Age Management in the Workplace
This is a report of a survey conducted for Cullen Scholefield. It is an opinion and experience survey of the consultancy's clients, on the subject of age management. The subject is of interest currently for a number of reasons, including the imminence of the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations, which will come into force in the UK on 1st October 2006. Companies are therefore thinking about their policies on age issues, and it may be that some will want to do more than meet the basic requirements of legal compliance.
Anti-discrimination policies are an important part of nurturing human resources, particularly when issues of age are considered. However, they are unlikely to be sufficient if taken alone. It would be naïve to think that age discrimination will 'go away,' simply because of the enactment of legislation. However, adjusting the ways in which age, work and society interact may contribute towards reducing discrimination by dealing with some of its causes.
As falling birth rates and increased longevity produce marked changes in the demographic characteristics of western countries, employers will need to consider how to encourage and enable older workers to remain longer at work. This need is sharpened somewhat by the shifting ground around pensions provision and news that the state pension age will rise to 68 for men and women by the year 2050.
We are living longer and perhaps we should therefore expect to work longer. However, this prospect will not always appeal to the individual, whose skills are becoming out of date or who is feeling the physical effects of ageing. Helping individuals around these sorts of problems may change attitudes of older people themselves as well as those with whom they work.
These ideas may lead organisations to adopt policies for intervening at work so that age and the individual do not interact with the same abruptness that largely applies at the moment. The right to request delayed retirement and the employers' duty to consider such requests, will be one change, but age management policies cover much more. They range from changing working hours to be more accommodating of older workers' specific needs, to introducing training programmes that will prevent the decay of skills acquired over a long working career.
Our survey was intended to find out how far clients of Cullen Scholefield were considering these wider issues in relation to age, as well as how far they were modifying policies and practices so that their organisations comply with the new law when it comes into force. In addition, we wanted to know how far issues of age discrimination and age management represent needs that Cullen Scholefield might help clients to address.
1 September 2006
