If the average life expectancy today in the West is around 80 (and still rising), and 53 is the median age of people in the Baby Boom generation (born between 1946 and 1964), this means most Baby Boomers have as many years of productivity ahead of them as behind them.

Marc Freedman, author of “The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife,” found in his research that millions of people are hitting a midpoint in life and in their careers and asking the big questions about what’s next. How can I find renewal in what I am doing? How do I make a change? Can I take a risk in this economy? How do I finance a transition? How can I live a life that has greater significance or leaves the world a better place? If I don’t make a change now, will it be too late? Freedman concluded that it is time for a shift in thinking by individuals and organizations; this requires a shift in policies to enable people to remain productive.

Freedman calls this new phase of life the “encore stage,” where people are starting new careers out of necessity or desire. Peter Drucker, in his classic Harvard Business Review article “Managing Oneself,” said, “managing oneself increasingly leads one to begin a second career,” but also said that there was a prerequisite for managing the second half of life. Drucker warned that we must begin long before we enter it. This sounds like common sense, but I am not sure it is common practice.

Richard Leider, an author and life coach, in conjunction with the MetLife Mature Market Institute conducted a study of Baby Boomers called “Discovering What Matters: Balancing Money, Medicine, and Meaning.” Based on interviews with more than 1,000 Americans between the ages of 45 and 74, it found that respondents, regardless of financial status, maintained that their goals are primarily meaning-based. The conclusion was that “meaning trumps money, and significance trumps success.”

In another Harvard Business Review article, “The Existential Necessity of Midlife Change,” Carlo Strenger and Arie Ruttenberg advocate that “organizations need to help executives understand that everybody in the company will leave at some point to begin a second life.”

They suggest providing coaches to “help executives prepare for a second life as a matter of policy.” Coaches could also help employees plan for their “encore careers,” establish a continuing education fund for personal development and collaborate with colleges to develop transition programs. These initiatives cost money, but employees are more productive and satisfied if they have a better understanding of how to navigate this stage of life. And in postemployment transition, wouldn’t it be a benefit to have people leaving as ambassadors spreading the good word about the organization?

Drucker concluded that we tend to believe that organizations outlive workers and that most people stay put. “But today the opposite is true,” he wrote. “Knowledge workers outlive organizations and they are mobile. The need to manage oneself is therefore creating a revolution in human affairs.” I think we all need to pay attention.

Jann Freed (freedj@central.edu) is a professor emerita and former Mark and Kay De Cook Endowed Chair in Leadership and Character Development at Central College in Pella.