Ageism – the stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination against people based on their age – is pervasive and is experienced by both younger and older participants within the labor market. The number of age-related discrimination charges filed against employers with the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) by workers doubled between 1990 and 2019. We asked several experts to share their opinions on this topic. Check their answers below.
What are the most common reasons for age discrimination?
“The most common reasons for age discrimination, in my experience, are (a) resource-based – it is often assumed that it is cheaper to hire a younger individual who has lower reward expectations, disregarding the quality of the competencies and skills of an older candidate, (b) fear that older individuals will create more problems for management through health issues, (c) older individuals will be seen as blocking promotion or other opportunities for younger people, (d) in the international development sphere, doubts as to whether the individual will be able to handle the pressures and difficulties of working away from their home countries, if required, particularly in areas of high deprivation, challenging climate and living conditions and health risks, (e) a perception that older individuals will be unable or unwilling to keep up to date with digital technology, be less flexible and have more entrenched “old-fashioned” ideas and views which will have an impact on their ability to work successfully to “modern” standards.”
“Prejudice or misconception heavily influences the denial of job opportunities to candidates of a certain age. Companies are aware that new employees need additional training, and capacitation is an expensive labor component that employers expect to recover over the life span of a worker. The longer the employee stays in the company, the more the company profits from the investment made in training. In this line, a young employee likely will stay longer than someone close or beyond the age or retirement, so the chances to recover training costs are higher with young staff, and thus younger applicants are preferred. Other common misconceptions are a) Staff of certain do not have the flexibility to adapt or change. b) Older staff do not have fast-learning skills and are hard to train in new technology. c) Senior staff is less healthy than junior staff as if health only belongs to young people. d) Due to their working experience, older staff are more aware of their rights and working conditions whereas young staff does not care that much to the point that younger people will kill themselves trying to accomplish things in order to get a promotion, higher bonuses or hearing, etc.”
What are the most serious consequences of age discrimination?
“Discrimination affects not only older people who are at the receiving end. Organizations are losing experience, knowledge and people who are able to make decisions in complex situations, bringing composure and perspective when facing disasters or risks such as those currently being experienced in the terrible Covid-19 pandemic. Everyone must recognize that ageism against older people is equivalent to wisdom discrimination, ignoring the input from people who can view the world with care and who are capable of responding to problems and adversities. Additionally, people aged 50 and over represent one of, if not the, largest age groups in most developed countries. If governments, organizations and companies are not engaging with these people then, they are excluding a large proportion of users, customers, potential buyers and contributors, remaining blind to their needs and expectations. Eliminating age discrimination has the power to transform – older people become a source of support to everyone instead of being people who need help and who are a problem for society.”
“By discriminating against older workers, the most serious consequence is the loss of long-term and in-depth high-quality expertise and experience. In addition, depriving older experts of work, for which they are appropriately qualified, simply because of their age, risks increasing poverty levels within the aging population. There is a prevalent assumption that older workers will have a pension to fall back on – this is by no means always the case; pensions in a number of countries don’t exist and in others may not be secure. By ignoring the assets that older workers can bring (soft skills such as patience, precision, conscientiousness, for example), there may be a general loss to the whole community which will have consequences over time.”
How does age discrimination affect international development?
“Age discrimination seriously affects international development because, most importantly, it deprives projects of experts with wider experience, demonstrated effectiveness and essential soft skills. Exclusion of older experts also means that aging and vulnerable project participants/beneficiaries will not be targeted effectively as possible. Building in awareness of the issues surrounding aging is important for effective project delivery. A project team with a variety of profiles, including both younger and older experts, is often more acceptable to beneficiaries.”
“As previously explained, this type of discrimination prevents organizations from being more productive. When applying age discrimination during the formation of a work team, a cooperation project is more likely to fail, not only in the planning and execution stages but also in the diagnoses that establish the need to carry out a certain cooperation activity. Experienced seniors can help prevent projects from making the same mistakes as previously, as well as avoiding bad designs, including efforts to “reinvent the wheel.” Age discrimination directly increases the risk that projects will have a low impact on solving the needs of the cooperation beneficiary to introduce a high cost for the donor organization.”
“Older Persons are repositories of Skills, Wisdom, practicality, and good Judgement, however, low Retirement Age barriers enable these repositories to migrate outside of the “System” and once there they are not called upon. Several Countries including Developing Countries, especially those with a very limited set of Human Resource Skills, can use these Repositories of Wisdom and Skills to assist in enhancing their individual Development Agendas, e.g., British Expat Program (where retired skilled persons volunteer in the Developing World). The beneficiary Society can benefit from skills in Management, Information Technology, Science & Engineering; Manufacturing and Transfer of Technology and Fund Flows, Health, Agriculture, in addition, this Group has extensive World-wide Networks that they can tap into to benefit the Beneficiary Country.”
What can the international community do to combat age discrimination?
“Organizations can enroll employees on Managing Bias, Diversity & Inclusion and similar courses in order to raise awareness amongst their employees and showcase the importance of being a truly equal opportunity employer. Additionally, efforts to remove biases during the hiring process such as masking names, age or access can have a significant impact in improving diversity. There are also other short-term solutions to help employ and continue to benefit from the older generation’s knowledge. Probably the least useful is volunteering among retirees. While this can provide a reason for people to live and feel productive, it generally misuses their technical, ethical and decision-making potential. More important are job boards for retirees that can offer a database of suitable roles for them to continue working as consultants, auxiliaries or technical support in public and private institutions. Finally, NGOs have the possibility to hire retirees too.”
“Three aspects should be worked on. The first is to consider this issue in the formation of values and virtues that must be delivered during preschool and school education. The second is to generate public awareness through the promotion of non-discrimination. I believe that both are fundamental and feasible to implement or improve upon today. The third is to create awareness of the cognitive biases in the training of professionals; we naturally and inadvertently tend to favor people who are more like us in the selection process.”
“The most common reasons for age discrimination presented in the related official reports indicate the adversely changing the partnership status of a partner because of age, maintaining any formal or informal mandatory partner retirement policy or practice based on age; pressuring a partner to change partnership status or to retire because of age; requiring partners to cease their service on any firm committee, because of age, former sales employees discharged or demoted due to their age in companywide reorganization and similar. While in the international sphere almost 44 percent of employees report that they or someone they know experienced age discrimination in the workplace. Further on, 21 percent report they faced age discrimination themselves.”
“The documents which applicants need to submit should focus on professional qualification criteria and not contain data which reveals the applicant’s age. This is option one. Option two is introducing a rule that tender specifications need to define the maximum age ceiling plus the explicit reasons for this.”
“Employees should be protected from discrimination firstly in job advertisements and in the terms and conditions of recruitment. They should be able to recognize the value of all everyone. There is also the need to implement training to change mind and mentalities.”
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