The Roundtable Events

A massive demographic shift is reshaping the workforce in ways most organizations still aren’t planning for: people are living longer, staying healthier, and increasingly questioning whether “retirement at 65” makes sense financially, professionally, or personally. In this interactive fireside chat, I’ll be joined by Dan Pontefract, author of The Future of Work is Grey: The Untapped Value of Age in the Workforce, to explore what he calls “age debt” — the accumulating strain leaders will feel as birth rates plummet, skill gaps widen, and the traditional flow of talent (learn, climb, exit) stops matching reality. If you’re responsible for results, whether through talent strategy or business execution, this conversation will sharpen how you think about productivity, continuity, capability building, and the underused advantage sitting in plain sight: experience.

This will be a candid, practical discussion designed for leaders navigating change together. Dan will unpack how organizations can shift from treating age as a risk to unlocking the “experience dividend,” including his Rivers, Rocks, and Rubies archetypes and concrete examples of how some employers are redesigning work, ergonomics, roles, and flexibility to keep experienced people contributing longer — without forcing “up-or-out” career paths.

As always, we love audience interaction, so bring the real questions you’re wrestling with: What needs to change in how we think about retirement? How do we retain and redeploy experienced talent without breaking job architecture and pay structures? And what would it look like to create a workforce strategy that genuinely works across the full age spectrum?