What are your first thoughts when someone is referred to as older? Do you go straight to an age? What are your associations with that age?

An older person is over 60 according to the United Nations. It’s 65 for the NHS. The reason I ask is because when I was marketing a pilot to prove commercial skills could transfer to the charity sector, I struggled to find the right words to describe who I was targeting – mid-life, older, a specific age. I think you’re as old as you are in your head, so I don’t personally relate to the terms ‘mature’ or ‘older’ because in my head I’m 20 years younger.

My mum Anita died when she was nearly 87 and I remember a conversation with her when she said she still felt like her 16-year-old self.  Anita volunteered all her life and was driving her ‘oldies’ (her term, said with affection) to hospital appointments when she was in her 80s. She never thought of herself as old, but she did live a long life.

Chat GPT’s response to ‘are you old?’ is that it doesn’t experience time or age in the way humans do, so doesn’t consider itself old or young. Its knowledge is based on information available up to its last data update. And maybe that’s the answer for humans. We shouldn’t be defined by our age, but by experience and what we have learnt. Forget age and think knowledge. My ask of hiring managers in charities is that when you can calculate that someone has been alive for the number of years that you equate with ‘older’, put that to one side and think about what they have learnt and how you can benefit from that.

There are now 5 generations in the workforce. That is a wonderful mix of experience and perspective to tap into. It’s unsurprising that organisations with a co-generational workforce are more innovative.

Ask me what I know, not how long I have lived.

Or as Chat GPT would put it “if you have any questions or need information, feel free to ask, and I’ll do my best to assist you with the knowledge I have.”