Dear Keir,

I’m probably getting ahead of myself, but congratulations on your new job. There’s an awful lot of new stuff to get used to – different home, police escort, nuclear codes etc – but I know that in among an overstuffed in-tray,  one of your priorities is growth and for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to decisively refocus on work. So far, so good…..but what about  the ‘ghosted’ generation?

According to 2024 analysis of ONS data by Over-50s digital platform Rest Less, there are nearly 600,000 economically inactive people aged 50+ in the UK who don’t have a job but want one… In a job market that currently has over 900,000 vacancies, according to Statista.

Some don’t want the mid-life MOT, a boot camp or help writing their CV that’s offered by the DWP.

They want to use the skills and experience they have accumulated over a 25 year career.  They want a job that will use these transferable skills.

And for that to even stand a chance of happening they need to get as far as an interview.

The over 50s was the group hardest hit with redundancies during the pandemic.  And once out of work it’s really hard to get back into it.  According to the Chartered Management Institute, only two fifths of employers will consider hiring someone aged 50-64.

Our ageist job market gets brushed under the carpet, and the tragedy of experience and skills being tossed aside and consigned to the bin marked ‘out of date’ should be causing outrage. Imagine if voters had looked at Keir Starmer, aged 61, and decided you were over the hill.

Imagine what it’s like to have a successful, lengthy career, be out of work and then be ghosted by countless employers?  It chips away at confidence and fuels self-doubt.

I, like many others, got to a point in life where I wanted work with more purpose. I imagined that with my experience it would be relatively simple to switch sectors.  It was the opposite.  I didn’t know enough about how the charity sector operated.  Or how to explain that my experience was relevant. I needed someone to give me a chance to prove it.  That’s what eventually happened, but for many the door remains resolutely shut.

It was this sobering state of affairs  that drove me to launch the not-for-profit The Well Placed –  a scheme giving people in mid-life the opportunity to transfer their skills to the charity sector.

I knew that charities have a skills gap that has overtaken the private and public sectors.  The idea is very simple. Six-month paid placements within UK charities as a stepping stone into the sector.

We’re at the end of a  pilot now.  I thought that if we got to the end and just one person managed to land a job, it would have been worth it.  Well 4 of the 6 have, and I have no doubt that soon it’ll be everyone.

With the pilot concluded, The Well Placed is now rolling out a larger scheme, offering 20 placements at leading charities such as the WI, via thewellplaced.org. We want to be the stepping stone from the commercial world into the charitable sector for the experienced professional.

My ask of the new government is to similarly create concrete pathways into employment for the experienced worker who finds themselves out of work. If I can do it, surely the DWP can?  If they need any advice, I’m here to help.

Wishing you the best of luck

Maya

Founder and CEO, The Well Placed