Charlie Rumens (32) - Now A Plumber
Charlie Rumens is just 32, but after 15 years in retail, he has walked away from his career in order to retrain as a plumber. Most recently he was a buyer in pharmacy for Sainsbury’s, but now believes that his future in plumbing is far brighter, particularly if he starts his own company.
No Age Barriers For A New Career
Mature workers are beginning their careers from scratch by retraining, in order to try and beat age discrimination later in life.
Although new laws are being put in place during October of this year, banning age discrimination in the workplace, a lot of employees are still highly concerned about the safety of their future as they get older.
People today are living for longer so their working lives are longer, so more employees are finding a need to carry on working in order to fund their retirement, so a second or in some cases, even a third career is becoming more and more common.
Although more of the major companies, ie Asda and B&Q are introducing mixed-age workforce policies; evidence shows that the more mature workers can draw the short straw if they don’t take control of their careers.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development says that 50% of employees believe that they had been overlooked for new jobs, purely because of their age.
A lot of the bigger firms are finding older worker applying to join management programmes that have traditionally been the preserve of new graduates, says Tom Crawford, a director from London recruitment consultancy, Bernard Hodes. “If you are going to work until 70, you can peak in one career in your forties and still have time to start afresh and reach the management heights the second time around in your sixties,” he says.
It isn’t only the older workers who are changing roles because they are worried about the future of their career as they get older either.
Charlie from North London says, “The hours are long in retail and you often work weekends. It really is a younger person’s game. I needed something that would give me a skill I could use for the rest of my working life.”
Charlie took voluntary redundancy last year and is now about to complete a plumbing course through New Career Skills, a training provider that usually specialises in helping the more mature workers retrain for the construction sector.
He says, “You could earn pots of cash in retail if you work all hours, but for me it’s all about quality of life and knowing I’ll be able to do something where I’ll be my own boss for the rest of my life.”
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