Tempting back older workers means ditching business as usual. Firms are fostering the needs of Generation Z first and foremost, so how do you recruit and retain the over-50s? That is the question posed by Camilla Cavendish in an opinion piece for the FT and it strikes a chord - it’s an issue facing many of our clients - so we’ll take a look at some of the steps clients are taking to address the problem.
The FT’s opinion piece blames employers for the over-50s workplace generation gap and the Guardian agrees. In an opinion piece at the end of last month following chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s famous plea to the over 50s, ‘your country needs you’, a host of retired over-50s told the Guardian they wanted to come back to work but are put off by the treatment they’d face if they did, with stereotypical assumptions and age discrimination topping a long list of negatives. As the FT points out, the stereotypes are strikingly consistent around the world. A 2021 survey by Generation, a global non-profit, found employers in Brazil, India, Italy, Singapore, Spain, UK and the US saying they prefer staff under 45, who are a “better fit” with their company culture. These employers agreed that older workers performed just as well as younger ones; they just don’t want to hire them.
In the UK the latest employment tribunal statistics highlight the problem. In the year from March 2020 to March 2021 there were 15,336 claims which included a complaint of age discrimination. That’s more than double the number of disability discrimination claims, which is the next highest category, and is a sixfold increase on the number of age discrimination claims presented in the previous year. The assumption is that Covid has driven workers into retirement, and it will be hard to get them back, but that task, for many firms, now rests with HR.
So, let’s get a view on this. Trish Embley is Head of Client Training and is currently working with a number of clients in this area:
Trish Embley: “I think the main problem, really, has been the exodus, the voluntary exodus, of the over-50s since the pandemic because we're talking about a group where I think it's about 65% now who are mortgage-free, debt-free. So, after the pandemic they saw they could have a different life, and maybe a better quality of life, and they voluntarily left, as well as those who may have been forced to leave through some form of discrimination and this has made the labour market tighter, more competitive, and had that knock on effect of creating that competition that leads to inflation in terms of demands on salaries.”
Joe Glavina: “The latest figures from the employment tribunals shows a noticeable rise in the number of age discrimination claims being brought by older workers and yet most firms’ D&I strategies we come across don’t focus much on this group. The two must be connected.”
Trish Embley: “Yes, I think that's absolutely right. Quite understandably the focus of D&I strategies more recently has been on gender, race and ethnicity, and disability but there has been in the last recorded figures a 74% increase in age discrimination claims and this is mainly because, as one study found, and they refer to this as age discrimination being the last socially acceptable form of discrimination and, again, it's one of the reasons why people of this age group report feeling undervalued, they feel that there are barriers to their progression and development, and those that maybe would like to be back in the workplace fear some form of age discrimination.”
Joe Glavina: “So what are the key action steps, Trish? What advice are you getting to clients about how to address this problem?”
Trish Embley: “Well, the advice that we're giving is that whether you want to attract - and the government themselves are really focusing on how we can get people of this age group back into the workplace because, of course, if we can, that's a whole load of tax being paid to the Treasury. So, we're advising there are three things employers can do to either get all the wealth of knowledge and skills of this age group back into the workplace, or to keep them. The first would be tackling the discrimination that I've mentioned. Studies have been done that show hiring managers would not look at the over-50s, they make stereotypical assumptions and would be disinclined to engage them or, even if they would engage them, they wouldn't want to invest in training and developing them. So, I think there's something to be done there on unconscious bias training, anti-discrimination training for hiring managers. The second thing is about healthy ageing at work. Now, without making stereotypical assumptions, health conditions do increase as people get older. We know that around one in four women are leaving work because of the symptoms of the menopause and what studies also show is this is the group that would be disinclined to ask for any sort of flexibility. So it's something that we're saying to employers think about, acknowledge that there may well be health issues, and make sure that you're making accommodations in terms of adjusting, maybe, job roles, or hours of work, or place of work, so that people don't leave you because of health conditions. That brings us on to the third key action which is flexible working. So, this is the generation who, perhaps, might, without wanting to make any assumptions, but might want to take a step back as they transition into these sort of twilight years of their career into a role that maybe isn't so demanding, or has a different focus which means they would get more value out of it, so not so focused on necessarily money, but a job that they feel is worthwhile, like mentoring younger workers, and thinking about where they work. So again, this tends to be the generation that has had enough of the commuting, and the long hours, and so may want to move into a role where all of that can be accommodated.”
As we mentioned earlier, this is a global problem and the US angle is one we covered back in October when Ohio lawyer, Todd Lebowitz, told this programme about some of the legal barriers to attracting and retaining over-55s in the states. That’s ‘Need to attract over-55s talent? A US perspective’ and we have put a link to it in the transcript of this programme.
LINKS
- Link to Out-Law article: ‘Need to attract over-55s talent? A US perspective’
