Tesco employs more than 50,000 over-50s - the equivalent of one in five of its UK workforce - the superstore announced as part of its celebrations for the government’s UK Older People’s Day on October 1.

Some 20 per cent of employees currently on Tesco’s internal development programme, Options, are aged over 50 and the number-one UK supermarket now employs 54,545 over-50s within its UK workforce. Thanks to Tesco’s pro-older people policies, its total number of employees in the over-50 age bracket has soared from 13 per cent of its workforce in 1998 to 20 per cent today.

Tesco currently employs 154 per cent more over-50s than it did in 1998, when the total number of 50-plus employees was 21,515.

Although some of the growth in the over-50 employee bracket has been the result of an increase in Tesco’s overall workforce, the pro older people policies Tesco has put in place have had a notable difference to the structure of the Tesco employee base.

The policies have had their biggest impact on the 60-plus bracket. In 1998, Tesco employed 4,179 workers over the age of 60. This has increased by 255 per cent to 14,829 - with over-60s now accounting for more than five per cent of Tesco’s total UK workforce.

Tesco has no fixed retirement age and is happy for employees to work and be developed for as long as they wish - the eldest employee currently working within a Tesco store is 80 years old.

Linda Avis, personnel manager for UK resourcing at Tesco, said: “Although our workforce as a whole has grown over the past decade, we are delighted to see that the percentage of older people has also risen steadily. We are now seeing that our over-50 workforce is not only formed of employees who have worked their way through the ranks within Tesco, but increasingly, those who have decided to join Tesco later in life. Many of these new recruits have decided they would like a new challenge and have chosen to follow a new and exciting career path at the age of 50 or over.”

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