When Deborah Myles decided she’d had enough of retirement, a Detroit program designed to help senior citizens find employment eased her back into a life of productivity, connections and being needed.
For a few years after ending an odds-and-ends career that included housekeeping, teaching disabled students, and working as a record technician for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Myles stayed home, watching her health deteriorate.
“Once I got out here in the working world, I feel a whole lot better,” says Myles, 69, who with braided curls, painted fingernails, and an easy laugh now serves drinks and folds laundry at
The Commons Coffee Bar & Coin Laundry, a laundromat-coffee shop on Detroit’s east side.
MACC Development, which operates The Commons, recently signed on as a host site in the
Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP), administered by the Detroit Area Agency on Aging. The program funds and facilitates job training of older adults who need new work experience to reenter the workforce.
“We are not sending out seat fillers,” insists Jonita Edwards, chief administrative officer of the
Detroit Area Agency on Aging. The program’s 55-and-older participants are assigned to entry-level positions where they learn actual skills to prepare them for employment.
The program not only helps older residents, it also provides quality workers to nonprofits and taps into a valuable and often overlooked resource, Edwards says.
Seniors like Myles may come to the program with a lifetime of work skills that need polishing, or with no work experience; some are retired from Fortune 500 companies. Either way, Edwards says, “We need not count them out.”
Finding a good fit
When Myles retired some years ago, she had no intention of returning to the workforce.
“I didn’t want to work no more for nobody, I don’t care what you say,” she remembers, perched in a coffee shop chair on pause from folding a stack of white towels in the laundry area.
A one-time majorette and basketball player voted Most Popular in high school, she faded in retirement and turned into someone she didn’t want to be, Myles says.
A push from a friend got her connected to the Detroit Area Agency on Aging where, she discovered, she could learn skills required by modern employers and meet employers willing to hire her.
Her first job assignment didn’t go as well as she’d hoped, and she almost dropped out of the program. Now, though, surrounded by the low murmur of a coffee shop and the smell of laundry soap at The Commons, “I’m in a comfortable zone,” she says.
The Senior Community Service Employment Program has helped numerous restricted income seniors like Myles in its 10 years of reacclimating retirees into the workforce.
The program pairs seniors with jobs that match their interests and abilities and provides needed training in computer skills, interviewing techniques, personal money management, and other skills needed to thrive at work.
Nonprofit and government host agencies agree to closely oversee the seniors’ work experience. The program pays its workers, but because they are participating in a training program and not technically employed, their income can be excluded for tax purposes and doesn’t deprive them of Social Security and other financial benefits.
Forging a new start
Whatever their background, people in Myles’ generation often struggle to start or even look for a new job. But if a participant is willing to learn and to work, the SCSEP can find a place where they will thrive, Edwards says.
The program previously kept participants in one workplace the full four-year period of their participation. Three years ago, the DAAA revamped the program to cycle seniors through a different host site each year, broadening their exposure to new skills and to environments that might prove a good fit for long-term work, the program’s ultimate goal.
Some seniors finish their four years with the program without a job. Others leave early because an employer has snatched them up, seeing their value as employees, Edwards says.
The program has room for 48 participants. Participant numbers rarely hold steady, “A good problem to have” because it means seniors have found jobs, says Rashonda Dawson, SCSEP coordinator.
The new rotation has worked well, keeping the seniors interested and letting them show off new skills. Supervisors at host sites fight over participants they consider quality additions to their staff, Dawson says.
The program celebrates itself with an annual information-sharing gathering that ends with a senior basketball tournament and an end-of-year event honoring those who have found employment during the year.
Some program participants have gone on to work for employers in professional positions, including a high-level administrative assistant in an executive office and a director of a senior facility.
Some participants struggle in the program as they adjust to a new work world. They might have a hard time taking direction from younger people in authority over them, Edwards says, or encounter coworkers who don’t understand and respect generational differences.
Investing in a senior worker pays big dividends, however, she says. Older adults ready to do the work of getting back to work can make excellent employees ― “You just need to spend time and walk with them at a slower pace.”
Bringing value to the table
Among a mostly younger staff at The Commons, Myles offers a new energy along with her lifetime of experience, says Tiffany Banks, deputy director of MACC Development.
MACC created the laundromat-coffee shop after asking nearby residents, most of them senior citizens, what they most wanted in the neighborhood served by the agency.
Now, when customers come in, they see a familiar face in Myles, who serves up wisdom alongside the coffee drinks she’s still learning to make.
“She’s pretty brilliant,” Banks says. Maybe the senior worker needs a little extra help with tasks like completing a timesheet, but “she brings value to the table.”
Myles finds her young coworkers inspiring, even as they tease her and call her “the old lady,” she says.
She doesn’t know if she’ll ever feel ready to go back to the 9-to-5 grind of full-time work. But she likes being a part of that world again. Once she arrives at work at a leisurely 11 a.m., “They can’t get me out of here,” she says.
Society can be quick to label seniors, to box them in and disqualify them from employment without knowing them. The senior employment program helps older folks not only feel valued but earn an income that stabilizes them and, by extension, their communities, Banks says.
For nonprofits, participation as a host site is “a no-brainer,” she says. Through it, everyone wins, as long as the host is committed to openness, willingness to teach, “and grace to let people grow.”
Resilient Neighborhoods is a reporting and engagement series examining how Detroit residents and community development organizations work together to strengthen local neighborhoods. It's made possible with funding from The Kresge Foundation.