Growing older, working smarter

Vietnam is still a young country, but it is ageing quickly. According to UNFPA, within a decade more than one in five Vietnamese people will be over 60. The 'golden population' period, when people of working age greatly outnumber dependants, is expected to end around 2039. The World Bank has summed up the challenge as getting old before getting rich. It is a challenge, but it also comes with a clear timetable, and a timetable is something businesses can plan for.

Japan went first

Japan offers a glimpse of what lies ahead. In September 2026, a record 29.6 per cent of its population was aged 65 or over, and the Recruit Works Institute has projected a shortfall of around 11 million workers by 2040. Japanese companies have responded in ways that Vietnamese firms can learn from, often at modest cost.

Valuing experience

Japanese employers must by law offer continued employment up to 65 to those who want it, and since April 2021 they are asked to make efforts to do so up to 70. In 2025, 9.43 million people aged 65 or over were in work, 13.8 per cent of everyone employed. Vietnam's retirement age is rising gradually too: under the 2019 Labour Code it reaches 62 for men in 2028 and 60 for women in 2035.

By choice, not by pressure

Working longer should be a choice, not an obligation. Not everyone wants to continue, and not everyone can, especially after decades of physically demanding work. Higher retirement ages alone cannot solve the question. Where people are simply required to keep going, the strain can fall on them and on the working members of their families, and that is not good for families, companies or the wider economy.

The better approach for a company is to ask and to encourage, and above all to make continuing possible. That usually means adjusting the job rather than expecting the person to adjust to it: lighter physical tasks, flexible hours, part-time roles, or a move from production into teaching, quality, planning or customer care.

A different kind of contribution

In the first half of a career, progress is often measured by personal output: more pieces, more sales, more projects. Later, a person's own output may level off or decline, while their knowledge keeps growing. Experienced staff know why things are done the way they are, which customers need special care, and what went wrong the last time something was tried. That knowledge is of great value, yet it is not always recognised, because it does not show up in personal output figures.

A wise company therefore changes what it measures. At some point the question is no longer how much one person produces, but how much more the team produces because of them: through training newcomers, solving difficult problems, improving methods and preventing mistakes. Seen this way, an experienced employee's contribution can keep growing for many years.

BMW gave a well-known example. In 2007, at its plant in Dingolfing, Germany, it staffed a production line with workers whose average age matched what the plant expected in the coming years, and asked them how their work could be made easier. They proposed some 70 small changes, among them special shoes, wooden floors, adapted chairs for some tasks, better tools and larger type on computer screens. The changes cost around 40,000 euros, including the workers' own time, and within a year the line's productivity had risen by 7 per cent, with almost no defects.

Automation where it helps

Japan has 446 industrial robots for every 10,000 manufacturing workers, among the highest densities in the world, against a global average of 132. Yet machines are only part of the story. The deeper Japanese habit is to improve the process first and then automate what is stable and repetitive, so that technology supports skilled people rather than replacing understanding.

Planning succession in time

Ageing affects owners as well as workers. In Japan, 347 companies went bankrupt in the first eight months of 2025 because they had no successor, according to Teikoku Databank, and many more close quietly, some of them still profitable. For Vietnamese founders who built their companies in the decades since Đổi Mới, it is a gentle reminder to prepare the next generation of leaders in good time.

The window is now

While the workforce is still young, Vietnamese companies have time to invest in training, write down what experienced people know, improve their processes and introduce technology step by step. Those who start now will find the years after 2040 much easier.