As populations around the world age and birth rates continue to fall, organizations face a stark reality: tomorrow’s workforce will be older, more multigenerational and increasingly dependent on the transfer of knowledge across generations. According to leadership and culture change strategist Dan Pontefract, author of The Future of Work Is Grey, businesses are dangerously unprepared for this shift.

In a conversation with Mapfre, Pontefract argues that many enterprises are quietly accumulating what he calls an “age debt”—the hidden cost of failing to value, retain and develop employees across all stages of life. The challenge, he says, is not simply a demographic one – it’s cultural.

What is age debt and how can it be calculated?

“One of the biggest obstacles to tackling this concept of age debt is that most organizations don’t measure it in the first place. And we know that if something isn’t measured, then it’s not managed, right? So while too many enterprises, large and small, routinely measure engagement, well-being and diversity indicators, very few of them systematically collect data on age-related experience.”

Twenty-five years ago, organizations struggled to quantify engagement until consultants like Gallup introduced standardized methodologies like the Q12 to measure employee engagement so that it could be transformed into a meaningful business indicator. Pontefract argues that the same approach can be applied to age within a company.

“The infrastructure is there, we have the vehicle to do it,” he says. “We need CEOs or CHROs to ask the right questions about ageism, and how menopause affects women’s careers, and whether anyone gets called “boomer”, or consistently passed over in promotion decisions, and much more.”

Annual engagement surveys could be expanded to include questions such as:

It seems that the issue isn’t a lack of tools to measure the age debt but rather a lack of willingness to ask the right questions. “If you ask about it, then you have to do something about it,” Pontefract says.

That fear, he suggests, explains why age remains one of the last major diversity dimensions that many organizations have not fully examined. Leaders worry that measuring ageism – which occurs in up to 70% of organizations – may reveal uncomfortable truths requiring investment, policy change and cultural transformation.

And yet, failing to measure and appropriately manage age debt carries its own risks. As retirement rates accelerate and labor markets tighten, organizations that don’t understand the age dynamics of their workforce may find themselves facing critical knowledge gaps and talent shortages.

Workplace ageism isn’t just an older-worker problem

As Pontefract is keen to note, ageism affects every generation in the organization. While public discourse, shaped by both the underlying dynamics of a rapidly changing world of work fueled by AI and a misplaced but nonetheless generalized belief among many that younger generations are more thrusting, resourceful and solution-oriented, often frames age discrimination as something experienced exclusively by older workers, the reality is more complex.

Young professionals can encounter age-related barriers when recruitment systems dismiss them for lacking experience. Middle-aged employees can find age-related life transitions overlooked. Older workers may be excluded from development opportunities or assumed to be less adaptable than younger colleagues.

“Ageism is everywhere,” Pontefract says. “It’s consistent.” He cites a common example: leadership development programs. Organizations frequently invest heavily in younger, high-potential employees while overlooking experienced professionals in their 50s and 60s. The logic seems sound on the surface: companies assume younger employees will return the investment made over a longer period of time. But Pontefract argues that the evidence often points in the opposite direction – younger employees can look on these investments as stepping stones to new roles in other organizations, while an employee over the age of 50 would who wants to remain with their current organization for another 10 years or so would find reward in pouring their newly-acquired knowledge and updated skills back into the organization they have served loyally for decades.

By concentrating resources predominantly on younger talent, organizations may inadvertently undermine loyalty, engagement and knowledge retention among experienced employees.

Tackling ageism therefore requires moving beyond stereotypes about any single age group. Instead, organizations need to create systems that recognize value at every stage of a person’s career.

The stability senior talent brings to the table has a direct economic impact on a company. Older professionals reduce staff turnover, cut talent acquisition costs, and prevent the loss of critical knowledge. According to a report by Accenture and Harvard Business School, companies that integrate senior profiles are 36% less likely to suffer talent shortages.
Pontefract applauds Mapfre’s approach to managing its senior talent, which numbers more than 9,500 professionals, representing 31% of its global workforce. He is particularly impressed with the company having been recognized, for the fifth consecutive year, as the leading publicly traded company in Spain for leveraging the experience and knowledge of its employees over 50 years of age. This accolade was received for the structured manner in which Mapfre cares for its senior collective, which revolves around three core pillars: fostering senior talent, supporting the transition to retirement, and offering flexibility so employees can adapt to each life stage as best suits their individual needs.

What becomes of the traditional career ladder?

If age debt is partly the result of outdated assumptions, then few assumptions are more entrenched than the traditional career ladder, and Pontefract believes it’s time to rethink the concept altogether.

“I want to torch the career ladder,” he says bluntly. The ladder model assumes that career success means climbing upwards through successive management positions. While that structure served many organizations in the past, it’s becoming increasingly incompatible with longer careers and more dynamic workforce needs. For younger employees, it can create unrealistic expectations that promotion is the only pathway to growth. For older workers, it can create anxiety that reaching the top makes them vulnerable to being considered too expensive or expendable. Instead, Pontefract advocates for a more flexible model built around movement, learning and contribution rather than simply hierarchy.

Such a model could include:

This type of approach encourages continuous learning while enabling organizations to deploy talent more effectively. It also reflects a reality that many organizations are only beginning to acknowledge, namely that careers are no longer linear. As people increasingly work into their 70s, the idea of a single upward trajectory followed by retirement becomes less relevant. Future careers are likely to resemble journeys across an organizational ecosystem rather than sequential steps up the rungs of a ladder.

What does real age diversity look like in a progressive organization?

Age diversity is often discussed in abstract terms, but Pontefract provides a more practical vision. Rather than viewing employees primarily through generational labels such as Baby Boomers, Generation X or Generation Z, he prefers to focus on career stages and experience levels, and has coined the terms Rivers, Rocks and Rubies to denote these stages.

Rivers are early-career professionals whose curiosity, adaptability and fluid intelligence drive exploration, learning and innovation across the organization.

Rocks are mid-career employees who combine experience with creativity, providing stability, delivering results and connecting different generations through their broad organizational perspective.

Rubies are seasoned professionals whose deep wisdom, judgement and accumulated knowledge enable them to provide continuity, mentor others and help organizations navigate complexity and change.

Pontefract says that an age-diverse organization intentionally creates opportunities for employees at different life stages to work together, learn from one another and solve problems collaboratively.

Imagine a project team that includes a recent graduate bringing new ideas and digital fluency, a mid-career professional with deep operational expertise, and an experienced specialist with decades of organizational knowledge. Each contributes something different. More importantly, each learns from the others around them. This exchange becomes increasingly valuable in an era shaped by artificial intelligence (AI). While younger employees may be quick to adopt new technologies, older workers often possess the contextual understanding, judgement and institutional memory needed to apply those technologies effectively.

Pontefract argues that organizations should actively involve experienced employees in AI governance, adoption and training efforts rather than assuming digital transformation belongs exclusively to younger generations. Indeed, many of the ethical challenges surrounding AI require exactly the kind of judgement that comes from experience.

The knowledge crisis hiding in plain sight

The strongest argument for age diversity may ultimately be an economic one. Asia is aging. Europe is aging. Retirement rates are accelerating. Yet many organizations still lack formal processes for capturing critical expertise before employees leave. Pontefract points to research showing that most CEOs admit they lack robust knowledge-capture systems for departing employees. This means valuable institutional knowledge often disappears the moment someone retires.

In response, forward-thinking organizations are beginning to experiment with new approaches. Pontefract highlights BMW’s Senior Expert program in Germany, which allows retired employees to continue working on temporary projects, thereby allowing them to contribute their expertise without hampering the career progression of younger leaders. The underlying principle is simple: experience shouldn’t be discarded simply because someone reaches a certain age. Instead, it should be treated as a strategic asset.

For knowledge-intensive businesses, the implications are profound. Companies spend millions acquiring expertise through hiring, development and experience. Losing that knowledge without a transfer strategy represents a significant organizational risk.

It should be noted that the benefits accruing from a pro-aging rethink are not limited to the world of business: society stands to gain too. As Fundación Mapfre’s Ageingnomics Research Center publications highlight time after time, the potential of seniors as active consumers, entrepreneurs, and contributors to a new, thriving economic model is not something to be disregarded. The center’s Senior Consumer Barometers shed light on how individuals in Spain 55 and older consume, work, and make decisions, and the insights and conclusions they present can be generally extrapolated to other countries and regions experiencing the longevity phenomenon.

The competitive advantage that comes from leveraging age

For organizations operating across multiple countries, cultures and generations, the demographic transition presents both challenges and opportunities. The companies that thrive in the coming decades are unlikely to be those with the youngest workforces –they’ll be the ones that build the most effective multigenerational workforces.

That means measuring age debt, confronting ageism, rethinking career structures and creating environments where employees of all ages can contribute and grow.

“The future of work is grey,” Pontefract says. “The challenge for leaders lies in recognizing that grey isn’t a problem to solve, but rather an asset to leverage.”