Tackling ageism in the workplace head on

When think­ing about the future of work, it’s easy to focus on what work will be like for those just start­ing, or yet to start, their careers. But as the work­place changes, it’s impor­tant not to for­get about the impact on old­er work­ers.

More than a third of peo­ple in the UK report hav­ing expe­ri­enced ageism in the work­place and over 64 per cent of old­er work­ers are con­cerned about being dis­crim­i­nat­ed against at work. How does dis­crim­i­na­tion in the work­place man­i­fest itself, what can we do about it, and how do com­pa­nies and human resources depart­ments need to change their think­ing about old­er work­ers?

Treat­ment of old­er employ­ees is a big­ger issue than ever. While redun­dan­cy rates have risen dra­mat­i­cal­ly across the board dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, job loss­es tend to affect old­er work­ers more. Pre-pan­dem­ic research by over-50s web­site Rest Less found redun­dan­cy rates were more than dou­ble for work­ers in their 50s com­pared to those in their 40s. Indeed, over the past 12 months, unem­ploy­ment has risen by a third for the over-50s and by 75 per cent for the over-65s.

Rest Less chief exec­u­tive Stu­art Lewis sees this as only the start. “Sad­ly, these num­bers are sim­ply the canary in the coal mine. With the fur­lough scheme wind­ing up and 2.5 mil­lion over-50s hav­ing been fur­loughed, we expect this to leave a per­ma­nent scar on this gen­er­a­tion and their employ­ment prospects,” he says.

More older workers than ever

Beyond the imme­di­ate future, ris­ing retire­ment ages will see ageism in the work­place become rel­e­vant to more of us. Already peo­ple have start­ed to talk about the con­cept of “unre­tire­ment”, with retirees return­ing to the work­force through finan­cial pres­sure or sim­ply because chang­ing atti­tudes and increas­ing stan­dards of health mean they don’t feel like leav­ing work behind yet.

The old ide­al of a job for life set­ting you up for a com­fort­able retire­ment by your ear­ly-60s is increas­ing­ly myth­i­cal and it’s impor­tant employ­ers face up to the real­i­ty of what the hir­ing pool their staff are com­ing from is actu­al­ly like, rather than just try­ing to fill posi­tions accord­ing to a mis­in­formed stereo­type of the ide­al employ­ee.

Despite the progress against ageism in the work­place made by the Equal­i­ty Act 2010, ensur­ing that age is a pro­tect­ed char­ac­ter­is­tic, some firms have a long way to go in improv­ing their hir­ing prac­tices.

Vic­to­ria McLean, chief exec­u­tive of career con­sul­tan­cy firm City CV, points to com­pa­nies that try to side step the law through word­ing. “Loads of job ads include age-biased lan­guage,” she says. “They should be avoid­ing using words that sug­gest they’re look­ing for appli­cants from a par­tic­u­lar age group, for exam­ple terms such as ‘two to three-years’ expe­ri­ence’, ‘enthu­si­as­tic young peo­ple’, ‘recent grad­u­ates’ or ‘we invite peo­ple to join our young team’.”

Inter­view process­es need to be struc­tured to avoid con­scious and uncon­scious bias­es, says McLean, advis­ing that all the can­di­dates are asked the same ques­tions and firms should be “invest­ing in inter­view and assess­ment skills train­ing to ensure every can­di­date is treat­ed with par­i­ty and fair­ness”.

Lewis cites an extreme exam­ple when dur­ing a job inter­view a can­di­date was told, ‘I’m sor­ry, but you remind me of my moth­er and I would­n’t want my moth­er work­ing here’, and had the inter­view ter­mi­nat­ed. Com­pa­nies seek­ing to avoid com­plaints of age dis­crim­i­na­tion would be wise to ensure their hir­ing process­es have no space for such gross stereo­typ­ing to be a fac­tor.

Training courses can revitalise productivity

Ageism in the work­place can be a real issue at the hir­ing stage. More than one in sev­en work­ers over 50 believes they’re been turned down for a job because of their age and near­ly one in five have or have con­sid­ered try­ing to hide their age dur­ing a job appli­ca­tion process because they feared such dis­crim­i­na­tion. Old­er work­ers are uncon­vinced that employ­ers will always take a fair, or indeed legal, atti­tude to how age affects someone’s abil­i­ty to do a job and are behav­ing accord­ing­ly.

There may be a per­cep­tion that old­er job can­di­dates are more inflex­i­ble, less like­ly to have up-to-date tech­ni­cal skills and they’ll ask for more mon­ey com­pared to a younger, poten­tial­ly more pro­duc­tive can­di­date. Though sad­ly for us all our men­tal and phys­i­cal per­for­mance will prob­a­bly decline as we get old­er, this doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly tell us much about how our per­for­mance at work will change.

Aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies in this area have found that the knowl­edge gained through expe­ri­ence of a job, which old­er work­ers are inevitably more like­ly to have, is one of the most impor­tant pre­dic­tors of how well some­one will per­form at that job.

Ageism in the work­place can play a fac­tor in how old­er work­ers can progress in their careers. Stereo­types may affect who firms are will­ing to spend mon­ey train­ing, mak­ing it hard­er for old­er work­ers to keep pace with the skillsets of those new­er to the work­force. If pro­duc­tiv­i­ty drops as a con­se­quence, they are like­ly to face more bar­ri­ers to pro­gres­sion and even­tu­al­ly face redun­dan­cy, where­as invest­ment in train­ing could enable them to keep pace and apply their exist­ing expe­ri­ence to new sit­u­a­tions and tasks.

By fail­ing to hire, invest in or, ulti­mate­ly, keep their old­er employ­ees, employ­ers may not only be open­ing them­selves up to accu­sa­tions of hav­ing bro­ken anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion law, but be fool­ing them­selves into think­ing suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies must be com­prised entire­ly of young faces rather than look­ing at the poten­tial a dif­fer­ent kind of work­force brings in terms of knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence.

Lewis at Rest Less con­cludes: “If we lose this gen­er­a­tion from the work­force entire­ly, we risk los­ing valu­able key skills and key work­ers from the work­place for good.”