The Emergence of a Chief Longevity Officer Role: Gamechanger or Gimmick?
Eliminating ageism from the workplace, encourAGEEQUALITY consistently advocates, requires the development of a dedicated business strategy rather than reliance on culture change. The success of strategy is often more attributed to how well it is executed than the original idea behind it. This raises the important question of how best companies might implement their business strategy to tackle ageism within the context of a globally ageing demographic? Traditionally, HR would be assigned the responsibility, on the simplistic belief this strategy is all about people management. But is this the best approach? Some very early signs are emerging that companies who are beginning to embrace longevity as a business strategy, are seeing value in the use of a specialised Chief Longevity Officer (CLO) role to guide their change effort rather than including it as an extra responsibility in a generalist HR function. The question is whether this emerging strategy execution thinking might be a gamechanger in promoting longevity and eliminating workplace ageism or become recognised as an organisation gimmick?
Emergence of the Chief Longevity Officer role
At L’Oréal, longevity has the same strategic focus as climate change and AI.
Europe is at the forefront of this evolution in thinking. A new generation of corporate leaders are understanding ageing and living longer not as a problem but as a huge new market opportunity. Across sectors and continents, a handful of companies are realising the strategic dimensions of demographic change and appointing people to lead the opportunity. Ageing is being reframed from a negative to a strength. And, in this process, these organisations are increasing their relevance with the fastest-growing customer and talent segments, those fifty years of age and over.
The Chief Longevity Officer designation is still in its early stages. The French cosmetics company L’Oreal and the Portuguese insurance company Fidelidade are two established European companies who are early movers in this space. But they are not alone. Although not yet featuring in any Fortune 500 company, the Chief Longevity Officer role has been adopted by a handful of biotech startups, Venture Capital firms and companies in the hospitality sector.
At L’Oréal, the world’s largest cosmetics company, longevity has been elevated to the same strategic tier as climate change and AI. The company launched L’Oréal for All Generations, a global programme that repositions age as an asset in both workforce and marketplace. In 2023, Portugal’s largest insurer, Fidelidade, appointed a Head of Longevity. The company is weaving longevity into everything from product innovation to public perception, portraying older adults not as dependents but as future builders.
Why consider a Chief Longevity Officer (CLO) role?
This century sees the increase in individual longevity as one of the most powerful global change phenomena. Today, people entering their 50s can expect to live into their 80s and beyond. This remarkable increase in longevity should be seen as a social triumph, but governments and industry continue to struggle with how to deal with this positive development.
The way organisations address rising life expectancy and aging remains mostly unchanged leaving most employers ill-prepared to confront the changing workplace landscape. Their work structures, designed for shorter lifespans, are incompatible with longer working lives. In the USA, many leading consumer brands continue to ignore ageing and longevity as a material factor in their business operations – a significant blind spot.
The unrelenting nature of demographic change should be forcing entire industries to rethink customer lifecycles, employee productivity, and market opportunities. The logic is simple: if customers and employees are going to live 20-30 years longer than previous generations, business models need to evolve accordingly. In this context, forward thinking companies will be rethinking organisational models and embedding demographic strategies at the heart of their business transformation. This evolution in thinking opens the possibility of creating a new strategic role: the Chief Longevity Officer role, one that recognises adaption to demographic and longevity shifts will represent the new normal for business operation.
What might Chief Longevity Officer role be responsible for?
Positioned at an executive role level, the Chief Longevity Officer is a forward-thinking strategist who anticipates the organisation’s needs five, ten and even fifteen years ahead. The role operates across departments, spanning product design, marketing, wellbeing, operations, finance, organisational development, and leadership to cultivate an age-empowered culture producing a range of products or services supporting longevity. A CLO understands that aging is not only a biological journey but also a rich social and psychological experience involving every aspect of life. The purpose is to turn longevity from a ‘soft’ aspiration into a measurable business strategy.
The critical focus areas include:
developing long-term, age-inclusive strategies within the organisation. The focus is on redesigning the entire employee experience to reflect today’s realities of prolonged life. This will include customising career paths to cater to different stages of the employee’s life, evolving bespoke benefit structures and creating a workplace culture for employees with work lives spanning 60 years or more.
crafting holistic wellbeing programmes that address physical, mental, cognitive, and emotional health.
eliminating age-related siloes through the development of policy and practices promoting a multi-generational workforce that turns longevity into a competitive advantage.
developing programmes and practices that preserve and transmit institutional knowledge amongst all employees.
aligning internal strategy to business external responsiveness, ensuring the organisation is equipped to lead in both employment and market innovation.
integrating the older adult perspective into existing company new product and service innovation processes to support marketing opportunities across all longevity market segments.
Nonetheless, alternatives still exist to a CLO role, if companies prefer a more traditional approach to managing the longevity challenge. The Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) or Chief Strategy Officer role can be considered. If companies elect to embed longevity within their HR portfolio, they might create a new role focusing on longevity and the multi-generational workforce directly reporting to the CHRO. However, the question is whether HR can deliver maximal benefit for a company investing in a longevity strategy, relative to creating a stand-alone CLO role.
Longevity as business strategy: a paradigm shift
Should a company think that adapting to longevity is merely a new way of working, they will be sadly mistaken as adapting to longevity requires an entirely new way of thinking. At a practical level there are major assumed differences between an HR and envisaged CLO approach to delivering a longevity business strategy. These are to do with the difference between creating an age friendly workplace and delivering a business agenda positioning longevity as a competitive advantage.
Whilst an HR focus might centre on age inclusion, a CLO approach centres on a strategic approach to utilising longevity. Often age-friendly practices are reactive or compliance driven, aimed at avoiding discrimination or providing accommodations. In contrast, the expectation is a CLO operating in an anticipatory and strategic way, reshaping organisational culture, workforce development, and knowledge systems with longevity as a core planning principle. The emphasis is on transformation not just an amendment of policies.
The above difference also then highlights another contrast between a potential internal HR approach and a contrasting holistic CLO longevity management engagement. While age-friendly models largely focus on employees, the CLO’s scope is broader in connecting internal longevity-readiness with external trends, including aging customers and the emerging longevity economy. This external-internal linkage is rarely addressed in age-friendly frameworks.
The Chief Longevity Officer role – Gamechanger or Gimmick
Introducing a CLO role into a traditional organisation structure with its firmly embedded historic functions promises to be both risky and messy, opening a new frontier for functional ‘turf wars’. The success of the role will require collaboration across many departments including HR, marketing, operations and finance. Established workflows and existing priorities will be disrupted.
The risk is high of such a role being seen as an organisation gimmick if the Board or CEO elect to understand longevity as another management fad, offer the role luke-warm support and fail to provide the position the resources it requires to effectively do the job. A flowery, PR-friendly executive title will provide little comfort to a marginalised business role whose intended purpose becomes more understood as a corporate branding exercise rather than a position of substance.
Positioning a CLO role as an organisation gamechanger then will require:
Not treating longevity as a fad and approaching the role as something that’s set to deliver measurable, meaningful results for the business.
The company having a clear and accountable strategy for longevity.
The role receiving the unequivocal buy-in of the CEO and the wider C-suite, a budget to match and the empowerment to bring about meaningful and lasting change across the company.
Simultaneously focusing on both markets and talent by addressing the evolving needs of the fast-growing older consumer segment while retaining and developing older workers.
Developing the metrics system to demonstrate a longevity business strategy is tangibly improving business operation.
Understanding the role as a potentially transitional one allowing new perspectives and skills to eventually dissolve within different roles and functions within the organisation.
Some final thoughts
We applaud L’Oreal and Fidelidade for being early movers in this space. Their focus on viewing aging as a business opportunity is a move in the right direction. We hope the creation of a clear and accountable corporate strategy for longevity acts as a major contributor to the success of the CLO role.
L’Oreal’s and Fidelidade’s actions reveal their acceptance of the new reality. Demographic shifts are here. Traditional attitudes to retirement are changing. Aging affects every layer of the business ecosystem. And yet, ageism remains both widespread and under-acknowledged — the “last acceptable bias” in many workplaces.
Longevity is now here to stay and most companies remain ill-prepared to manage its impacts. That’s why the arrival of a dedicated Chief Longevity Officer role is a powerful signal. Age is moved from afterthought to agenda. This is a mindset shift impacting workforce management, product development, and innovation.
The early CLO adopters are showing what’s possible. They’re demonstrating that longevity isn’t a problem to manage but a frontier to lead. And by embracing longevity they are in the process of futureproofing their businesses.
Ultimately, the real question is not whether organisations can afford a Chief Longevity Officer, but whether they can afford not to.
What do you think? Is the emergence of a Chief Longevity Officer role potentially an organisation gamechanger or just a gimmick? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
