← The Sustainability Story
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- [00:05]
A
Welcome to the Sustainability Story. My name is Tiffany and I will be your host for this episode. Today's conversation is about sustainable human capital, specifically how increasing human longevity and digital transformation are reshaping the workforce and what actions investment firms can take to manage their people more effectively and inclusively. I'm delighted to welcome my guest, Dr. Saidiya Firdes to this discussion. Saidiya is an award winning academic at Queen's Business School in Belfast where she researches aging organisations and workplace inclusion. She also has held research and teaching positions at both the University of Manchester and and the University of Oxford. So before we dive into today's topic, we always like to start by hearing about the sustainability story of our guests. So, Sajiy, could you tell us about your journey and what led you to your current research focus?
- [01:13]
B
Thank you, Tiffany. It's a pleasure to be here today talking to you about this topic that I feel very passionate about. My interest in longevity and human capital really began during my PhD at Manchester Business School. School I was studying how people experience aging at work and became drawn to those whose paths didn't quite fit the typical narrative. People whose working lives evolved differently because of either their gender, class, ethnicity or migration background. And from that I developed their perspective of divergent work aging, recognizing that people don't all age at work in the same way. And these differences often come from structure and systems rather than individual choice. My interests also had a personal side. Watching my own parents growing old in a country different from where they were born made me think about how aging is shaped as much by context as by time. And over the years. That focus has grown into three strands in my research. One examines how AI and digital technologies influenced older people's experience of work, particularly what I call algorithmic ageism, that is, when automated processes unintentionally disadvantage certain age groups. The second strand explores how we might rethink retirement within today's much longer and more flexible working lives. And the third looks at the philosophy of age, that is how we come to know about age and how we understand age the way we do. And all of this connects to a single theme, really how we sustain human capital over time. So as people live and work longer, their accumulated knowledge, relationships and judgment become major assets, but only if workplaces and economies know how to value and renew them. And that's what brings the longevity discussion, I think, firmly into the sustainability space. So it's really about designing systems, you know, economic, technological and cultural that allow human capability to endure and keep generating value. And that's why, you know, I'm very glad we are having this conversation today because for me, longevity, human capital and sustainability are simply, you know, different angles of the same question. How do we sustain performance and purpose across time?
- [03:47]
A
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I particularly loved how you connected your personal experience to your research focus. And you are completely correct in saying that longevity is an increasingly important topic to pretty much any industry, and in particular our current industry, the investment industry, and what you talked about just now, the relationship between human capital and aging, and in particular the digital focus of your research, really leads us quite nicely into the first part of today's discussion. Now, I've read a little bit about your research, and I know that currently your research does focus on deconstructing something called digital precarity for older workers. And I think this is something our listeners would be really interested in. So could you tell us more about the framework you proposed and how, in your opinion, this could be applied to the investment industry?
- [04:45]
B
Over the last couple of years, my research actually has moved a bit away from what I once called digital precarity. That is, you know, the sense of vulnerability people feel when technology outpaces their speed of learning. And I've moved forward to a more forward looking idea, if you like, and I now propose an active digital aging framework. And this shift came from recognizing that aging and technology are no longer separate phenomena. So they must be seen as converging forces that will define how we live and work for decades to come. We are living longer and we are working increasingly through digital systems. Yet I think the frameworks we use to manage human capital have not caught up with either. So if we look at the numbers, the scale of change is extraordinary. Across OECD countries, people aged 55 to 64, now they make up more than 20% of the total workforce. And participation among those over 65 continues to rise. By 2050, nearly one in three workers in advanced economies will be over 55. At the same time, AI and automation are transforming our work designs, with over 60% of large firms now using AI in HR, analytics and compliance or decision support, et cetera. And these dual dynamics, aging and technologies, are actually colliding. And I can see an age AI paradox emerging here. On one hand, AI could extend working lives by automating repetitive tasks, supporting cognitive and physical health through assistive devices, and allowing people to work flexibly across time and place. Yet the same systems can also shorten careers if they replicate bias. They exclude certain groups from digital participation or privilege digital nativeness of younger people over judgment and experience of the older cohorts. So for example, OECD evidence actually makes it clear that it does not have to do with age. Older workers digital skill levels tend to lag on paper and only on paper. But when training is relevant, contextual and embedded in real work, their adaptation rates actually are just as high as those of the younger cohorts. So the issue isn't capacity, it's conditions. And that really is the age AI paradox. I'm talking about. The same technologies that could extend the productive life of human capital can just as easily compress if design and governance fail to recognize experience as a new renewable asset. And that's why I propose that, you know, we need an active digital ageing framework. You can say that it's an evolution of the WHO or OECD's active aging framework that reflects the realities of the AI driven workplace. So the original active aging idea focused on health participation, social engagement, and so on. So we should look at primarily three aspects that shape how people experience AI and technology at work. And I call them precursors, moderators and triggers. First, the precursors, where we are looking at people's life course trajectories, I.e. their accumulated digital exposure, their learning pathways, and their sense of self efficacy in adapting to digital change. The second wing, the moderators. And here we are talking about the organizational and societal conditions that shape digital inclusion. For example, management culture, the systems designs, the leadership, attitudes toward age and learning, and access to continuous digital reskilling as well. And finally the triggers. And these are the points of technological disruptions, introduction of AI tools or digital workflows that actually reconfigure what counts as productivity, capital and expertise. So essentially, active digital aging should give us a way forward through a more comprehensive understanding of how people age digitally. So it's about designing digital systems that people can age with and not out of. AI then becomes an enabler of human capability rather than a substitute. And this to may sits at the heart of sustainable human capital.
- [09:31]
A
You mentioned earlier that older workers have valuable skills and experiences that can contribute ultimately to the successful implementation and use of AI technologies. So therefore, in your opinion, how can investment firms leverage the experience of older workers while adapting to the demands of AI and automation?
- [09:51]
B
I think that's an interesting question because I think with a longevity trend, the issue isn't whether older workers still have value and if they should be considered as value, it's whether firms can afford not to. So across OECD economies, older age groups or adults aged 55 to 64, they already make up over 20% of the workforce. And I think I've mentioned that before as well. And the participation among those 65 and over is the fastest growing segment as well. If we look at the old age dependency ratio, that is the number of people who are active per economically per 100 working age adults, has also risen from just over 20% in the mid-1990s to over a third of the population today and is projected to grow even more by 2050. So in simple terms, human capital is aging faster than most firms strategies for managing it, including the investment firms. And at the same time, we are operating within the longevity economy. It's already worth about, you know, it was worth about $7 trillion in 2019 and expected to surpass $27 trillion by the year 2026. So in knowledge intensive sectors, especially, you know, such as finance and investment management, that demographic and economic shift is directly tied to productivity continuity, you know, and capital performance. The question is really how confirms translate this demographic reality into productivity gains rather than in a risk exposure. I think the older workers actually hold a substantial amount of what I call chronological capital. They possess skills like nuanced contextual reasoning and institutional memory. And in the digital era, these capabilities are not simply, you know, legacies, okay, they are stabilizing forces. They should be considered as a stabilizing forces that keep AI and automation systems grounded in reality and ethical logic. So the way forward I think is to integrate longevity into their digital strategy, not as a diversity target, but as a capability advantage. So when seasoned professionals, they review algorithmic outputs, they effectively supply the institutional memory and pattern recognition that machines currently lack. And if you embed senior experts in AI audit programs and governance, that strengthens, you know, your model risk controls. And it also reduces your error propagation by adding, you know, contextual judgment to automated outputs. And this is perfectly aligned with the responsible AI guidance from major policy and industry bodies as well.
- [12:49]
We also know from the OECD's recent working conditions report that when digital upskilling is designed as iterative and task specific and not as one of training mid career and later career workers, they actually adapt at rates equivalent to their younger peers. So that needs to be considered and embedded into the digital strategy as well. The other step is measurement. So treating longevity as a component of capital performance performance, developing trackable re entry rates by the older workers into the labor market, intergenerational knowledge flows and so on, these will need to be turned from demographic awareness into a strategic dashboard, if you like. And what all these point to is a deeper capability logic really, when we talk about using the experience of older workers in a digital age, it's really about developing dynamic human capabilities. The ability for organizations to continually, you know, reach, generate judgment, trust and learning speed across the lifespans. And firms that understand this, they won't actually see longevity as a cost. They will see it as a multiplier, a source of adaptive intelligence that sustains competitive advantage.
- [14:08]
A
And how might firms balance the digital expectations and learning styles of both younger and older workers to ensure everyone thrives?
- [14:17]
B
Yes, the answer is not five training programs, but one inclusive learning ecosystem. So older workers, they're eager to learn, but they need learning that is relevant, problem centered and respectful of their prior experience. Whereas younger workers, they weren't bite sized, they were gamified and fast feedback. So organizations need to blend the two and also ensure psychological safety. They should create a psychologically safe place where older workers have the permission to say, I don't get this yet. Like multiple generations have always coexisted in the workplace. What we are really observing in today's workplaces isn't generational tensions or different set of expectations or differences in learning patterns. It's technological ethnography. And I think that concept really helps us understand what's going on in the current scenario. It's essentially different groups forming distinct relationships with the same digital systems. There have always been divides of style, hierarchy and worldview in workplaces. So what's different now is the context, right? So this time the boundary lines are drawn by technologies. Younger professionals, they tend to be socialized into technology as infrastructure, something ambient and almost invisible for them. Whereas older professionals, they meanwhile often experience technology as governance, something that mediates authority and the level of accountability or even trust. And those aren't attitude of different generations, they are interpretive positions formed by levels of exposure as well as power dynamics in organizations. So the real task isn't to manage the generational divide in terms of expectations and learning styles, but to translate between digital cultures within the same organization. And this is where I think the idea of AI ethnography becomes useful. Not as a research method in the academic sense, but as a mindset for organizations. So what does it mean? It means paying attention to how people make sense of algorithms, automation and data flows in their everyday work. What they trust, what they resist and what they reinterpret. So those small patterned behaviors often tell you more about an organization's digital maturity than any skills audit can. Organizations need to be creating the conditions where different digital sensibilities can speak to one another meaningfully. And I think that Once you begin to view the workplace through that AI ethnographic lens or digital ethnographic lens, the so called generational divide dissolves. And what remains are multiple digital cultures of learning negotiating, coexisting, which is exactly what adaptive and ambidextrous organizations need to focus on.
- [17:18]
A
To this point, we've been talking about age in terms of the age of digital and AI, and I think it would be really meaningful for our listeners if we leaned on your expertise in aging to address the implications for multi generational workforces, which is the second part of today's episode. Now, I know in many industries, including investment management, it's becoming increasingly common for five generations of employees to work alongside each other. Managing the generational divide as a growing topic of discussion, and earlier you already kind of touched on this issue, this topic of the generational divide. I was curious to know, do you think this term is sometimes overused and are there examples of practices that really work to bridge those stages in addition to what you talked about earlier?
- [18:04]
B
In my view, generational divide has become a lazy metaphor and it explains very little, but gets repeated because it feels intuitive. And I would actually go back to what I mentioned before, that it is overused, but using ethnography or using how multiple lived realities can coexist actually make more sense when it comes to explaining the differences between generations. Also, the intersectional lens come in handy here. I would say age is only one part of our identity which is always in flux. So is every other identity. And I think that we see a growing trend of applying intersectionality to understand that how people experience their lives across time and location and context, and so on. So other than the technological ethnography, I would say that looking at the tensions or the complexities and the differences between generations and their expectations and approaches to life and work processes would mean that, you know, we are looking at intersectional complexity other than the technological ethnography. Keeping intersectionality in mind when trying to understand their perspectives and their work ethics and work styles would be very useful for organizations and leaders.
- [19:34]
A
And I think it just reinforces the point that we definitely need much more research in this area. How can we take action without any kind of evidence or support for our actions? Another one of your key research areas focuses on reimagining retirement, which is a very important topic within the investment industry and particularly the implications of reimagining retirement age Related provisions for aging or older people is something that I understand is in your area of research. In what ways could a reimagining of retirement influence how we engage with investment, career and work.
- [20:13]
B
That's a great question. Because when we talk about reimagining retirement, we're really talking about redesigning one of the most powerful institutional inventions of the 20th century. And retirement was never simply a social milestone, right? It was a labor market mechanism born out of industrial logic. In the late 90th and early 20th centuries, as child labor was phased out, mass pensions introduced. Governments effectively drew a line between who counted as economically active and who didn't. And that line, roughly aged between 50 to 64, shaped everything from tax policy to our GDP accounting. And it worked when average life expectancy was around 60 or 60 something. But it's an anachronism in the 21st century. In other words, we have an extra 15 to 20 years of potential productivity that our institutions don't know how to account for effectively. So historically, retirement policies policy was justified by what economists want called the lump of labor fallacy. The idea that older people needed to exit so younger ones could enter. But that myth was debunked a long time ago. And in fact, higher employment among older adults correlates with higher youth employment because age diverse labor markets expand aggregate demand, skill diffusion and innovation, and so on. So simply put, when older people work, economies grow. Now, going back to the active aging framework for this, which tried to extend participation by promoting health and social engagement. But it didn't rewrite the underlying systems and assumptions, workplaces, financial instruments and public policy that determine how longevity translates into productivity. It relied mostly on individual effort rather than institutional designs. And that's why I argue that reimagining retirement is less about extending work and more about modernizing the architecture that supports supports work across longer lives. The data tell us three things investment leaders should note. First, the longevity dividend is real but undercapitalized. So we have estimates that closing the participation gap for workers aged 55 plus could add trillions of dollars to global GDP. Yet most pension and labor systems still treat people over 64 as dependents rather than contributors because of the outdated global working age benchmark. Countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, which have better links between pension age and life expectancy, show stronger fiscal stability and higher labor life participation. And that's a return on policy innovation, not philanthropy. Second, labor market rigidity, not biological aging, limits productivity. What we need now is a post retirement economy. One that moves beyond the binary of working and not working. In a world where human lives routinely span 80200 years, the friction is in between generations. It's between systems built for 60 year lives. And the lived reality of 75 plus year careers. And this isn't the pensions issue, it's a capital allocation problem. We've built a global economy that underinvests in midlife and late life capability just as those capabilities reach peak cognitive and social value. We treat experience as a depreciating asset instead of as compounding capital, if you like.
- [23:46]
A
Thank you for sharing that. That was very insightful. I love how you said in particular, you know, the divide between working and not working. I mean I think I personally, I can see myself working for, for a very long time. I don't really see myself retiring. And I do know people that have so called retired, but actually not retired, they've come back to work. And I have spoken to people, leaders and corporate leaders that are thinking about hiring what they call returning retirees because they see that it's a, it could be of benefit, great benefit to human capital. However, our industry, so I'm talking about the investment industry, the global investment industry historically has avoided including an older population, our workforce. In your opinion, how should we talk about aging in an industry that has typically avoided this topic?
- [24:39]
B
I think the first step is to bring aging into our conversation in age neutral social language, not as a welfare issue, but as part of how economies actually work. And that change needs to be wider than policy or, you know, hr. At the farm level, it's about how we understand the value of age. Age structure affects consumption, savings, labor productivity, all key to forecasting returns. Yet we rarely account for that explicitly when it comes to, you know, investing investment firms. And it's worth noting that the industry's own aging mirrors the market it serves. So the sector is living its own longevity story from senior leadership to client demographics, which makes this both an analytical and a cultural question. So in that sense, investment firms also have a role far beyond portfolio design. They have a role to play in strengthening financial intelligence and digital literacy among aging populations. For many older clients, the move to digital finance, online trading platforms, app based pension access, even algorithmic investment tools can be daunting. So if you're not used to managing money digitally, you are likely to depend on family or professionals, which creates new asymmetries of power and risk. And investment firms can and should address that, not as a charity, but as a strategic extension of the longevity economy that starts with age neutral social language. It makes the investment firms feel more comfortable. And I think also getting rid of the age coding age neutral social language helps us, decoding the ageist stereotype, become more comfortable with age neutral language. Or markers.
- [26:25]
A
I was quite interested in knowing what does age neutral language sound like.
- [26:30]
B
This is still a very new, you know, thinking. I have been, you know, instilling this idea in and through my research. And I think it starts with designing age, designing systems that do not have age codes at all. If you think about designing, you know, programs that are, of course, there have to be guidelines, age restrictions and guidelines in place where they are necessary. For example, we have to set age restrictions for digital, you know, viewerships when it comes to certain sensitive contents and so on. But in other places, we discussed, discussed the example in hiring in other places, getting rid of those languages or age codes and not teaching them. Teaching the digital systems will actually help. And age neutral language would essentially mean that you are not using any age proxies in how you develop your strategies, how you write your policies, how you write the codes for your designs, AI designs or digital systems. In cvs, we have graduation year, we have graduation time. And all those give away the age, approximate age of people. And these work as age proxies. We have to make sure that they are not there. And all these terms that we use, the popular terms old versus young and youth versus, you know, other aging terms, we have to slowly move away and modernize our language. And that is precisely what I mean when I say age neutral language. It is entirely possible. Age identity has always been in flux. It is a rather new phenomena that a gender or sexual orientation. These identities are being fluid. But we have to think that all identities have been always in flux. People do not have static identities. And focusing on chronological identity, such as age, and thinking about biomarkers only when it comes to people's value is not very helpful, whether it's in economic terms or in social life. So that is precisely what I mean. When we have to move towards an age neutral language, we have to get rid of those age codes.
- [29:08]
A
I've learned so much from this conversation, and I'm sure our listeners have as well. So of all the things that you have shared today, what would you say are the top two to three key points that investment firms and professionals should remember moving forward?
- [29:24]
B
So if I were to leave a few closing messages for investment firms, they would be these that you're already living inside the age AI paradox. So technology depends on experience, even if, as it risks displacing it, then we need an active digital aging framework now, not to help older workers catch up, but to align digital transformation with longevity. And the investment industry sits at the intersection of two demographic realities. An aging client base and an aging workforce. So unless firms build systems that keep people learning and contributing across longer spans, they're mispricing their own human capital. And finally, drop the vocabulary of benevolence. Age friendly, age inclusive, etc. Need to go and move to age neutral language because neutrality, not sympathy, is what produces fair value.
- [30:30]
A
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Sajiya. This has been an incredibly interesting and insightful discussion to our listeners. If you're interested in learning more about longevity's implications on human capital, do also check out our Global Inclusion Team's latest article on CFA Institute's Enterprising Investor blog entitled six Ways Longevity is Transforming Investment Careers. Thank you and goodbye.
- [30:58]
B
Thank you very much.