am determined to cope with this issue based on my usual self-discipline. A little more sport, a little less chocolate, and everything will be fine again. But it isn’t just that: my volition is simply gone. I find myself not only feeling increasingly "I can no longer do this", but also "I am no longer able to want to do this." My volition, and consequently my self, are bent by biology! This shakes me deeply.

I rebel against my physically false self, I want to strip off the shell of my aged body to become myself again. But I have to admit to myself: My false, because old and strange self is my true self, with whom I have to live on.

These contemplations take place in the safe space of my privacy, away from prying and judging eyes. However, I cannot hide my aging body from the world, and particularly in the work field, I feel a certain concern about the gaze and the disparaging judgment of colleagues.

My strength of will and persistence have always been important aspects of my identity which have been most appreciated by my superiors. I am the one who gets things done. How will my co-workers react to my incipient aging? Will they equate the increase in wrinkles, gray hair, and kilos with a dwindling of my performance?

Loss of companions – loss of my past

I began working at the age of sixteen and since then I have been employed in various companies, until I joined Siemens 20 years ago. Since then, the company’s topography keeps changing at a furious speed and thus I have seen a multitude of mergers and acquisitions as well as carve-outs and spin-offs. In those twenty years, I have made my, albeit small, contributions to shaping the company, and am thus a part of its history. In the same way, the company’s history is part of my personal past.

One’s past can only be kept alive through conversation with the people who shared it.

To share memories is good for our minds and souls.

Having said this, the changes within my company have been accompanied by the loss of a large number of valued long-term companions – as a result of restructuring, as well as retirement and settlement offers. The loss of these people means the loss of this part of my past. Has Corona reinforced these feeling? I miss them, yes, and I am grieving.

Women without potential

I definitely have an idea of what I can do for my company in the upcoming nine years – how I can use and share my experience, my knowledge, and my newly acquired skills.

However, I have to realize that in the judgement of others, as a 55plus year old woman, I am only what I am and no longer what I could be.

Career opportunities are shrinking more and more, until they have solidified into the final stage of an employment biography. Either I have been a team manager or not. Either I have worked abroad or I have not. If I haven’t achieved either yet, I won’t be able to do so ever, nor anything else. And so, I find myself to be an employee without potential – not from my own judgment, but in the eyes of others.

As a precaution, I study the conditions of part-time work for older employees and watch closely how my colleagues react to settlement offers. And I ask myself the worried question: What would happen to me if I received and refused such an irresistible offer?

What now?

Positive thinking like "I'm not stopping, I'm just starting" or "Keeping the best for last!" won’t help me. With statements such as these, I do not feel respected regarding my worries and feelings. Everyone who knows me knows that I will not succumb to resignation. On the contrary, every day is a renewed invitation to shape my own existence and the world I live in. Here are my three steps: 

1. Embracing the pain

It took me a long time to face my aging. It was, and is, a painful process – but it is necessary. Only when I acknowledge my diffuse feelings of fear, anxiety, and grief, when I open up to feeling them, am I able to differentiate them, to realize their nuances. I can name them and I can understand them. And this is what opens the door to change. 

2. Making aging the subject of a discussion 

I have started to write about my experiences of aging. In writing about my sadness and my self-alienation, I have already escaped the mere consternation a little and was able to get a little closer to myself again. However, I achieved the biggest boost when I dared to talk about my feelings with other people. Suddenly, windows opened! Within a very short time I found people for whom this topic is also of concern. People who enriched me with their experiences and views. People who are willing to discuss aging at work with you and me. 

3. Giving aging a meaning, and finding ways to cope

No, it is not over yet. Whether #50plus or #55plus – we still find opportunities to further shape our career. We, the agers, can – and will – identify ways and means to interact with new people and new situations, to forge new ideas which enable progress … for the benefit of all. In the upcoming weeks, you will be reading a variety of contributions on aging at work from within my network, covering a multitude of aspects. What can we ourselves do? What can team leaders to? How can structures in the company be designed in such a way that the potential of the #50plus employees is tapped? And what does a positive collaboration with generations XYZ look like?

I – we – have not reached the finishing line at all. We have quite a way to go! Stay tuned.