Working out a way to get the most out of life

"I work 12 hours a day, seven days a week and I love it," says Gilda, who moved to Leeds from her home in Salermo, Italy, nearly 50 years ago.

She opened Pasta Romagna, on Albion Street, in Leeds city centre, 25 years ago and is something of a local celebrity. She believes work keeps her young.

"I see so many people my age moaning and groaning and being depressed. I live on my own and if I didn't work, what would I do?

Sit at home and be depressed. Working makes me happy so why shouldn't I do it?" says Gilda, who is known for bursting into song to entertain her customers.

Such is her dedication to work that even the day after a fire at her home last week she was back in work at 7am the following day singing the praises of the firefighters who saved her belongings. The show, as they say, must go on.

Across the city, stockbroker Alan Kitching is also hard at work. Alan, 75, could have retired 10 years ago, but instead continues to help people make the most of their money.

He works two-and-half-days a week as a consultant for Charles Stanley stockbroker in Leeds. He also works in venture capital and spends two days a week doing charity work as chairman of two residential homes for people with Alzheimer's Disease.

Alan actually retired at 70, but when he was approached by Charles Stanley to help open their Leeds office, he jumped at the chance.

"If you are fit and healthy and your brain is still working, then I do not see the problem with carrying on so long as you enjoy it. I never think of work as work. I am in the happiness business and I love what I do. I am lucky enough to be in the position now that I can do the really nice bits of my job."

Alan believes that an older workforce has plenty to offer and is fully behind plans to scrap the default retirement age.

He also believes that if the big banks had kept hold of their older, more experienced staff rather than having what he calls a clear-out every 20 years, then the banking crisis might never have happened.

"In an awful lots of cases, the industry has been quick to get rid of people who have a few grey hairs and experience, in favour of young whiz kids. It is a generational thing.

"A lot of the banks like to have a clear out every 20 years but then they lose the experience of those who have seen it all before. All those who had been through the trials and tribulations of the '70s had been booted out or pensioned off, so the new generation just repeated it all. It like burning all the books in the library."

However, Mr Kitching says that as you get older there do need to be limits to what you can do.

"You have to accept that there are some things that you just don't want to keep on doing when you are 75, like rushing around all over the country as much as I did. And you have to make room for the next generation, but there is a role for both."

Gilda and Alan are two of a growing number of people working beyond the retirement age, and, if the Government gets its way, many more people could be working into their seventies and even eighties.

Last week, the Government launched a consultation on plans to scrap the default retirement age (DFA). The plans will see forced retirement phased out

from next April before becoming illegal on October 1, 2011.

The numbers of older people working beyond retirement age are soaring. The latest Office for National Statistics figures reveal that 1.428m people of retirement age are in full- or part-time work – an increase of 18,000 over the previous quarter, and the highest number since 1992, when comparable records began.

This marks a complete shift in our attitudes to aging and older people in the workplace in the space of one generation. The numbers of working women over 60 and men over 65 has been rising since the 1990s. Amid a general picture of high unemployment, in which 18-to-24-year-olds are hardest hit (some 734,000 are jobless), this demographic group is the only one significantly gaining ground, bucking the trend in a dismal market. At 60-plus, those interviewed said they felt vital and engaged and couldn't see themselves retiring.

A survey by Aon Consulting found that more than three-quarters of adults currently in work expected to work beyond the age of 65.

Just over half (53 per cent) said they would need to carry on working to increase their pension, and a quarter said they wanted to work because they liked work.

Only 22 per cent said they would not work beyond 65 in any circumstances. At present, only about one million people work beyond 65. But Jon Beaumont, a Human Resources consultant at Aon, says these figures imply "there will be three times that number working or at least wanting to work after that age".

And he warned employers to prepare for the idea.

"As the baby boom generation heads for pension age, the number of people aged 55-64 will fall while the number of over-65s grows. So there may be a gap to fill."

But business leaders warn that employers will find it difficult to plan for the future if they do not know when staff will step down, although compulsory retirement ages could still be enforced in physically demanding jobs such as front-line policing.

The Confederation of British Industry says that knowing that the bulk of the workforce will retire when they reach 65 allows them to plan ahead; plans to scrap it will create uncertainty for employers and employees.

But Prof Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University, believes it is the only way forward.

"We are going to have double the number of 65-year-olds and triple the number of 80-years-olds. So they don't develop dementia, you have to keep them active. Research shows the more people are cognitively active dementia is off-set for many many years," says Prof Cooper.

"Obviously, the jobs they will perform will be different. They may want to work part-time and not have the stressful jobs they had before.

"But their experience is invaluable. They can be mentors and consultants. Employers and employees are going to have to be flexible in the future, but it is the sensible way forward."