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April 10, 2024
Age discrimination has no place in modern workplaces, and yet many companies are inadvertently creating the conditions in which it can thrive. A more diverse workforce is not only beneficial for workers but also for your bottom line. Productivity and therefore profits increase when there is a more diverse workforce working together towards a common goal. In this guide, we’re exploring some of the benefits of age diversity in the workplace. Armed with this information, you can go forward and implement policy to prioritise a more diverse workforce.
When we talk about diversity in the workplace, it’s often in relation to DEI policy, or diversity, equity and inclusion. This is a modern approach to diversity that helps companies to understand their obligations in building more diverse workforces.
Age diversity is one key component of this policy. It helps to avoid age discrimination and also encourages companies to think about how their hiring, promotion and firing policies might be influenced by ageist attitudes.
Companies that prioritise diversity typically enjoy better productivity, improved staff morale, high staff retention and reduced recruitment costs. All of this can contribute towards improved output and therefore higher profits. Here are 5 specific benefits of age diversity to consider:
When you have a more diverse workforce, decision making is improved by including more diverse opinions based on a range of experience levels. Leaving young workers to make decisions alone could lead to short-sighted decisions that lack experience, whereas older workers making decisions alone could be seen as lacking in innovation.
The solution? Have a more diverse workforce and ask them to make decisions together. This will force everyone to get out of their own headspace and consider the experience and perspectives of others.
Some generations are known as digital natives as they grew up surrounded by technology. While this is no doubt beneficial in the workplace, there’s also value in being a newcomer.
Diverse perspectives are essential for making stronger decisions that consider your entire customer base, not just a small portion. Skill sharing is one of the biggest benefits of a diverse workforce.
When you value age diversity in your workplace and ensure that older workers feel valued, right up to their retirement, you can enjoy the obvious benefit of keeping knowledge and experience within your company.
If workers feel undervalued past a certain age, this can have a knock on effect of encouraging them to look elsewhere. And they’ll take their valuable knowledge and experience with them.
You don’t have to be actively firing older workers to experience issues with age diversity in your workplace. Sometimes it can be down to policies that indirectly discriminate against older workers, such as isolating these individuals from the rest of the team. This can lead them to feel that their contribution isn’t as valued, which will damage morale and eventually lead them to look for opportunities elsewhere.
Older generations have a lot to offer, and their extensive experience in the sector is often one area where they can shine. Young workers might have new ideas, but they lack the experience to know how to operate effectively in the industry.
Bring these diverse age groups together and everyone benefits. Mentorship is increasingly being seen as a two-way relationship, with younger workers also sharing their insights with those who they could traditionally look up to.
It has been proven that companies with older CEOs experience a boost in productivity. While the tech boom might have paved the way for increasingly younger CEOs to take centre stage, this should really be the exception and not the norm. It’s not uncommon for there to be a young CEO supported by a board or more senior executives, and this helps to strike a balance.
It might be seen as a trendy move to have a very young CEO, but this could damage productivity over time. Age diversity will bring all of the benefits above, and this in turn will help to increase productivity. And better productivity often turns into increased profits.
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