Everyone knows these facts and yet employers and workers alike are struggling to deal with them.

 

But Dianne Bown-Wilson set up a consultancy, in my prime, to address these very issues, providing advice, strategic guidance and practical help to employers, policy makers and older workers themselves.

Perhaps not surprisingly, however, becoming an age management specialist wasn’t something that she dropped into immediately after university, but rather became an interest that she developed over time.

 

Bown-Wilson grew up in New Zealand, but relocated to London after finishing a first degree in psychology. She fell into marketing, which she found to be a good fit, and subsequently spent the next 10 to 15 years switching between marketing, PR and copywriting jobs.

“Having experience of all types of organisations was incredibly valuable when I look back on it,” Bown-Wilson says.

For one thing, she learnt the value of being able to repackage her skills and experience in order to make herself a viable candidate in a number of different professions.

 

And it is this very same skill that she applies today when coaching older workers who are looking for (or forced into) a change of direction.

 

 

A move from London to Cheshire and Manchester – and another change of profession – followed. “It was an interesting place and Manchester is undervalued in the south,” Bown-Wilson says. Although originally, she had moved to the city to work in advertising, she ended up settling into a marketing management role.

 

“When you do a lot of ground level PR, copywriting and so on, it’s great because it’s interesting, but you get to point where you want to set strategy,” Bown-Wilson points out, admitting: “It’s a good thing and a bad thing that I’m interested in lots of different things.”

But she believes the fact that she got a postgraduate degree in marketing from the Chartered Institute of Management under her belt opened a lot of doors for her.

 

For example, she spent a few years working in marketing for the Information Commissioner’s Office. “Marketing data protection is by no means an easy job,” she jokes, but she found the challenge hugely rewarding nonetheless.

Next, however, Bown-Wilson became the first marketing person for a large commercial law firm. “That was an enormous challenge,” she admits, “but services marketing is absolutely fascinating.”

But it was also about this time that she began to take an interest in HR – and to recognise that HR and marketing needed to forge closer ties. “In services, it’s all down to marketing and if your employees are not on board and they’re not engaged, then you have a problem,” she says.

 

But Bown-Wilson believes that “the interlink” between HR and marketing is not exploited enough in most organisations. “I think it’s still a huge hole really, because if you look at marketing services, then employee support is crucial and you will have problems if you don’t connect marketing and HR,” she explains.

On deciding to take this message to a wider audience, however, she moved to Oxford and set up her own business, The M3 Consultancy, in 2000.

 

 

“My message was marketing and motivation, with the idea that if you’re going to market effectively, you need to manage people properly and be motivated,” Bown-Wilson says. “That was something I launched to the marketplace – my USP [unique selling point]. People can see it when it’s explained to them.”

 

The idea was that, even though many organisations spend a lot of money on marketing, very few have any idea whether consumers actively engage with it. “Marketing is thought of as something that marketing and sales people do and has nothing to do with ‘us’,” she attests.

While over time Bown-Wilson duly added executive and careers coaching to her long list of skills, her real change in direction happened about six or seven years ago.

 

“When I was coaching older managers, I became interested in their attitude to their lives and careers, and I realised my perception that older people have their lives sorted out and know where they are going just wasn’t actually the case,” she recalls.

 

Bown-Wilson recognised a gap in the market and, as a result, set up her current consultancy, in my prime, to exploit it – while also enrolling with the Cranfield School of Management and studying for a PhD on the subject of older workers’ careers.

 

But although she still does some marketing work, her focus now is almost entirely on age-related issues. “Biologists and other experts have been predicting the effects of an aging population for years but, even six or seven years ago, nobody seemed to have much interest and there was little activity,” she observes.

Although since then the government has scrapped the default retirement age and age-related issues have moved higher up the agenda, Bown-Wilson feels that little has fundamentally changed – discrimination, as in many areas, has simply become more insidious.

 

“HR put policies in place, but really very little has changed attitudinally and people come up against the same barriers,” she says. “But people are more careful to make sure they aren’t obvious. I don’t think it’s malicious, however – ageism is so inherent and is seen as almost natural in a way.”

 

Unfortunately, the belief still appears to persist that if a worker is older, they will not be able to perform as well as a younger colleague. This means that, while 60 may feel like the new 50 for members of that generation, attitudes elsewhere have been slower to change.

As a result, Bown-Wilson believes that it would be useful for employers and older workers to consider introducing more flexible options: working part-time or changing individuals’ role, for instance.

 

But employers also need to become more flexible in their thinking generally. While there is a tendency to assume that all older workers want the same thing, in reality, there is as much diversity among this age group as there is among those just embarking upon their career.

A common option for older workers is to set up their own business. But Bown-Wilson warns against taking official numbers in this area at face value.

 

“If you look beyond the statistics, people who were made redundant say they are working for themselves to save face,” she points out. “But you can work for yourself and earn virtually nothing – it doesn’t equate to a “proper” job.”

 

Nonetheless, older people who do chose to establish their own companies tend to make more of a success of it than other age groups, she adds.

As well as her consultancy work, career coaching and role as visiting fellow at Cranfield, Bown-Wilson is also somehow finding the time to write two books – one on what it feels like to age on a personal basis and the other to act as a guide for employees. It certainly appears that she, for one, isn’t slowing down.

And finally….

Who do you admire most and why?

 

I admire many people in different fields for a variety of reasons. However, one person that stands out is Diana Athill, who after a long and distinguished career as an editor at a leading publisher is now a hugely inspirational author and speaker. She is currently in her mid-90s and shows no signs of slowing down.

 

As a woman and older person, she is an absolute role model for us all – hugely interesting, entertaining, wise and curious. Rather than ignoring age, she deals with it as a new challenge in her life, ultimately embodying the saying: “It’s not about the years in your life, but the life in your years”.

What’s your most hated buzzword?

I think, although it may sound strange, that it’s ‘diversity’. It seems that it makes us focus too much on individual differences – an approach that is divisive – rather than our inherent similarities, which I believe is a much more productive approach.

 

Ultimately we are all different from each other and the way that we keep adding to the “diversity” agenda is worrying. It looks like obesity and possibly red hair are next on the list…where will it stop?

The problem is that, although the situation of various groups may improve, we never seem to think we have moved forward. For example, social class was always a great barrier before we labelled such issues as “diversity”. Now, social class has been replaced by economic inequality, but people still talk about “working class” issues.

 

Currently the only “mainstream” individuals are white, able-bodied, heterosexual men in their 30s and 40s. By definition in our global society they’re a minority, obviously, so how can we still use them as the benchmark for everyone else’s differences?

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

 

“There’s nothing as infectious as enthusiasm”. I picked this up from a coach when I was undertaking coach training and, although it seems an innocuous statement, it’s actually true.

 

In the workplace and in society, we want people to do certain things and behave in certain ways, and yet often leaders, managers and trainers obviously lack personal enthusiasm for what they want others to do. Yet if you come into contact with someone who is passionate about what they do, then it is immediately compelling.

 

You take an immediate interest simply because they are so energised by it and you start to talk about it with other people. Ultimately, it’s a sales technique, but it shouldn’t be cynical. We should all try and find ways to be enthusiastic about what we do in the workplace if we want others to engage with it also.

How do you relax?

Depending on time and opportunity, either a glass of wine, a good book, or a few hours in the garden bashing weeds. None of these is at all remarkable, but each is remarkably therapeutic in its own way.