Population ageing and demographic change patterns

Covering Assessment Criterion 1.3 of 7CO01, this video addresses the long-term social and demographic forces reshaping work and employment in the United Kingdom. Its central subject is population ageing — specifically the growing proportion of people aged 65 and over relative to the working-age population — and the two interconnected drivers behind that shift: rising life expectancy linked to medical advances and improved living standards, and declining fertility rates across generations. The video situates these not as cyclical fluctuations but as structural, decades-long changes, and examines what they mean for talent pipelines, skills availability, pension and healthcare costs, and the assumptions that have historically underpinned recruitment and career progression.

The video also ranges across related demographic patterns that bear directly on workforce composition. Migration and its effects on linguistic, cultural and educational diversity within UK organisations feature alongside the uneven geographic distribution of population change — the contrast between regions experiencing growth driven by economic opportunity and those losing younger workers to outward migration. Changing family structures receive sustained attention, including the rise of single-person households, dual-earner families, and the so-called sandwich generation carrying simultaneous caring responsibilities for children and ageing relatives. Each of these patterns is examined in relation to concrete HR practice areas: job design, phased retirement, flexible working, recruitment strategy, health and wellbeing provision, ergonomic workplace design, and absence management.

Age-related bias in performance management and the psychological contract with older workers are both addressed, as is the tension between the challenges an ageing workforce presents and the institutional knowledge, experience and stability that older workers contribute. The video connects regional labour market variation to workforce planning and remote working policy, and considers how inclusion strategies must respond to migration-driven diversity. Taken together, the content gives senior HR professionals the analytical grounding needed to evaluate — as AC 1.3 requires — how these intersecting demographic trends are already altering the conditions of work and employment, and how organisations can be positioned to respond rather than simply react.