Late in 2007, Life Academy started its DWP-funded project to provide information and guidance to employees approaching and over age 50 in the Cambridgeshire, mid-Bedfordshire and Bedford areas on work options in later life and the transition from paid work.
The project aims to provide employees with an awareness of:
- the retirement landscape including the demographic drivers and the response from government and employers
the provisions of recent age legislation guidance on managing caring and health issues and continuing to work options for part-time or flexible working scope for retraining current developments relating to state and occupational pensions. The objective is to ensure individuals are better able to make informed choices about work in later life.
We have been working with employers, professional and trade bodies, trades unions and community groups to reach employees and have started to deliver the service at the work place, in community settings or in premises we established in Cambridge
Six months into the project, we thought a progress report may be of interest.
Project set-up
For the first three months of the project, we worked on clearly defining firstly what information and guidance we would be offering, and secondly how we would then deliver this information and guidance.
Although we knew the basic subject areas, a lot of work had to be done in the first few weeks on the detail behind the subject areas. With the help of a few Life Academy tutors, we wrote detailed Guidance Notes for the following areas:
- Retirement and pension landscape
Options to continue in work Work at 50+ State pensions Occupational and Personal pensions Tax and National Insurance Caring and work Health and work Education and training We then set to work on crafting three workshops that we could offer to employers – a short one-hour session, half-day workshop and one-day workshop, and developed the supporting visual aids. We made sure that each workshop was focused on the project objective, and would, to varying levels of detail depending on the length of the workshop:
provide the employee with an understanding of the changes that are taking place in 21st century Britain that will affect those aged over 50 – the demographic changes, retirement, work, pensions, finance, family, government policies help them to understand the implications of these changes provide them with a framework to successfully adapt to these changes enable them to consider the changes and impact on their own personal situation, so that they can develop new attitudes, behaviours and actions to improve their position. Delivery
The delivery phase of the project began at the beginning of March, starting with a short workshop for Sainsbury’s in Cambridge. At the end of March we ran a half-day session with Huntingdon District Council.
By the beginning of April, the momentum started to build – we spent the month delivering half-day sessions at various Cambridge colleges, as well as another short session back at Sainbury’s.
During May, we ran 3 full days of back-to-back short workshops for Cambridgeshire County Council in Cambridge, March and Huntingdon – very hectic days for our tutors! The Council have booked another 3 days to take place in June and July. Towards the end of May, we also delivered a mixture of short and half-day workshops to Papworth Hospital and the Cambridgeshire Primary Care Trust. This was the first of a series of workshops that Papworth Hospital is providing for their employees aged over 50.
To date we have delivered information and guidance to over 400 individuals. Word is definitely beginning to spread – we now have 95 workshops booked in the diary, with many more employers wanting more information about the project.
Evaluation
At the end of each workshop, the attendees are invited to complete an evaluation form, so that we can gauge the effectiveness of our sessions. The feedback so far has been very positive. Below are some of the individual comments we have received:
“The workshop really made me think deeply about so many different things.” “It was an excellent course.Well presented!” “Excellent start to something I have been considering for years.” “Great workshop, very varied with excellent facilitation.” “Very helpful advice; will check my current status. Changes in government / pensions very useful.” “It’s all so confusing, so it was good to have it explained so clearly.” During 2008 Life Academy expect to deliver information and guidance to over 3,000 people approaching or over age 50 so that they are better equipped to make informed choices about issues such as the late stages of their working life, state and occupational pensions, and finance. Our research findings will help to influence the design of future provision of information for older workers provided by both government and non-government organisations.
Further information about the project can be found at www.life-academy.co.uk/50WorkingLives. If you’re in the Cambridgeshire, mid-Bedfordshire or Bedford area and would like to run workshops at your place of work, or would like to attend one of our half-day workshops in our Cambridge office, please contact Linda Taylor on linda.taylor@life-academy.co.uk.
