A senior expert requested a year’s leave of absence. “Is something wrong?” the manager asked. “Nothing is wrong. We just decided we don’t want to wait for retirement to travel.”

The manager said no. The policy allowed such a long leave only for specific reasons, mostly involving exceptional personal circumstances. The senior expert quit, traveled for a year, returned and asked if the organization wanted to hire him back. They did. They also changed the policy.

As people live longer, a 100-year life could mean a 60-year career.

A longer career needs room to change. That may mean an employee who declines a promotion, a manager who wants fewer direct reports or someone seeking reduced hours or an extended leave of absence. They may still welcome a demanding project or the opportunity to make an impactful contribution. Their interest in contributing continues. The arrangement they want changes.

The traditional pushback has been practical: who picks up the work when someone is away, and how do people step into and out of a job? AI creates an opportunity to revisit those questions. As it reduces the time needed for some tasks, employees may ask whether some of that time can become theirs . And organizations could explore using that productivity gain, alongside the redesign of jobs around tasks, to accommodate different schedules or responsibilities.

Organizations that focus their career conversations mainly on the next title, the bigger job or the more demanding project risk losing people who can contribute but are no longer interested in “more.”

Which raises a question for employers: How many ways can someone continue working in your organization?

Rethink Career Progress Beyond Promotions

Career development used to connect progress with greater scope: a larger team, a bigger budget, another step up the hierarchy. Over the years, careers shifted from ladders to climbing walls . Development could take different directions, sometimes stepping sideways to climb up elsewhere. Organizations learned to accommodate people seeking more meaning, a new industry or opportunities to learn new skills. But progress was still largely associated with taking on more.

Yet, depending on their circumstances and financial position, employees may value time outside paid work more than the income from another hour worked. Economists describe a related trade-off through the backward-bending labor supply curve : at sufficiently high wages, some people choose to work fewer hours because they can afford more leisure.

That concept concerns wages, but longer careers raise a related question about time. When someone has worked for 30 years and may still have another few decades ahead, their interest in contributing can continue while their definition of a desirable career changes.

In a conversation on The Future Of Less Work podcast, Lyndsey Simpson, founder and CEO of 55/Redefined and author of The Age Rebellion , describes people seeking a gradual change in their relationship with work. “They don’t want to be retired and they don’t want to be working 80 hours a week, but they want this tapering over 10, 15 years,” she says.

Essentially, Simpson describes a shift from a retirement cliff edge to a career glide path. It requires employers to accommodate a sustained change in how someone works, rather than treating reduced responsibility or hours as a temporary exception.

Rethink Flexibility For Longer Working Lives

Flexibility used to mean arranging life around work. Increasingly, employees are asking to arrange work around life.

For someone planning the later decades of a long career, flexibility can extend beyond location and weekly hours to periods of availability. Fewer hours every week can still mean being tied to work every week. Someone may want substantial stretches of uninterrupted personal time while remaining willing to work intensely between them. A three-day week and a month away solve different problems. Employers who offer only the first may still lose someone who needs the second.

The OECD’s 2023 report, “ Retaining Talent at All Ages ,” cites a survey of 3,000 Americans aged 55 and over. Among those no longer working, about 40% said they would be willing to return under their previous working conditions. About 60% said they would be willing to return if offered a flexible schedule. The willingness to work may still be there, even when the willingness to return to the same arrangement is not. For employers, the question is: what other ways of working can you offer?

Flexible work arrangements can support people at other life stages as well. Caring for a parent may require a temporary change in schedule. Learning a new profession may require a sustained reduction in workload. Someone completing an intensive project may want a longer break afterward.

Flexibility therefore needs to extend beyond weekly hours or days worked remotely. It also needs to include which responsibilities someone retains, when they are available and how their contribution can fit a different arrangement.

Rethink Work Design Around Experience And AI

These arrangements may seem easier to negotiate for people with scarce skills and bargaining power. Simpson introduces a business lens that can help employers assess them more broadly: “return on experience.”

The question is what an experienced person contributes beyond the cost of employing them. That contribution might include understanding customers, recognizing recurring problems or helping the organization navigate change. As AI enters the work, relevant experience can also provide the judgment to evaluate its output and know when to push back .

Once employers understand the contribution they would lose, redesigning flexible work arrangements becomes a business decision. Personalized flexibility can help retain experienced employees who can develop the next generation of colleagues and help redesign work around AI.

An experienced specialist might take responsibility for defined projects, complex reviews or mentoring without retaining the full scope of their previous job. Such job redesign still requires continuity and clear accountability. But as organizations redistribute tasks between people and AI, they should explore whether those tasks can also be organized around people working part time, returning after a break or available for only part of the year.

Longer lives mean people may want to change how they work years before they want to stop working. For some, that means taking a break and returning. For others, it means fewer hours or a role with less responsibility. Employers who want to retain their contribution need to make room for those choices, so that employees’ career and life decisions can work for both sides.