In the developed world, people are living longer whilst, at the same time, birth rates are falling. Some governments, such as in the United Kingdom (UK), are telling adults they will have to stay in work until at least the traditional retirement age of 65 and probably beyond in order to sustain their pensions, and also because the economy needs them. The extension of working life has many social and political implications, and, in addition, it poses challenges in terms of workforce and personal development. Working for longer is occurring against the backdrop of new forms of work organisation, the widespread use of information and communication technologies and attempts by many organisations to reformulate and extend the role of individual workers. This paper will explore the (changing) role of older, experienced employees in the workplace in terms of their own needs and opportunities for learning and in the context of changing organisational expectations. It draws on Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of situated learning and the notion of 'learning as participation' as starting points for examining the types of learning opportunities experienced by older workers. The discussion relates the nature of such opportunities to the changing workplace contexts in which employees are located. The article presents data from a recent research project which focused on how young people (apprentices) and older experienced workers learn at work and which explored how both apprentices as well as their more experienced colleagues routinely engage in 'teaching' practices. The project 'The Workplace as a Site for Learning, is one of five projects located under the Improving Incentives to Learning in the Workplace Network, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council's Teaching and Learning Research Programme.In order to structure the discussion, the paper is organised in sections. Section one briefly reviews the changing nature of work and the implications for learning. It outlines the ways in which learning at work has been conceptualised and identifies 'learning as participation' as the dominant metaphor. The second section describes and contrasts the sites from which the data presented in this paper were collected, and the data collection methods that have been utilised. Data will be presented from research in two companies gathered from interviews and the entries recorded by employees in weekly learning logs which they kept for periods of up to eight weeks. The logs were designed to capture the forms of participation to which the respondents had access and the types of knowledge and skills they were being given the opportunity to develop. In section three, we present an analysis of the some of the research data and discuss what the evidence reveals about the types of opportunities older employees are experiencing and how they make sense of them. The perceptions and attitudes of employees who have access to formalised and planned learning activities are compared with those who do not. The analysis shows that from the perspective of experienced employees, factors such as organisational culture and history; the way jobs are designed and work is organised; and the way people are managed and their performance is judged, help explain the lived realities of workplace learning and provide messages for enhancing workforce development. The paper argues that contrasting forms of work organisation and approaches to managing employees generate different learning environments and opportunities for participation, and that the types of opportunities available to have implications for what and how people learn at work.