Ageism in the workplace: can we really work it out?

The head of an award-winning ëolder peopleí recruitment agency this week slammed ëout of touchí employers who still discriminate against older people.

Spencer Jacobs, MD at Forties People, a Dowgate-Hill, London-based agency geared to help mature workers find new jobs, warned that ageism in the workplace is still widespread at the end of 2004.

He said: ìToo many companies are still living in the dark ages when it comes to age discrimination in the workplace. Some might call it a corporate pandemic ñ despite the new anti-ageism legislation planned for 2006í.

Jacobs added: ìItís true that new rules will make any reference to age in recruitment advertisements, interviews or at the workplace, illegal ñ but how is that going to work in practice?î
The Government can bring in all the laws it likes but the big question remains: how will ageism be policed?
Itís one thing to require all future recruitment to be based on skill, ability and potential and for any redundancy decisions to be ëcompletely unbiasedí but whoís going to monitor this?
The bottom line is that older people will still be relying on the goodwill of corporate management to follow the new code and eliminate discriminationÖ.and thatís a real leap of faith on their part.

Latest estimates suggest that ageism in employment in this country could be costing the state 31 billion a year ñ and the government itself agrees that one in four people aged 50 to 69 have experienced age discrimination when working or looking for work.

Said Jacobs: ìAt Forties People we see the hard evidence of discrimination every day of the week. We work with growing numbers of people who have been discarded because of their age and discriminated against when they seek new jobs.

Almost every older person we see believes that employers generally discriminate against older workers ñ and many of them donít see new laws in 2006 changing much at all. And the latest study by the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and development) points out that 1 in 5 job seekers have been discouraged from applying for a position because it contained an age restriction.
Itís a simple fact that 36% of Britainís workforce is now aged 45 or over and yet worrying numbers of employers still appear to have their heads in the sand when it comes to age diversity.

New guidelines make it clear to businesses that age must no longer play any role in who they recruit. Interviewers should ask only job-related questions and any work-related tests must not discriminate against older people. Standards and techniques at interviews must be fair and consistent across all applicants ñ and the governmentís own guidelines state quite clearly that there should be a mixed-age workforce at all levels.

But we see hundreds of mature workers who have been consigned to the scrapheap by employers who want younger people on board.î

Jacobs has called for faster government action on pensions and retirement policy.

He said: ìAll workers should be kept informed about their companiesí retirement policies and they should be seen to be fair and flexible to all parties.
Tony Blair says he wants to change the culture that writes people off at 65, 60 or even 55 regardless of whether they want to work or not ñ but heíd better hurry up because down here on the street we have growing numbers of very concerned people.î