- Early careers and over 55s face different barriers, which squeezes the middle layer and slows decisions, development and resilience. A skills‑based approach helps unblock this.
- Looking at work as tasks underpinned by skills allows smarter deployment, fairer access to opportunity, and better use of multigenerational strengths.
- Practical moves include redefining work and talent, designing cross‑generational collaboration, and using agile resourcing models guided by skills data.
Across the workforce, subtle but significant shifts are exposing deeper issues in how organisations develop and sustain talent. However, we are hearing conflicting things about where this is having the most impact on the talent pool.
On one hand, there are increasing reports that persistent uncertainty and increasing automation are contributing to rising youth unemployment, leaving fewer early careers workers able to build the foundational skills traditionally gained in entry‑level roles.
At the other end of the spectrum, recent polls have found that experienced over55s are often excluded by ageist assumptions, particularly perceptions about lower tech capability, despite the value of their experience.
The unintended result of both these challenges is an increasingly compressed and overloaded middle layer, stretched by work that is evolving faster than job descriptions can keep pace.
This raises some critical questions:
- To what extent are these challenges driven by outdated assumptions about what individuals at both the earliest and latest stages of their careers can contribute?
- What can organisations do to dismantle these barriers and better harness talent across the full spectrum of careers?
Why do organisations need to change?
There are also consequences for the labour market as a whole.
- Loss of experience: As individuals aged 55 and above face continued barriers to employment, organisations risk losing institutional knowledge, leadership maturity, and long‑developed problem‑solving capabilities that are essential for stability and continuity. This erosion of experience not only weakens organisational memory but also limits mentoring opportunities for emerging talent.
- Increased war for a reduced talent pool: With fewer early careers entrants gaining foundational skills and mid‑career professionals becoming increasingly overstretched, organisations find themselves competing for a shrinking pool of fully skilled talent. This intensifies hiring costs, drives salary inflation, and reduces the ability of businesses to fill pivotal roles quickly and effectively.
- The youth unemployment crisis: as entry‑level roles decline or become automated, young people are missing out on the early career experiences that traditionally build workplace readiness. This slows their transition into the workplace and threatens the talent pipeline for organisations, creating future skills shortages.
How can thinking about skills help to solve this problem?
A skills-based approach (as we defined in our campaign from last year – Becoming skills-powered) to defining and utilising talent can enable organisations to shift the focus from static roles and past performance to capability, adaptability, and future potential. By understanding work as a set of tasks underpinned by identifiable skills, organisations can redesign how work is organised, allocate responsibilities in a better way and deploy people fluidly to where their strengths create the greatest value.
What each career stage brings:
Early careers
The middle layer
Over 55s
Skills strategy: three moves to make now
1. Redefine work and talent
2. Lean into generational differences
Consider how much early career talent and the 55 plus cadre can learn from each other, and the opportunities this presents for capability building, knowledge transfer, and organisational resilience. Younger employees often bring digital fluency, fresh perspectives, and adaptability to emerging technologies, while older workers contribute accumulated experience, strategic insight, and the ability to navigate organisational complexity. By designing intentional opportunities for collaboration, through reverse mentoring, cross generational project teams, and shared learning pathways, organisations can unlock complementary strengths rather than reinforcing artificial divides.
3. Think about how you can use the workforce in an agile way
Interested in talking to us about your skills strategy and approach to workforce transformation? Reach out using the form below – we’d be happy to chat.
