Wie steht es mit dem Arbeiten in späten Jahren in – Australien?

Richard:
Herzlich willkommen im Richard-Kaan-Podcast. Mein Ziel ist es, Unternehmen zu inspirieren, sich rechtzeitig mit Beschäftigten jenseits der 50 zu befassen. Ganz besonders, was ihre Fähigkeiten, also die Senior Skills, betrifft. Darüber hinaus möchte ich Menschen motivieren, nie mit dem Aufhören anzufangen, denn die positive Beschäftigung hält sie jung und fit. All das mache ich mit Büchern und Vorträgen auf Bühnen oder aber hier in diesem Podcast.

Richard:
Es

Richard:
Ist wohl eher eine Ausnahme, aber heute werde ich das Interview auf Englisch halten. Ich habe einen wunderbaren Gast aus Australien, nämlich Ross Moriarty. A warm welcome for my guest today. It is a special pleasure to welcome you here in Austria. We know Ross and her husband John since many, many years. A wonderful arrangement called Home Exchange brought us together. Originally Ross, John and their family were in Australia. Their family stayed in our house in Graz, while we lived in theirs in Sydney. But later on we have made good friends and since that we have been visiting each other. Glad that you are back in Austria. Welcome, Ross.

Ros Moriarty:
Thank you very much, Hadi.

Richard:
Ross Moriarty was born in Tasmania, an island in the south of Australia. And she is a business owner, social investor and author. Her major interests are indigenous questions and strategies. The more as her husband, John, and her mother was an Aborigine. Other than that, she is a member of all sorts of important councils and boards and earned tonnes of honours all over the world. This list is endless and I lost track by studying it. So, Ross, could you please tell us in one or two sentences the most important pillars of your business in social activities.

Ros Moriarty:
Thanks, Hadi. Look, we’ve just clocked up 40 years, so 40 years in business. Oh,

Richard:
You started with 10. Sorry. You started with the age of 10.

Ros Moriarty:
Thank you for that. This will be a great interview on that basis. So 40 years really of an indigenous design business that has a charter to change the way Australians view our design traditions. Traditionally, our designers always look to America or to Europe for their inspiration. But our purpose was to say we have such incredible inspiration right here in our own country from an ancient culture. That, you know, we are, we would like to draw on that.

Richard:
I remember the two aeroplanes , Boeing 747s, I think, which had that indigenous originally design on that. Do you have any connection to that?

Ros Moriarty:
So there are designs. Very exciting because it happened 10 years into our business. And it was very difficult to establish a business like ours because there wasn’t a lot of interest in anything indigenous back in the early 18… not 1800, sometimes feels like it. But back in the early 19… 1980s, when we really had to carve out not just our own offer of what we would be as a design company, but also a market because the market really wasn’t there for us.

Richard:
What is your particular social business?

Ros Moriarty:
We have a foundation, which is called Moriarty Foundation. It has been running for 11 years now. And as a business back 40 years ago and in the time since, we’ve always had a view of offering pro bono services where we could, so where we could assist. But 11 years ago, we decided to formalise that. And into a registered Australian charity that delivers early years learning in remote regions and rural communities to indigenous children the age between babies and five year olds. And also football, which was John’s sport. He was the first Aboriginal footballer to be selected for Australia. And so between the ages of six and 18, we train around 2000 young indigenous kids between those ages a week in three states of Australia in 23 public schools. So that’s the social arm of the business.

Richard:
Besides that, you’re writing books as well, do you?

Ros Moriarty:
I do get a chance to write books because I have teams who do their jobs very well. And 40 years in, you know, I have some time to write nonfiction, write some children’s books and also working on a couple of novels.

Richard:
Lovely. As you’re not only an employer of about 100 staffers, I remember you yourself are a bit beyond 50, as we have heard. The age, which at this moment interests me a lot. In the view of the situation of this particular working class, I know and I have learned a lot about it in Germany and in Austria, but I’m curious of how things happen in Down Under. First of all, the question about the Aussie working world in general. Is there any shortage of employees in Australia at this moment?

Ros Moriarty:
I think definitely in certain sectors following COVID, we’re like the rest of the world and we’ve had a hold on immigration during COVID. Where, you know, many of our positions in hospitality or in rural industries are certainly impacted. In the cities, I think the way it’s described now is an employee’s market. So it is more difficult to attract the right staff into your business. However, because we are a business for purpose and we’re a foundation for purpose, we’re finding really high calibre staff who following COVID had a little bit of a reset and are looking for work with purpose. But in general, I think there is definitely, a shift in employment expectations from a variety of sectors, including the younger cohort of employees who maybe don’t want to work in the same way anymore.

Richard:
Will this go away?

Ros Moriarty:
No, I think society will probably need to shift to accommodate what has been a change through a pandemic that we don’t really even know the full parameters of yet, I think.

Richard:
The tendency I see here is that the people want to work less than they did before. Let’s see. 20 hours, 23, 25 hours, whatever. We have a welfare social state, we at least. I think Australia is pretty much similar. How are we going to finance that if the people only work 20 hours a week?

Ros Moriarty:
It’s a really interesting question. And I still feel that the dust is settling around COVID and that people haven’t yet come to terms with quite what it means and what those expectations are. Because if people want to work less, either they need to work more efficiently or employers need to recognise that there’s an incremental increase in what we will be paying our staff, somewhere something has to give, purely through economics. So I think we’re still coming to terms with what might that mean.

Richard:
Coming to older age, when do the people retire in Australia?

Ros Moriarty:
I think it’s probably similar to here. I think it’s mid 60s. I think, I have no idea. I mean, I’m probably retirement age, but I’m not thinking about it

Richard:
Really. You are an employer, so you will retire. You don’t follow the normal rules. Do the people get a pension in Australia? Yes, yes. Superannuation?

Ros Moriarty:
Yes, exactly. Superannuation is compulsory and employer paid. And a pension also is means tested. So it’s dependent on income and property.

Richard:
But can you live on that? I

Ros Moriarty:
Don’t believe so. I think the pension is at a level that would be very difficult

Richard:
To… Can you give us a number, a figure, just a rough idea?

Ros Moriarty:
I’m not too sure, actually, to tell you the truth. But I know the pension itself. The pension itself is in a relationship to the income a person might have or the superannuation they might have or their property assets. But I’m not too sure where it sits.

Richard:
But if the people or a particular amount of the people cannot live on that, what’s the alternative? What do they do then?

Ros Moriarty:
Good question. You know, I think there is good aged care in Australia to the point that aged care is working in a general sense around the world. It’s not, you know, there are many issues around it. There are commissions into its quality. There are commissions into how families relate to placing older people in institutions and, you know, whether people are really being properly cared for regardless, you know, even above and beyond whether people are emotionally, intellectually stimulated or whether it’s a good place to be. But there are just some structural things around how we cater to the ageing process. But they’re

Richard:
Very, very basic and not very comfortable.

Ros Moriarty:
I think it depends on expectations. My mother, for instance, was in a retirement village for some years where she was quite independent. But there was the possibility for her to move into a care situation if she wished. And she loved it. I mean, I looked at it and thought, that’s probably not for me.

Richard:
But probably that was not cheap.

Ros Moriarty:
That was not cheap. But there was a system where she could sell her home and place that into this aged care system. And then that would be refunded into her estate. So there are some safeguards and some safety nets.

Richard:
But if you don’t have a house, if you don’t have a home.

Ros Moriarty:
Exactly. Do the people work

Richard:
Beyond that point of retirement?

Ros Moriarty:
I think many people do. I don’t know the statistics. But I feel that on a number of councils, boards, commissions, various things I do outside the business, the median age isn’t 30. It isn’t 40. It isn’t even 50. You know, there’s a recognition that into 60s and late 60s, there’s a well of knowledge and expertise. And I think also a comfort with sharing. You know, I find there’s a lot of generosity in those late 60s years where there’s nothing much. You don’t need to prove a whole lot more anymore.

Richard:
And I think we all the people, we know everything and we want to share that. What do you think the employees or the people in the working class 50, 50 plus need most in their jobs today?

Ros Moriarty:
I’ll probably answer that in another way and talk first about what employers need them to do. Because that then reflects in what the opportunities are for them. So I think a 50s plus employee needs to really understand accountability. So what is personal accountability and what is team responsibility? Because by 50s and even earlier, you want people to have a real sense of leadership, not just management, which means they need to really take accountability. So if they can take accountability for solutions and outcomes and not simply pushing around a management system. Then what they need is opportunity. I think they need opportunity to lead, to shine, to be acknowledged, to be valued, to be rewarded. So to me, that’s the value of having that kind of expertise in a staff team.

Richard:
Isn’t there a growing problem between the working staff, the younger ones, which sort of the Generation Z does, or which comes into labour today, and the older ones? If you were looking personal and you were the HR person, there comes a young person says, well, I might consider working for you, but I want to have 3,000 euros a month and I’m not working more than four days. I want to have an electric car. And if my kid cries, I’m going home immediately. And there are the older people, let’s say 50 plus, who say, I have three and a half thousand. I’ve been working for 30 years or 30 plus years. I have no electric car. And if my kid cries, of course, I see that somebody else takes care of it. I don’t have kids normally at that age, maybe grandchildren. But isn’t there sort of a growing problem?

Richard:
Is there sort of a disbalance now, which is extremely difficult for employers to deal with?

Ros Moriarty:
I think you need to have a lot of awareness and your HR department needs to have a lot of awareness around how this works, because the load needs to be shared. So if you have an employee who is in that older bracket, who doesn’t necessarily have the day-to-day child needs or family obligations in the sense that they had when they were younger and probably didn’t have the sort of support that they now have. You need to make sure they’re not penalised by working harder and harder so that you can offer this flexibility that is now an expectation. It is a demand from the younger cohort. But I think if in our experience anyway, if we take a view of flexibility and if we do provide that support, there’s also a pragmatic expectation that the returns to the business will be manageable because it’s always that Nexus and that balance between what does the business need?

Ros Moriarty:
What do our various employees need? You know, whether it is about childcare or it is about someone who has difficult mental health issues and needs support for a year or more, or it is about an older employee who has more different caring responsibilities, caring for older, sicker parents, for instance. So I think in Australia, the flexibility is the most important point, but we need to make sure that everyone in the team feels that they are not carrying an unbalanced load because of someone else. David Röhn I see

Richard:
That there is a growing jealousy between these two cohorts because the young ones ask for something that all the ones never had and never will achieve. But anyway, this is something the employees have to deal with in the close future. I think it’s going to be extremely difficult because you have the lack of stuff. You need people to work, but you can’t follow their needs or their demands they have. Just the last few questions about the working class beyond 50, which is my main interest at the moment. How important, if you sort of make a rating or the key points, how important are people beyond 50 and why? They’re

Ros Moriarty:
Absolutely critical because the expertise and the knowledge they have and the comfort with often, the comfort with the way they operate, the confidence they carry. I’m talking about really good employees. I mean, you can have great employees who are over 20 or 40, 30, 50 and you can have very poor employees in any of those age groups. But I’m talking about really valued, high performing people over 50s are invaluable. We have a number on staff who are wonderful mentors to younger staff who can make decisions where a business owner doesn’t necessarily need to be too involved to stay strategic. So to me, it’s vital that we retain this knowledge and information. And I used to think, I suppose, when I was 30, that 50 was old. Now in my 60s, I think 50 is incredibly young. So to me, they’re invaluable. And, you know, I find that I need that cohort of senior managers who are closer in my age than necessarily the younger cohort.

Ros Moriarty:
Having said that, my two ICs is 37.

Richard:
I think this is a wonderful closing. Dear Ross, I still have tonnes of questions, but today they will remain unasked. I thank you very much for your time and for these so informative answers. And have a good trip back.

Ros Moriarty:
Dankeschön, Heidi. And it’s been a wonderful stay in Graz. And we love the friendship.

Richard:
Das war heute einmal ein Interview auf Englisch. Und ich bin sicher, es ist besser, es so ganz original zu belassen, als zu versuchen, es zu übersetzen. Ich danke für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit und verabschiede mich. Bis zum nächsten Mal. Auf Wiedersehen. Danke fürs Reinhören in meinem Podcast. Mehr Informationen gibt es auf meiner Webpage richardkaan.com. Bis zum nächsten Mal.

Richard:
Ciao.