Illustrative image | Retirement plan. (Photo: iStock) | Standard Bank CEO Sim Tshabalala. (Photo: Supplied) | Former Standard Bank deputy CEO Kenny Fihla. (Photo: Supplied) 
I’m at a stage of life where I’m very interested in the people in my field who are older than me, how they prolong their careers and what happens to people who stop working.
There is a phrase that people have used for many years on football fields about whether you can put a very young player on the field for a big game. They’ll say, “If he’s good enough, he’s old enough.”
But “if you’re good enough, you’re young enough” doesn’t seem to apply. So many companies have mandatory retirement ages, or ages at which you have to leave.
A few months ago, I was in a workshop, plonked on a stool, trying to recover from the cost of a new set of tyres.
Behind me, a woman was telling the receptionist, obviously a long-term acquaintance, how angry she was that her company had retired her. She was financially secure, but she clearly felt that a big part of her life was being taken from her.
I have huge sympathy for her. I mean, my work is such a big part of my life, and I imagine it is, or was, a big part of yours.
Financial needs
Because of the nature of our society, you might be in a position where you still need to financially help your children or your grandchildren, or simply a younger member of your family.
There may be many people who still rely on your salary even though you are now in your sixties.
Last week, Standard Bank announced that it was raising its retirement age for executives from 60 to 63.
There is a wonderful Game of Thrones context to this. The current CEO, Sim Tshabalala, who has shown himself to be a hugely effective leader (if you ever get a chance to sit next to him at lunch, take it), is 58.
Previous deputy CEO Kenny Fihla is roughly the same age, and it seems one of the reasons he took the job of Absa CEO was that he believed he would never get the job at Standard Bank.
Legally, your retirement age is included in your employment contract. This means that companies can change these contracts (so long as you agree) if they choose to.
But it also means that when you sign a contract, you need to check the fine print. And when you are joining a company, looking at the retirement age probably comes quite a long way after trying to understand how on Earth your medical aid is going to work.
I do wonder what goes into a decision about a company’s retirement age.
I think some companies want to have a mechanism to ensure they can remove people who are getting on a bit. Not everyone can still do a job well in their 60s. And some jobs are not appropriate for people in a later stage of life.
I mean, one of the problems in our army is that too many of the soldiers, the people who should actually be doing the fighting, are too old. The average age of our infantry soldiers is 39.
Age diversity
The other thing that firms need to manage is age diversity. If you have a group of people of just one generation making decisions, you will make mistakes.
The world is changing very quickly at the moment. I might have grown up waiting for TV to start at 5:30 every afternoon, but my children have TVs on their person at virtually all waking hours.
One of the big mistakes the ANC has made in government is keeping too many people in Cabinet for too long. And this has led to them making huge mistakes along the way. They simply have not understood how the country, and the world, have changed.
It’s also led to a very large group of slightly younger people who have not been able to move through the ranks. As a result, you end up with congestion in the middle sections of the party (in the provinces).
This leads to even more congestion in councils and local government. If there is no prospect of moving up, you will stay and build your empire there.
This can happen in companies, too, if you’re not careful. So you do need to have a mechanism that allows people to move up. And to do that means your mechanism also needs to allow them to move out.
But, you also need to find a way to keep people if they are still adding value.
Pick n Pay brought back Sean Summers at the age of 72 to try to help the company out of a massive jam. He is certainly helping the retailer sell a lot more marmalade.
This gets to the crux of it. If you still bring more value than other people would to the same job, I think it might be wrong to force you to retire.
But at some point, and this happens to all of us, it does become time to stop working.
There is part of me, not a big part, but a part nonetheless, that just can’t wait.
Because work is a major part of life – but there is also so much more. DM
This article was amended on 2 July to reflect that the previous age of retirement at Standard Bank is 60 not 58.