British businesswoman Lyndsey Simpson is a master of persuasion. Six years ago, with one of her clients struggling to find older talent, she successfully asked 400 people whether they might ‘un-retire’ and return to the workplace.
It sparked the idea for her company, 55/Redefined, which has seen some of the world’s largest organisations attract workers and consumers aged over 50.
Simpson’s aim was to inspire this generation and end ageism in the workplace. Further, she persuaded corporations that focusing on over-50s talent would not only future-proof their businesses but create a competitive edge by valuing experience.
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It currently delivers age strategy services in 44 countries for more than 95 of the world’s largest companies, including Amazon, Barclays and Warner Bros. Next year will mark the London startup’s fifth anniversary.
“We are a global organisation that helps everyone, everywhere to feel inspired and not retired, solving challenges around our ageing population,” says Simpson.
The idea was formed when Simpson was CEO and co-founder of an HR and recruitment outsource business. The firm had received a call from Natwest bank which needed to bring in over-50s talent for a regulated project of work harking back to the 1990s.
Entrepreneur Lyndsey Simpson founded 55/Redefined in 2021.
Her clients had to unpick the advice the bank was then giving to businesses, but found that all the people in their required demographic were in their 60s and retired.
As a former banker at Barclays, she started networking and phoned up ex colleagues with the same number she’s had since the 1990s to see if they would return as contractors.
It didn’t take long for Simpson to pick up on a recurring theme; dejected by a lack of purpose, retiring was the worst decision they had made. In eight weeks, she had 400 people placed back into the banking sector. Six years on, 250 are still working full-time.
So, why did they want to return? “It wasn’t about the money,” says Simpson. “They could all afford to be retired, they were career bankers on final salary pension schemes. They were targeting retiring in their late 50s or early 60s and being competitive about it.
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“Most people who go into retirement underestimate their own life expectancy by about 15 to 20 years. What nobody spends any time doing is what they will do 24 hours a day for decades if they take work out of the equation.”
Since leaving Barclays in 2007, where her roles included head of corporate development, Simpson has been an entrepreneur in the consultancy and restaurant sectors.
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55/Redefined is her eighth business, while she has been privy to a hard-working environment since childhood when her parents owned a butcher’s shop and post office, and her aunts and uncles owned pubs and restaurants.
55/Redefined champions age diversity in the workplace. · MartinPrescott via Getty Images
“My entire childhood was working in and watching business owners in a seven-day environment where there is no work and home separation,” says Simpson, a former Veuve Clicquot Bold Women Award nominee.
She hails the late Sir John Harvey-Jones as a business hero, having watched his BBC series Troubleshooter as an 11-year-old where he would go into struggling companies and turn them round with consultancy. “I was fascinated by the concept that you could be a problem solver,” adds Simpson.
She recalls one episode where Harvey-Jones helped turn apple juice business Coppella into a premium brand. “It flew off the shelves and that was a real moment for me,” says Simpson. “Every business I have ever done has been about solving problems for a consumer.”
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55/Redefined currently has three group brands. The company consists of Work/Redefined, which enables businesses to attract, grow and engage over-50s talent, free-to-join lifestyle membership platform Life/Redefined and Jobs/Redefined, the UK’s first dedicated over-50s jobs board.
Its consultancy service also uses ‘age data diagnostics’ for its global clients where workforce data is ingested and analysed through the lens of an age, be it customer outcomes, promotion velocity or absenteeism.
55/Redefined CEO Lyndsey Simpson is a leading authority on ageing workforces.
“We have a heatmap of the organisation by age, which shows us where the opportunities for them to lean in and where there is massive risk, that they might have a population of people that are all at the same age who could retire at the same time.”
Simpson’s company today prioritises purpose, flexibility and inclusion. “The workplaces that are really succeeding are the ones sharing stories and celebrating people of every level and age,” she says.
Take Simpson’s own company, which is evenly split with both under and over-50s in its workforce of 25 full-time staff, who range in age from 23 to its 72-year-old chairman.
Meanwhile, its finances are also in heathy shape. 55/Redefined has raised £8.5m in funding to date and welcomed Just Retirement PLC as an institutional investor in 2024. At the time of their last investment round, they were valued at £16.4m.
Over-50s potential
“Ninety-three per cent of over-50s say that they feel under-invested in, they don’t receive career development opportunities and there is an assumption that they just want to ease out when they are at the point in their life when they want to lean in.
This is a massively untapped potential. If you look at the percentage of your workforce that is over-50, that is going to be the fastest-growing element of your workforce, the fastest-growing consumer group and, if you’re a B2C business, it is also the group that holds 75% of the global wealth. Your ability to engage and mirror match people of all ages has never been more mission critical.
‘Progression not promotion’
We find a lot of phrases that resonate amongst our community and people are generally looking for ‘progression not necessarily promotion’. What happens from a job perspective is the pay and reward drops out of the top three reasons why over-50s come to work.
Business tips
Always hire for what you need tomorrow, not what you need today. With my HR recruitment business I saw too many companies having to turnover their staff as they went into scale growth, as they hired what they needed there and then rather than what they needed for the future.”
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