A workplace that merges innovation and purpose. How AARP does it.
The non-profit has created a consumer-first culture that offers employees freedom, flexibility and a unifying mission—and AARP’s workforce couldn’t be happier.
By WP Creative Group
JANUARY 26, 2023
As baby boomers—and, increasingly, Gen X—embark upon their next act, millions of them turn to AARP to empower them to choose how they live as they age. Behind this work are 2,000-plus staff members dedicated to advocating for Americans age 50-plus. With a leadership team that understands innovation doesn’t happen just anywhere, AARP flourishes in a culture of freedom, flexibility and support combined with a shared sense of purpose.
“When a culture is innovative, it nurtures creativity and exploration,” said Jessica Kriegel, chief scientist of workplace culture at Culture Partners.
AARP has placed innovation at the heart of its work culture for that exact reason: to encourage experimentation.
An experimental culture of innovation
Shelley Emling, AARP’s executive editor of specialized content, finds it liberating to work at an organization that supports experimentation and values innovation. “I think this is the best environment I’ve ever worked in,” she said.
Emling’s feelings aren’t surprising, according to Kriegel. “Innovative workplaces have a sense of psychological safety because people know that business moves up and down, projects fail and others thrive and we are in it for the long haul,” she explained.
This sense of safety fostered an environment in which Emling could take a chance on launching The Girlfriend from AARP, a free weekly lifestyle newsletter for Gen X women. While the focus and approach were new for AARP, studies show this demographic is stressed and often juggling busy careers while caring for children and elderly parents. Emling and her team wanted to engage these women with content that spoke directly to them to both address their concerns and introduce them to the benefits of AARP membership as they enter their 50s.
The Girlfriend launched in July 2017 and has since ballooned into a robust, fast-growing community of one million Gen X women. By tapping into the power of crowd-sourced wisdom, The Girlfriend’s readers drive the conversation and, ultimately, shape the content.
In response to reader feedback about the difficulty of developing adult friendships, AARP launched in-person book swaps, virtual happy hours, social media groups and The Girlfriend Book Club, which are among the non-profit’s most engaged events.
“I was able to go to my boss and say, ‘We need to launch a Girlfriend book club because I think there’s a lot of readers out there, and this could be a service to people,” Emling explained. “She said, ‘Go for it.’ And now we have 55,000 members.”
Leaning into technology
AARP’s innovative-forward approach may be most apparent in the organization’s AgeTech Collaborative™, a networking platform that brings together cutting-edge thinkers, investors, entrepreneurs and other influential collaborators within the AgeTech industry. The pandemic radically expanded the world’s reliance on technology, a shift that was especially notable among people 50-plus. AARP seized on this opportunity and in November of 2021, created the AgeTech Collaborative with a mission to discover and support innovative ideas that empower people to choose how they live as they age.
Photo Credit: Linda Dono of AARP
The AgeTech Collaborative has already become the preeminent platform in the agetech industry with 195 startups, enterprises, investors, business services and testbeds on board and has fostered over 100 connections across the ecosystem.
Sasha Spellman, director of collaborative engagement for the AgeTech Collaborative, attributes this success to the flexibility and freedom given to her team. “I was given a vision for the AgeTech Collaborative ecosystem, but nobody dictated how to execute that vision,” she said, describing the goal-oriented creative license that’s the organization’s norm.
AARP solidified its status as the pioneer of AgeTech at CES in January. Along with the Consumer Technology Association, AARP presented the AgeTech Summit, a dedicated program of 20 panel discussions featuring industry leaders that view agetech as the utmost growth opportunity of the future.
Work with purpose
Reshma Mehta, vice president of advocacy outreach and mobilization at AARP, is inspired not just by the innovation at the organization, but by her role’s focus: ensuring the voices of older Americans are heard by elected officials. “The most rewarding part of my job is getting to work closely with voters and advocates to make their voices heard and to…enact change,” she said.
Mehta and her team were doing voter education work in the runup to the 2022 midterms when they were struck by the words of one woman: “I just don’t think politicians understand what it’s like to walk a day in my shoes. I wish they would come over and see what it takes to care for my 92-year-old mother-in-law every day.”
With remarkable speed, Mehta and her team created In My Shoes, a campaign to show politicians what’s really happening in the lives of older Americans and encourage them to fight for the issues that matter most to people 50-plus. In My Shoes also reinforced that the 50-plus demographic is the nation’s most powerful voting bloc.
“We saw an enormous response with 37,000 stories in two months,” said Mehta. In My Shoes leveraged a combination of social media, email communications, in-person events and SMS texting to collect as many stories as possible, and its research team used artificial intelligence to tag and categorize stories for specific issues. This advanced combination of technologies enabled Mehta’s team to quickly amplify voices across traditional and digital channels, giving the 50-plus demographic a powerful voice in this election cycle.
A supportive work environment
AARP employees are unabashedly proud of their mission and inventive projects, and are just as quick to call out the organization’s unique benefits, especially the flexibility. Since the reopening of AARP’s offices in March 2022, the staff has worked a hybrid schedule, coming to the office Tuesday through Thursday and working from home on Mondays and Fridays. AARP also offers some fully remote positions.
Spellman added that the organization takes care of its people and enables employees to care for their loved ones. “There’s caregiving leave that’s offered to employees each year. We get up to 80 hours to take care of our parents or grandparents.”
There is also an emergency backup care program for when day-to-day caregiving arrangements are disrupted, whether it’s for a parent, child or spouse. The program gives employees last-minute help 24/7 for up to 200 hours per year.
“As someone who recently started a family, I’m really excited about this,” Spellman shared.
Looking to the future
For AARP to meet the needs of people 50-plus, the organization must continue to evolve as Gen X, and, in a few short years, millennials, age into its key demographic. Employees at AARP view that ongoing challenge as an opportunity to do more of what they love most: Create new content, programs and services to deliver on its mission and best serve diverse cohorts.
As Mehta put it, “We’re really here to get things done and win for our members, their families and their communities.” And with its trajectory of relentless innovation, that’s what the AARP team will continue to do.
Learn more about careers at careers.AARP.org.
Content From
