Your feature on the 90-year-old bodybuilder Toshisuke Kanazawa was a joy (‘I’m 100% natural’: how Japan’s 90-year-old bodybuilder is still winning titles, 25 September), but it’s also a useful provocation. Almost 30% of Japan’s 123.7 million people are over 64 yet, rather than being written off, people like Kanazawa are still contributing well into their 90s.
Britain does the opposite. Between 670,000 and 860,000 people drop out of the UK workforce annually, and by their 60s more than a third of people are economically inactive. The loss is a stock of judgment and knowhow that simply walks out of the door.
Germany offers one model. Founded in 1983, its Senior Expert Service has a pool of more than 14,000 retired professionals and has arranged more than 60,000 placements by matching engineers, accountants, former military and skilled tradespeople with the small firms, charities and schools that could use their experience. Nothing like it exists here. There’s a second potential beneficiary: the almost 1 million young people not in employment, education or training. It is hard to think of a better use of an elder’s time than helping one of them get a foothold.
Modest pilot schemes in one or two sectors, modelled on the German system, would quickly show whether it is worth scaling up.
Kanazawa’s story shouldn’t just prompt admiration for one exceptional man. It should trigger a serious look at whether Britain is wasting a resource it already has: the thousands of experienced people it puts out to pasture every year.
Alan Coppin
Author, The Human Capital Imperative: Valuing Your Talent
