Are we going to talk fifty plus? Now? Are we going to talk that?
To?
Dorry Marino joining us on the line. Welcome Dorry, great to have you with us, Dorry. Are you there?
Yes?
Hi?
Can you hear me?
Yeah, yes, I can. It's good to happen me, Karen, And thank you for affirming me. I needed that today, that article absolutely. Why why did you write this article, Dorry?
Well, I think that it's a conversation that needs to start happening and start gaining momentum with people living longer, closer to ninety. You know, the idea of retirement is really well, what does it mean in this day and age.
It's a concept that was created in a different time zone, really so many years ago, and I think that it needs to be reconsidered and what does it mean not just for organizations as in how do we ensure that we keep people that wants to work and that are able to work for longer, but also just in terms of our own our own personal growth and our own mindset around the fact that well, work doesn't stop at
sixty five. It may it can continue, and what does that continuation look like for each and every single one of us. So it's it's a time of reinvention maybe, but.
You're saying there's value there. You're saying there's value in the age of a I people are going to be losing their job essentially, and I guess FIFO is going to be one of the means of ridding people from their from their from their jobs. Tell us, essentially, what qualities fifty plus year olds harbor, What do they bring
to the party, What is their contribution? And I think we can understand it in terms of maybe deep industry acumen, in terms of institutional memory, in terms of problem solving skills. Tell us about the value.
Well, you know, people that have lived to fifty plus sixty plus have been around the block a number of times. We've experienced I was listening just a short while ago you were saying that, you know, we've moved from telephones to cell phones, and just the number of transitions and changes and advancements that we've experienced, and that is just
all memory. The application and the adaptation of all of those changes is something that makes us resilient, That gives us insights as to how to adapt to change in a very fast changing world. And those are things that I think AI is not going to be replaced anytime soon. Just the human element of how do we navigate and how do we show up, and how do we maintain ourselves mentally and physically such and healthy to continue to be to continue to be relevant in this world that
we live in. So I think it's it's the softer skills and the softer resilience that and leadership and adaptability that we bring to the party.
Yeah, I was, I was, I was. I was worried about that. I was worried that maybe the machines could bring some emotional quotion to to the equation. And for a while, I thought we'll be safe with the eq that life has afforded us. But then I found my sister in a conversation with with Ai shure me, and it was a really, I thought, emotionally intelligent conversation. I was really worried. Are the machines not going to be able to even beat us at that?
You know, Karents who don't know. I think that there's a lot of speculation, and I think that, you know, I kind of look at aar almost like cell phones. If anyone had told us how we were going to be using cell phones and to what extent and how they would be part of our lives. When we first started using them, it would have been unbelievable. And I
think that the pendulum will swing. We're going to shift very much into using AI everything, including having coaches our coaches and having AI replaced the EQ component or what humans now bring to the party. But I'm a fame believer that we found our balance, we shift back, and we kind of let that pendulum swing back towards the center. And you know, I think it's not one or the other,
but it will be. And and some people will choose AI for the EQ fix or for their coaching or whatever it is that they that they may need, and other people will say no, they're actually wants the human connection, the people connection. So the real challenge for all of us is to found our space in all of that, isn't it? And I think there in Lars the opportunity for people of all ages and all generations.
It's the nature of change. It's absolutely seismic, and maybe you are suggesting a seismic change in attitudes. And you in your article you talk about for decades careers and un quoting followed a predictable path, study into your twenties, work for thirty forty years, then retire at about sixty or sixty five years old. This model assumed productivity declines after sixty an idea increasingly challenged by research and real
world experience. It's reality that, yeah, retirement at that age is no longer possible for many.
Well, just from a financial perspective is the first thing is that, yes, you know, when we were retired at sixty fist before, you were going to be living too around seventy seventy five, so your retirement savings was going to last you five or ten years. Now you're going to be living closer to ninety. So now if you're retiring or you stop earning an income at sixty five, you know, I have to have enough money to support
you for twenty five years. Aside from the financial strain or challenge is what do you do with yourself for twenty five years? Do you literally just waste away and have absolutely no purpose and nothing to do? So sixty sixty sixty five is really the age of reinvention and growth and being strategic about how do you want to play out what do you want to be doing for the next third of your life, really, and there's so many There's a lot of opportunity there for the individuals
and for organizations. I really really believe that.
And the challenge is also an opportunity. You talk about adapting to new technology, it is intimidating the pace of change, and you say we should, we should embrace it a little more enthusiastically.
Maybe, Well, a change is not going to stop, is it. It's like wishing that, you know, we could go back to the days of you know, the nineteen hundreds. It's not going to happen. How moves forward. Change happens. It's about embracing, adapting and figuring out how you let that change impact you on a day to day basis. At the end of the day, we all have choice. Yes, we get carried with a momentum, and you know, there is the thing that says, well, you know, if you
don't keep up to date, you'll be left behind. But you do have some choice around how much you want to adapt and how much you want to integrate, and how you want to make it useful and beneficial for you. So I encourage everybody. I'm turning sixteen next year, and I know that I know I'm a lot more tech savy than a lot of many younger people, and religious is an attitude of learning and adapting and not being afraid.
I think fear is the biggest challenge for most people, and that is regardless of age.
So I'm your generation. You were born sixty six. I was born eineteen sixty seven. We are Generation X. What really do we bring to our party? What is our generational contribution in your mind?
Dorri, I give confuses all the generation. I know I'm a generation, but I would say that we were the lucky generation because I mean we really just experienced the boom of so many things. I mean it, you know, exactly exactly, but you know we haven't experienced for war, were previous general experience not one, but a huge So we are the generation of can do gross Yeah, And I think that that's really what we bring to the party, to the mix, is that we just do things. We
get on with it. We don't know any other way, and so that that gives us some adaptability and it gives us the the well, you know, there's no end, we just keep going kind of things.
Yeah, you call themself skills, but I think they are going to be in demand, skills, that measured approach, that experience with change that we can bring our experience allow us to approach new ideas and challenges. Maybe when I'm more measured a calculated perspective, time would have taught us that. But ultimately the objective is embracing an age diverse workforce.
So if fifty plus years in South Africa constitute fifteen percent of the population, do you manufacture your workforce in line with those numbers?
Not necessarily. I think that it's really just, you know, data drives a lot of decisions, and that's not wrong, but I think that we also have to have sentiment and emotions allowing a lot of things to drive how
we go forward. And it really is you know, we worry about young people and mental health, and I'm saying, well, makes let's make sure that we don't create a mental health problem the other end of the spectrum, because we are retiring people too early, and that is potentially what we have, not just in South Africa, but globally that we are looking at bringing people into the workplace and giving them the tools to be able to settle in and grow and develop. But at the other end of
the spectrum, we're creating what we're creating another problem. We were saying, we're now letting you go, and you no longer relevant, and you no longer have a purpose, and you've gone from having something to do on a Friday to having nothing to do on a Monday. What problems, what potential problems are being created by that? You know that that attitude and that policy that we have in place, my guess.
Dori Marino, growth strategist and founder of self Journey wrote an interesting opinion piece in the Business Day on the untapped value that the over fifties represent for the workplace and for the economy. But you say it's an important time to be introspective as well to ask what now and how should you answer that question?
The answer is different for everybody. I think, you know, I'll have this conversation with many people and some people say, oh, please leave me alone. I can't wait to retire at sixty five, and that's okay. And then there are many people that say, yes, you know, bring it on. I'm ready to change, I'm ready to transition. I'm ready to carry on working and be relevant and be more purpose driven.
So I think that that answer is a very individual one and one that we need to take responsibility for individual in terms of figuring out what does it mean for us, how are we going to face this next phase of our lives, and how are we going to show up, whether it be in the workplace or in the family or for ourselves even But I guess that what we haven't had before was permission to have those conversations because it was just a given that a sixty
five is just what's going to happen. And so the idea of wanting to work for longer was one that was an outlier, and you were seen as a bit strange wanting to do that. So I'm wanting to normalize that as you know, people saying, well, I'm just going to carry on working until I decide I no longer want to be doing that, or the work that I'm going to be doing is going to be different, because
that's what I'm deciding to do now. But it's still purpose driven, and it's still it's me that's deciding when I put down the tools, as opposed to you had been decided for me.
Yeah, and you said that's an individual response that you need to make. I just cannot fathom. I can't fathom retirement. I really can't.
But you're That's the thing. That's the thing is that most of us at that age now, I mean, you say, you know, you're my generation. I'm sixty, I'm starting.
You know.
The work that I'm doing now is so exciting, probably more exciting than the work that I've done all years leading up to now. And for anybody to kind of say to me, oh, no, you shouldn't be doing this. You know, you're too old. You can't learn new things. You can't there's no chance for you. It's just, as you say, unfathomable. So yeah, and that's exciting.
Yeah. Who said you can teach a dog al tricks?
We can learn so many new tricks.
Let's just I want to I want to just share this last little paragraph out of the article, and then I'd like you to go and find it. Tapping into the over fifties workforces potential in Business Day and of course, penned by Dori Morino, our guests in a country grappling with high unemployment and a need for economic resilience, Tapping into the experience and creativity of older South Africans is not just a social imperative. It's a smart economic strategy.
By investing in the fifty plus workforce as creators, collaborators, and leaders, we can build more inclusive, productive, and future ready economy for all. This is no kind of special considerations that you are asking for you saying it's good for business.
Absolutely, you know, with a with a fifty plus individual stay in an organization or whether they're encouraged to go out and start businesses to create employment. That's what you want to do because you all of that money, it goes back into the economy. It builds the resilience. The more people you've got working, the more people you've got creating businesses, the more employment will get created. The more the money keeps flowing. You know, people that retire, what
there they're not they're not adding to the economy. They're living or savings. They're constrained, so they're not spenders. So you want to actually just keep boosting that economics and that money cycle of people earning money so that they're investing, so that they're buying, so that they are creating employment, so that they're spending, so that they're traveling, so that
they're buying houses. So that is the economic boost that I see and how older people or people of that generation can actually add to positively towards the unemployment statistics by creating employment if they go and boarding businesses or starting new new businesses.
Dorry, we're gonna wrap it there. We appreciate the article. Thank you for joining us today. Dorri Burrino, a growth strategist and founder at self chet again find the article in a Business Day. A wild drive your new dad, two babies seriously and one car that apparently can cope. Yeahsh the hedgeback was my baby, but it just didn't
have enough space for my two new babies. I know you're happy with the price when you sold to be by cars very We've even got some extra cash displurge on one of those fancy prians that you basically need a license for. Good luck Jains, we buy cars geared for family GID for you.
Did you know that every hour someone in South Africa is diagnosed with blood cancer or a blood disorder? DKMS Africa helps patients find a matching stem cell donor, ensuring that patients get the transplant they need. This Mandela month be part of the mission. Donate fifty runds towards the Swap Kids Save Lives campaign. Your donation will help more people register as potential stem cell donors. Visits Dkmsafrica dot org today Every rand and every swap count in the
fight against blood cancer. Cato WhatsApp Clarence five six seven one five six seven.
Welcome back and his eleven thirty five. There's a voice note And I'm not sure if it's Morris or Mourice. How do you pronounce it? Because I had a friend in my class at primary school his name was Maurice. Insisted it was Maurice. His name is Fuckway, So I'm not sure if it's Marrie or Maurice. But let's take listen.
H right, Clarence.
I hope we as a country don't spend the next sixty seven years trying to undo the damage that Nelsonman Dollas Party due to this country.
Huh yeah, I think we need to. We need to look at ourselves in the mirror and really interrogate how maybe, how just just how we have also enabled maybe too much abuses to happen in this particular country. That's it's really time for us to to see how complicit we have been. Uh, And how we can demand a lot more like we should from from our government and especially for the poorest of the poor. Of course, right it is time for us to talk. We gonna we're gonna look,
in fact at three Madiba Day activities. We're gonna look at the Secret Scarfs campaign. We're not gonna be telling anybody. And Ruth Eli will join join us in a short while, and then we are going to look at Impact with Love a village at an event in Cape Town. And then we are going to go to help unemployed South Africans on their journey to self employment and independence. Let's let me know about your activity as well. I'll be able to squeeze it in the time that we have available.
Welcome Ruth Eli. It's great to have you with us.
Good morning Clarence, good morning, Yes, sorry, good morning to the listeners.
Before I forget, of course, this is a hash hash conversation by the sides of things, So we're just going to be whispering, are we Yeah?
No, Unfortunately with me around, you won't get away with it.
Ruth, what are you up to today?
Well, the secret is out. We've been working secretly behind the scenes. We managed to get our bosses, our siblings, our nephews, our nieces, the whole family and all our networks in all eight regions have been working away tirelessly for the special day. And we've been doing it for the last ten years. And we've been making scarves, litwoits.
Have been knitting scarves. How many scarves have you knitted? And who will be benefiting from all of this knitting?
You know, I was looking at all the posts this morning and some of our regions some and we've got a lot of groups in all regions. I think it's actually countless at the stage and one particular group have done like six hundred and seventy scarves.
Wow.
And you know we've got groups at all the libraries, yellow clean cake town people meet at coffee shops and every group I've just gone to town. Or should I say I have been scarving away?
Now tell me you say, like a theme? Do they have to kind of do it in a certain color or is it just whatever wall is available? Just do it?
Yeah, you see with sixty seven. Because we're a non profitable organization, we look off donations, so we're very fortunate we are. Wool Stage are always a full We get people that give us colorful things. And you know we're not own CDs, so we turn it into magical scarves and something that you might not like, somebody else will just look at it and fall in love immediately.
Okay, so that's just think one place. You say, six hundred scarves. Who's going to benefit from it? How do you distribute it?
Well, one of the secrets is that we secretly hang it on trees, on lampposts, anything that in a where and in a way. We think somebody that would parssy, that would need it, So we just hang it around. And I think that's part of the secret about it. You know that we hang a dick and we surprise somebody. I call it random acts of kindness.
I love random acts of kindness. And where would these calves be finding trees? Give us areas where you know they're going to be hanging up on.
Well, you know, I'm from Grassy Park, so it's very green. Then we have still got some trees, thanks very much, So you know we will be hanging them, you know, around the Grassy Park area. People who'll be listing at a cathedral in town and they will be hanging somewhere. Oh, the list is actually endless. So I need people actually to go onto our social media and go and find a place in your region and you'll see where we're
all distributing. Because, like I said, I'll be taking up all your time this morning if I have to run through the whole list.
Okay, then direct us to your social media sites. What are we looking for?
Well, you know we are on Instagram, We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter, we are you know, we've got info at sixty seven Blankets. If you quickly want to drop us an email, there's always somebody there that definitely will respond. A very active website.
So even if you just.
Put on the sixty seven blankets for Nelson Mandela Day, we will be all in your face. Our core purpose is blankets. But once a year we just do these little things where we can actually put it around somebody's nick Sometimes we don't even leave it on the on the tree. We will don't find people in the car park, you know, people that we still deserve a little warmth and a little bit of love.
I love your random acts of kindness, Solar, and I know it's going to bring much needed warmth to very deserving people. Thank you to you and the wonderful netwits for this initiative. Today, Ruth Eli is the ambassador and of course you want to go and search on social media for sixty seven blankets for Nelson Mandela and you'll find out more. Now, let's got a Solva Albert Taine Impact Group HR executive and we are going to what are you getting? What are you up to today? Solar Welcome, Hi, Hi.
Thank you, thank you for having me. Well personally, I'm in Gophanage in Johannesburg in a place called Eldorado Park. So we're doing an activation.
Yeah, that's wonderful. I'm familiar with Eldorado Park. Have some fun memories. Tell us about about your initiative.
So today we've got activations in johanna Burg, in Cape Town and in case it n so, the one in Eldorado Park is an orphanage for little kids. And then in Cape Town in Greenville, we have our team out at Love Village.
Okay, and exactly what does the activation entail?
So in Love Village in Cape Town, our staff are working in the vegetable garden at that orphanage. They're spending time with the toddlers. And they're also making sandwiches and assisting chores in the kitchen.
So how does the village differ from a traditional orphanage. I think there's an interesting story there as well.
Yes, yes, so Love Villages. There's currently nine across the country, and it's not only your orphanage, but they also provide average of five thousand meals weekly to people in it across the country and to date they had six five hundred people have already received medical at at no cost through Love Village. So each Love Village also runs their own unique program and these programs are designed to our children reach their full potential.
I'm trying to sell Alberta an Impact Group. HR executive tell us more about the Impact Group. What do you do?
So?
Impact Group is a national food cleaning and integrated facilities management company. We are a purpose driven company and our aim is to positive impact the lives of all the people with touch and which includes our own employees, our clients, and the communities we serve.
Okay, and you're still wanting us to get involved. Can we get involved?
Yes? Ye so at any of the Love Villages. You can find the information online. They welcome volunteers not only on Neilsen man Dalla day but every day of the year, so you can just pop in and assist. We need it.
And I know Friday today from nine o'clock to eleven o'clock. So your activity in Greenville that's near Durbanville has come to an end already, hasn't it.
I think they're still on site. I just spoke to someone now, so they're still assisting with sandwiches. But these activations from vigious companies throughout the day at the village.
Okay, well you'll find it two forty seven corner of Baobab and Ebony Streets. That's Greenville near Durbanville. Maybe you want to just go and give them some moral support. That would be wonderful. Thank you Salwa for joining us and alerting us to your effort today. It's appreciated on me a pleasure, thank you. Okay. We've got Helen Brand, national marketing manager of TCB with us as well. Another initiative of foot. Of course, we're looking at pretty serious
unemployment rates and taking care of business. Enterprise Development program is fully an essential gap by training South Africans to become self employed and joining us, Helene welcome, it's great to have.
You good morning, thank you.
Is it Helene Brand? Yes, okay, because it could be Brunt or it could be brand, just checking you the national marketing manager at TCB. What is TCB all about?
Yes, well, Taking Care of Business is an organization that works with unemployed South Africans across the country and we focus on how you can eradicate poverty by becoming self employed, mostly in trading in what we call the circular economy. That's when we take waste items I think it would have ended up inlandful and learned to silid, repair it, repurposes and make money for it.
So essentially, through three programs and I'm reading Resell, repair and Remake, TCB empowers unemployed individuals, especially women and fathers, to become self employed in the circuit economy and you provide.
Our biggest program is that we sell one. So that's where we receive amazing donations of clothing and harmony from all the big brands across South Africa who donate their excess clothing and items to