Daybreak - Daybreak Special: How India's 40-somethings are redefining career longevity

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

There is something really concerning happening to India’s 200-million strong workforce. Nearly half of them, who are above the age of 45, have reached a point in their careers where they may have to retire much earlier than they planned. Against their will.In a nutshell, the usual career span that would last anything between 40 to 50 years even has been slashed by half almost….. to just 20 or 25 years. But this isn’t something that a lot of 40 and 50 year olds are taking lying down. They are figuring out ways to hack the system so they can stay “forever employable”. And in the process, conventional career trajectories are starting to change. Like one 38-year-old CXO put it, “Growth—be it in a profession or in life—is not equivalent to moving up a single, well-defined ladder.” Daybreak hosts Snigdha and Rahel speak to The Ken reporter Vanita Bhatnagar about these new career trends. Tune in.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganesh, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the same. secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they managed to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into.

to the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert, as soon as we release our first episode, please follow Intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast. or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode.

Today's episode is about an existential crisis. There is something really concerning happening to India's 200 million strong workforce. Nearly half of them, who are above the age of 45, have reached a point in their careers where they may have to retire much earlier than they planned. and that too against their will. Yes. In fact, I spoke about this in an earlier episode of daybreak.

We spoke about the 40 or 50 something consultants, freelancers, part-time executives or self-employed hustlers. We call them the unwilling retirees. These are people who've been forced to shift from their traditional jobs into these makeshift type of roles. And looking for a job has become super difficult for them. And that of course is leading to a lot of financial issues. and stress. In a nutshell, the usual career span that would last anything between 40 to 50 years

even has been slashed by half almost to just about 20 or 25 years. Now, all of this is actually based on the findings of a very ambitious survey that was carried out by a reporter here in the Ken Newsroom. Her name is Vanita Bhatnagar. The survey that she carried out was on career longevity. She wanted to understand how people perceive their careers long term and the career pivots that they were often forced to make. Okay, but it's not all

doom and gloom because in the process Vanita got to speak to a bunch of 40 and 50 somethings who figure out how to navigate these roadblocks and to remain forever employable. Welcome to the 5th Friday special episode of Daybreak. I'm Snigda

and I'm Rahal and once a week Snigda and I come together to talk about things in business and tech that interests the both of us. And it won't just be us. Depending on what we're talking about, we'll also be bringing a bunch of really interesting people onto the podcast. In this episode, we talked to Vanita about how some of these unwilling retirees

are trying to become forever employable. Vanita also tells us some of the fascinating things she learned from the survey. And don't be under the impression that this episode is just for people over the age of 45. Some of the tips Vanita's sources have to offer are each. equally relevant to 20-somethings and 30-somethings. Exactly. So hang in there. So, Vanita, can you start by telling us what got you interested in the story in the first place?

Right. So while I was in law school, I have only seen very linear career parts. Like for us, if someone was looking to become a corporate lawyer, they would typically start as an associate, become a senior associate and went on to become a partner. that was de-career part what we knew when we were studying law. But when I said, I'll just interrupt and tell our listeners, in case you're confused law school, Vanita was a lawyer before she became a journalist, just so you know. So post-COVID, I was wondering that, you know,

how people are looking at their careers now? Has their career aspirations changed? Like, what would a typical 40-year-old want from their career now when the way we work has also changed? do they still want to continue and climb the corporate ladder or do they want to explore newer areas? Or maybe are they looking to switch industries or maybe they just want to retire? So with these set of questions in mind and also one of my colleagues shared a Twitter thread in our Slack group and we sort of saw that there is a trend where 40 people in their 40s are kind of feeling stuck

where they don't see a lot of growth opportunities in their existing companies. And when they're trying to pivot, it's also difficult at their age. And hence we thought that, you know, maybe we can do a story here. So the quintessential 9 to 5, you know, go up the corporate ladder and retire at 60, you know, those aspirations are changing pretty quickly, right? Definitely, 100%. Yeah, that's so interesting. Also, I mean, again, for our listeners, this is a two-part story that Vanita's done.

And actually, if you regularly listen to Daybreak, you'll remember, I think a couple of weeks ago. I don't remember exactly when. But we had done this story on unwilling retirees, and that was based on Vanita's first report. And I remember this very interesting quote from there that one of Vanita's sources had told her, right? Vanita about something around the lines of, like, if our Prime Minister is, so active and he's working at the age of 75, why do we have to quit working after 40

or something like that, right? Right. So, Vanita's story is actually based on this very interesting survey that she carried out and I think, Vanita, how many people responded to your survey? Over 300 people. Wow, okay, very, yeah. So

it was about career longevity. Can you tell us a little bit about the kind of questions that you were asking people. Right. Before that, I'll also like to tell you, you know, why we decided to do a survey for this story. Generally, for our stories, like we reach out to our sources and try to figure that, you know, if there are already data points available, we could see here that there was a trend, but while I was speaking to recruiters and HR managers, we didn't really have clear numbers. So we decided that maybe, you know, we'll run a survey for our subscribers to sort of understand that how, how

How do they see their careers? What is that they want after 40? How difficult it is for them when they're looking to move to another industry or even when they're trying to find the next employment? What are the challenges do they face? Also, what is that they are prioritizing? Are they wanting to upskill, reskill? Do they want to take sabbaticals?

Do they want to retire early? Or do they want to do freelance, go for gigs, become consultants? So given all of these kind of options, we designed our survey and we received over. So there were about 1,000 people who participated in the survey, but like people above 40 were only 300. So if you could tell us, just walk us through some of the biggest findings of this survey, Vanita. What were some of the things that kind of, you know, surprised you. Yeah, tell us. Right.

So we found that about 85% people said that they feel. their career spans are shortening from the traditional 40 to 45 years. Like what Rahil mentioned earlier, that, you know, people would take a job and they would, you know, sit at that one company and reach up till the top. But now they kind of feel that their careers are becoming shortened. Like, you know, they only have like 20 years to 25 years of a runway. That's what 85% people said in the survey. And over 64% of people said that they do not find growth opportunities at their cardinal company. They kind of feel that they have reached the glass ceiling owning to their age and beyond

that point they don't see any growth within that existing company. Wow. Okay, so there's so much to unpack there. But to start with, Vanita, can you tell me if this kind of trend is being seen across industries or if there are some industries that are affected by it more than others? So definitely we see this more playing out in 10. manufacturing, retail and pharma as compared to consultancies. So that's there.

Okay, why those industries though? Because in tech particularly, like for example, something that a person might be doing at 40, like their younger colleague who joins maybe at 25 and 30, they're already updated with that technology and they're able to do that faster, like, you know, what that person might have been doing after so many years of experience.

However, in consultancy, because it's more about advisory roles, their professionals still have a longer runway because it's more about experience and, you know, advising businesses as compared to, you know, core specific skills. Vanita, I had one more question. You know, I just wanted to understand how are people, of course, you understood the scale of this because of the kind of responses that you got in your survey. But how are people individually coming to this realization, you know, that their career spans may be getting shorter? Because you did speak to people across all age groups. Like if you can give us some individual examples. So, for instance, Mr. Srinivasin, he worked with Oracle for two decades. He became a developmental manager in 2012.

And then for next seven years, he was at the same position. and he was only 42 then. So he sort of realized that, you know, how long I'm going to be in the same position. Because after that, promotions were not happening. Like, you know, he had certain opportunities, but those didn't really add up to the kind of growth

that he was expecting. Like, you know, he was only, so if he was managing X amount of people, sorry, if he was managing X number of people, it was only increasing that. but in a sense he was not seeing any growth in the kind of work that he was doing. So for seven years he sort of felt that even though he was working at this big technology company, he kind of felt stuck.

And that's when he took a sabbatical for two years and revisited what probably he could do next in his career. And retirement was absolutely out of question for him because he had his daughter, or like he had to finance his daughter's education, who was just about to start college. And also he was only 46. Right. He was wondering that, you know, what next probably he could do.

Yeah, suddenly, you know, we've been actually on the other side, we're going through this phase where we're like, oh, 40s is the new 30s and 30s is the new 20s. But on the other side, after getting to know about what's happening here, it feels like, oh my God, 40s old. Also, also there's an interesting. interesting statistic here and it wouldn't be a daybreak episode without an interesting

statistic interesting and also partly quite terrifying but apparently in technology only a tiny fraction and by that I mean literally a little a little over 1% are still working past 50 so so yeah so there's that but coming back to what snigda just said you know it's really funny because suddenly it's like longer life expectancy doesn't really seem like such a great idea right we're all going to live till like 70, fingers crossed. But, you know, the last 20 or 30 years, you're actually staring at this very real prospect of being unemployed, right? Retirement is fantastic.

It's great and all. But it's great only when you get to choose it for yourself. Exactly. So lifespan is increasing. We're going to live for longer, but we won't be employed for as long as we used to be employed for. So that is, yeah, we're really stuck in a, between a rock and a hot place.

Right, Vanita? Yeah, and there's also this pyramid effect, which sort of means that, you know, when at the bottom of the pyramid, there are obviously more jobs, but as you, when you have more and more experience at the top, there are lesser opportunities. So when you have like a longer life, where will you sort of put yourself? How will you plan that journey for yourself? All right, but, but there is still some hope and Vanita kind of talks about that in. the second part of her story.

Vanita, you spoke to some people who have kind of figured out how to hack this, right? Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Like, how have they figured out how to work around to stay employed for longer? Right. Snigda, so a lot of employees that I spoke with told me that how they are looking for ways in which they can stay forever employable. Now, forever employability hinges upon how a person, creates a certain level of expertise in an area where they work and build a personal brand

that will ensure that work will always find them. Now, this could be done as a consultant, freelancer, someone who's working as a gig worker or working as an in-house employee too, where it might involve lateral movements or negotiating in a way that works for both the employee and the employer. So for instance, like if you take my own example, that you know, if I'm not finding enough growth opportunities in editorial, I might want to reconsider working maybe for the product team, maybe in the podcast team. So growth does not always have to be vertical.

It could also be lateral. And in another instance, what we saw in the story was this lady called Nareesh, who was working as a business head at Mercer. When she retired at 60, she did not quit the consulting firm. Instead, she became an advisor with them. So that kind of gave a questioning to both Mercer and Nuresh, where Mercer sort of had her expertise. She already knew, like she's been with the company for years. So she already knew how they work.

And through her expertise, she was able to mentor younger people. She was able to help them with presentations, pitch deck and all of that. And along with that, it also allowed younger people to, you know, sort of keep growing within the organization. So without taking that space, like without taking that space for younger people, both Mercer and Nareh like sort of created a middle way out sort of a thing. Yeah. So that's great because both get something out of it. Okay.

So basically that kind of comes back to what we were talking about a little while ago as well, right? Vanita, right, Snigda, we were talking about how for the longest time we looked at, you know, our conventional idea of what a career should look like. It's kind of like, you know, you're constantly climbing up this imaginary ladder. It's very linear in that sense. True, true. Right? So even if you say jump jobs, you're generally staying within the ambit of one particular sector or a particular specialization.

So, I mean, there are also the likelihood of you, say, for instance, if I were a political reporter, I'd be looking for other gigs as a political reporter that may maybe offer more money or more opportunity. but that isn't necessarily the case when you're thinking about a long-term career, right? You're supposed to think big, think beyond that, pick a non-linear path. Can you tell us what some of your, you know, the survey respondents, the people that you spoke to, what they had to say, you know, how does that non-linear path usually play out? Right. So if we consider the example of Kusagru. Now Kishagru Gupta, he's just 38 years old. He has left his corporate job and he has left his corporate job and he He's doing a bunch of things currently.

So earlier he was working as a marketing head for big brands like PIFZER, Dr. Reddy's, Trite Farmer, but he decided that instead of staying in the race of climbing the corporate ladder, he would choose an unconventional career path and he decided to become a fractional CMO, a fractional chief marketing officer. Now, what he does as a fractional CMO is that he provides his consultancy services, to nascent businesses where he helps them build the marketing function from ground zero. And once it is built, like he quits and, you know, he creates that setup where the company can go on after that function is created. Apart from that, he's also running his own boutique marketing firm called brand scalers that sort of provide marketing related services.

like for example if someone is looking to run a digital campaign marketing campaigns looking to hire influencers and all of that so this is like an adjacent to it but he has this separate firm altogether and besides this he's also engaged in two more roles one is that he has founded a council of fractional leaders fractional CXOs in telangana where people from across industries like technology manufacturing, pharma, CTO, CMOs, CFOs, they all come together and they sort of share their own experiences and help nascent businesses with kind of expertise that they have. So he's founded this organization. He's running this council. And apart from that, he's also mentoring young startups as a Stanford seed mentor. He's also mentoring young startups on whatever. So it's like a 40-minute

call where whatever concerns the founders of these young companies have, he helps them navigate those challenges. Now, these last two things that we spoke about, Council of Fractional CXOs and being a mentor, these are not paid roles, but it allows him to tap into a network that he probably wouldn't have if he was doing like a traditional job. And through this network, you know, he's able to get more apportion. opportunities, build his expertise. Like, for example, one day he's mentoring an AI startup. The other day he's speaking to someone who's deep into technology or maybe like a pharma company, very

different from each other. So that way he's able to garner more experience and expertise across sectors. And at the same time, he's also able to meet like a lot of new people, which, you know, typically you and I, if we stick to like just one kind of a role, it's not possible. sounds both exciting and deeply exhausting. Yeah, yeah, that's true. But, okay, so, Vanita, you mentioned, obviously not all of these roles are paid, these non-linear parts that somebody like Kushagra has taken. Like, a lot of it is just for the networking and meeting new people.

So it's not necessary that you'll get paid for it. So we'll get to the money and the networking part later. but Kushagra is somebody who is a CXO, right, chief experience officer. But not everybody rises to top leadership, right? He already had that, which probably means that it was kind of easier for him to go the nonlinear path, right? But not everybody rises to the top leadership. So what about those people? What are they doing to stay more relevant and employable?

Right. Professionals are also considering upskilling or rescaling. in order to get re-employed. Like, for example, I spoke with this person, a 50-year-old man, Mohindar Guglani, who has been working as an assistant general manager at Punjab National Bank for past decade or so. But his retirement was due in next two years. But neither did he have willingness to retire or a financial cushion to retire at that stage. So he decided that he'll write certain examinations again.

to sort of see that where he can get an opportunity. So he wrote this exam called limited insolvency examination that is conducted by the insolvency and bankruptcy code of India. Now, under that court, it allows people to be appointed as an insolvency officer. Now, someone who will look after when a company is going for insolvency. So if you could take a step back and kind of see where things stand right now, right? would it be fair to say that, you know, instead of finding that one nine to five you want to do till the day you die, basically what a lot of people now are doing is thinking long term, which means instead of choosing that one job,

you're constantly like tweaking your career path, right, to stay in the game for longer, right? There's an interesting cricket analogy that you used in your story, Vanita. Do you want to share that with us? Right. So it says that, you know, you just have to figure the pitch, how's the pitch and then sort of bat. So giving another example, just like your insolvency and bankruptcy code, people with years of corporate experience, they also have an opportunity to become a director within a company or become a board member. Because after working for like 30 years in a corporate sector, you do have a holistic understanding about how companies work. And younger companies like your MSMEs, startups, they do need that kind of guidance. So the board member role allows you to do that.

And a lot of these people, like, this is flexible. They get paid on, you know, when they sit on the board, they get paid sitting fees. And for this also. So earlier, you know, people had this misconception that only people who are in law or, you know, from a certain background can become an independent director. But that's not correct. like, you know, for independent director as well, there is an exam that's been conducted. And anybody who clears that exam, even for, and it does not have an age boss.

So even, you know, maybe Snigda or Rahel, anybody like, you know, we can write the exam and be on the data bank of that independent directorship and, you know, can mentor companies around that. Right. So, Vanita, you know, upskilling sounds like it is one way to, you know, kind of get out of this. you know, dead end, right? But also it does sound easy, but it can't be because the age thing comes into play, right? Like, for example, how difficult it is for us to learn a new language after a certain age. So it must not be easy to pick up a skill, you know, for employees of this age bracket. So what are some of the trouble points that they usually face when they're learning a new skill? Right, but I think it all boils down to the fact that.

how much fire do you have in your belly and how much does a person want to excel at maybe trying something new or look forward towards moving that career? Because like you said, that you know, upskilling or training yourself from the beginning is very hard after a particular age. But in my reporting, what I have realized is that people like, for example, Sri Navasin, that I spoke for the unwilling retiree story, or here in this case, Mr. Sham Sundar or Sumit Ghosh, they all have been doing variety of things and the and for some some things are you know absolutely different like you know something that they have not done earlier in their careers at all like I'll give you an example so gosh is also a

co-team member of the eco-web project so this is basically an initiative by a climate tech action network however earlier he's worked in a finance company you He's worked for multinational consumer goods, conglary roommates, New York life insurance, like those kind of companies he's worked before. So this climate tech project is an absolutely different thing for him. But why he did this was number one. He was getting to explore something or delve into something he has never done before. And that sort of brings that excitement.

There's also so when you're starting something new, it's challenging, of course, but there's also a lot of excitement to it. and in my opinion and through my reporting like whatever I've come across it's whenever people have that fire in the belly and you know they want to keep moving parts keep experimenting are the people who sort of stay forever employable right so vanita upskilling also i mean it's a great way to kind of find a way around this trend but also it does mean spending more money right Like, for example, I remember you gave the example, you, you talked to this guy who told you he was in his 40s and he wanted to do an MBA or something and that would cost like tens of lax. But he had to make such a tough choice.

It was so difficult because he had a kid who was also studying and he wanted to spend good money on their education, right? That's correct, Snigda, like upskilling is not easy because it does involve money. depending upon what you want to pursue at that stage. Hence, what some of these people recommended here was that it should be a part of your overall career strategy. You know, like sometimes when we are planning our careers, we don't really sit out and budget for upskilling. We only look at, like, you know, a lot of times people have a very limited view and they would only kind of think that from here in the next two years, I want to become this. then in the next three years I want my salary to be this.

In the next five years, I want to be up till this position. But in that process, we are not taking in account how much are we ready to spend on upskilling. And also, like, you know, one person was telling me a discushagre person only that how sometimes it's not always about spending on these courses. It could also be about learning through your network. like what he does specifically at Stanford Seed. Like he undertook that whole program so that here he's not putting his money, he's putting his time. And through his time while speaking with startup founders from across sectors,

he's trying to learn about different challenges they face and how they combat those challenges, now which in itself is a great learning experience. So sometimes it's also about how creative you can get. with it and also the courses that we spoke about like this insolvency professional exam or your independent director exam those are not very expensive like just a couple of thousands got it and kind of shifting the lens from how much money you're investing to your ROI you know with these courses we hinted at this a little while earlier but if we could talk about the sort of money that say

someone like kushagra for instance you know he's doing all these different things are these people still making the same money they did, you know, before, as compared to when they were fully employed? Not always, Rahil. Sometimes it's lesser as well. Even when people are pivoting from one job to another, they have to like take a pay cut. Like even Shrinivasan, you know, when he moved from Oracle to this startup where he's working as a blockchain developer, he had to undertake a pay cut. So finances might not always be rosy. So there is a financial.

There's a financial implication definitely. But it does bring in a huge amount of flexibility that allows people to explore different options. Right, right. There's always that trade off. Right. So, okay, next question again is related to money. So basically, even if they do get, you know, they do manage to get back. to the workforce, especially as consultants or freelance professionals, they just have to make do

with lesser money. I mean, it's just something that they all need to come to terms with. Or have you come across any cases where they actually ended up making more money? I don't know. More money, not exactly, but like in the case of saying Gupta, so she's almost making the same amount of money. Like, you know, it's not more, but she's almost there. But like I said, that, you know, it's about making that money for a longer period of tenure. So if you keep that in view, I think their overall compensation that they're getting, you know, becomes more.

Vanita, can you just tell us who is St. Gupta, a little bit about her. Yeah. So she's a 59-year-old woman from Bangaluru who's ventured through multiple companies. companies tried her hand at different things. Like she started her career as a marketing executive for a tech company, ORG systems. And then she progressed into a profit center management roles. She became, then she subsequently was overseeing corporate communications and people development at Sonata Software.

And then most recently she was working as corporate affairs and communications operations at Barclays. which is an investment banking company. Got it. So after she left Barclays, she's been working as a freelance consultant. And she had like one of her biggest projects was with the State Bank of India where she was helping employees

in crafting their communication strategy. Right, but it kind of comes back to another one of those existential questions, right? Vanita, no matter how much you're saving, it's just not going to be enough, right? And for a lot of these people, it's just impossible to kind of beat inflation also. Like, for instance, if a 30-year-old, for example, is spending about 3 lakhs as annual expenses, you're looking at this figure going up to nearly like 2 crore by the time they turn 90, assuming a steady 7% inflation rate. That's correct, Jahil. And hence, you know,

Retirement for people now is becoming questionable, right? Unless you have like, you know, there are pension funds, government sponsored. It's a different case. But otherwise, retirement for private sector employees is becoming a tough call. And therefore, the need to stay forever employable increases. And people have to constantly look for maybe, you know, position themselves in a way where they constantly keep getting work at 60, 70, 80 with whatever the market requirements are. You can't say that, you know, I'm a computer engineer and I'll continue to do that for like next 50, 60 years.

Right. So I think now we've talked quite a bit about the money angle. Now let's get to networking, what you mentioned earlier, right? Vanita, now we hear this word thrown around a lot in our daily lives. everybody wants to do it, but somehow most of us don't know exactly how to approach it, right? We do it for different reasons, which in this case would be to kind of, networking would be optimized to elongate the person's career, right? So what is their approach? Like what are 40 plus or people close to hitting 40 or over 40? How are they approaching networking? So networking would essentially have three parts to it.

So one of the expert whose coaches mid-to-senior-level career professionals in career transactions said that when he's mentoring people, only like two out of ten people can rely on their network for a job referral. And generally when hiring happens at senior position, it happens through referrals. you would not want to give like a very senior position to someone who's who's completely new to you you would want to like do certain background checks and hence network is a very important aspect also in in the second story the forever employability story there was one example where a woman was able to find a job again because she was in touch with people who are way younger to her so sometimes you know when we think about networking we think that we only have to network with the people of our own age or maybe people who are senior to us but we kind of forget that people junior to us maybe the one you know who might be soon enough you know they'll be leading positions at different corporates so hence networking has to be like you have to network from with your seniors your age

group your juniors like it has to be across all age groups it cannot be limited just to one age group. And apart from that, it also has to be cross-industry. So this one person that I spoke with was telling me that before they decided to make a career transition, they would go on and speak with these people from different sectors, different industries, to sort of understand what challenges they encounter, how are they navigating day-to-day life. Because, you know, when you're younger, you still have a long runway to make errors. And there's room. for failure but like you know at at 40-51 there is there is also financial responsibility you want to be like a little more sure of the decisions that you're making and hence you know spending a lot of time

with others so this person was saying that you know how they would always attend conferences on different topics so tomorrow you know if they want to maybe develop an expertise in certain area of area they would they would attend conferences on those topics they would attend network lunches and all of that, you know, sort of help them build a, you know, a group of professionals, a group of friends that could later on help them in finding new jobs or also give them insights about what working in that sector looks like. Okay, so you said something interesting there, Vanita. You know, you were talking about that one woman who was able to get a job

through a younger colleague that she had in her network, right? So not, it's one way to look at it is, okay, there are competition, you're competing with them. but there's also a huge opportunity there, right? You can leverage that network that you have of younger colleagues. So definitely, Rahil. This works in two ways that, number one, if you consider this another example that I have quoted in the story about Sham Sundar.

Now, he is an active cyclist. He's a music composer and his group of friends are, you know, a bunch of 20-year-old, 30-year-old, 30-year-old. old and he was telling me during a call that he learns a lot of softer aspects from these younger folks in informal discussions about life, about trends, about how they approach careers or how they work. And that sort of helps him in devising his own strategies or, you know, look at things differently. And also to add on to it, upskilling always doesn't have to be necessarily about joining a course or, you know, getting yourself into an MBA program or something like that,

it could also be about learning how your younger colleagues are approaching problems, how they are approaching certain things. So having a younger people in your network definitely does help. So, Vanita, I think we've spoken enough about what we as employees can do to stay quote-unquote forever hireable, right? Can we now flip the lens to employers and can you tell us what can they do, you know, to make this better for, you know, senior professionals? Right. Considering the demographics, if corporations do not strategize on how to hire older workforce,

they will end up competing for a limited talent pool of overworked middle-aged professionals who will then feel the burned out even faster leading to a fall in productivity and even crisis. Hence, it's important that corporates also sort of devised strategies where they can employ these people. Like, for example, what happened in the case of Mercer, instead of letting go Nareesh completely, they made her an advisor. So that helped them in training future leaders for the company. And also, you know, whenever their team felt stuck about something, they always had Nareh to rely on for opinion, feedback, etc.

Similar, you know, something similar is also done by certain companies like Flipkart Gen Pact where they're hiring retired army professionals. also recently in medical doctors are also getting rehired in certain states like Punjab, Rajasthan, Bihar so there is a change that we are seeing around the corner where companies are coming around but I think it's a long way to go. All right, Vanita, I mean, that was very insightful, you know. I mean, after reading your first story, honestly after, you know, I covered it on daybreak. I was feeling quite hopeless.

I was like, oh my God, you know, it's not very long till the point I reached 40, but after reading the second part, I'm very hopeful. So I think we can end the conversation by asking you this question. Like, what were the biggest takeaways for you, you know, from your experience of covering the story? For me, I think the biggest thing is to stay agile. you cannot be boxed into say that I've done this role for X years and I can continue to do only X for next coming years as well. You cannot allow yourself to box into that category. So it will always be about reinventing and at the same time, you know, sometimes while so even the story was an eye-opener for me that, you know, while working sometimes, we get so laser-focused in our everyday tasks that. we forget to look at that big picture.

So it's important to sort of zoom out and look at that big picture and see for ourselves. Just how, you know, typically corporations plan for, you know, how they will run for next five years. It's also important for employees to take that step back and kind of see how their career will span for the next five years. And the most important thing here is that, you know, while you're making this plan, you cannot do it in silos. You cannot sit with yourself and plan that, okay, you know, next year I'm going to do this. You've got to have insights from others. You've got to ask feedback from your colleagues, from your seniors, from your own network and see what your skills are. So, you know, one of the organization behavioral specialist was telling me that how sometimes we also require.

a mindset shift because, you know, I would, like for instance, if I'm a writer, I would always believe that I can only do jobs that are relating to writing or reporting. So even in my next stint, I might find something that is similar to this. But until and unless I explore other sides, you know, maybe if I get a feedback that, okay, you're also good at problem solving maybe. Until unless I explore those other aspects, I might not know or might not discover what are those other things that I can do as well apart from this. So I think it's time for slash careers. You can no longer say that I'm X.

Like your identity cannot be just about that X role. It has to be multiple roles, which you also have to like constantly keep reinventing through the journey. Lovely. Thank you so much, Vanita. It's been so good talking to you. Thanks, Vanita. Interesting.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras. Head to the Ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by Rahal Philippos and I, Sinkda Sharma, and it was edited by Rajiv Sien.