Age discrimination: older Australian workers viewed as slow to learn

The trope of the older worker thrust back into the hurly-burly of working life made for great comedy in the 2015 film The Intern. But in reality this scenario isn’t always such a laughing matter.

Older workers face unique hardships. Hampered by unfair stereotypes about their abilities, their role in society and their responsibilities, they are regularly overlooked for interviews, jobs, promotions and recognition.

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2016 report Willing to Work found 27% of people over the age of 50 reported experiencing age discrimination at work, a third of the most recent episodes occurring when applying for a job. One-third of those gave up looking for work.

Age discrimination was particularly acute among older women, who were more likely to be viewed as having outdated skills, being slow to learn, or as being likely to do an unsatisfactory job. Seniors with disabilities face an even steeper uphill battle for jobs and recognition.

The bias against age can be overt; four in 10 companies surveyed by the Australian Human Rights Commission said they avoided employing anyone over the age of 55. In some cases, older individuals applying for jobs are leaving their age off their CVs and editing their work history to make their age less obvious.

But age discrimination can also be more subtle: inadvertent exclusion from work-related social activities and circles, repeatedly being passed over for promotion or training opportunities in favour of younger workers, or being parodied by younger workers, says Prof Peter Gahan, director of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Workplace Leadership.

“Certain ways of expressing things, or throwaway lines, are ageist, and they have the effect of excluding people from the social context of work and we need to be conscious of those things,” Gahan says.

Yet the reality is our population is ageing; one quarter of Australians are over the age of 55, with that predicted to increase to one-third in the next decade.

As a result, industry is taking a second look at older workers, and not a moment too soon, according to Dr Ruth Williams, research fellow at the Centre for Workplace Leadership.

“We hear all about the challenges and the doom and gloom, and the tsunami of [older] people but the mindset needs to be completely flipped,” Williams says.

“They are a huge untapped resource and they’re an untapped market as well for businesses.”

Older workers bring a lifetime of experience, networks and tacit knowledge that can’t simply be written down and left for their successors. They also have a lot to offer customers. Williams points to companies such as hardware retailer Bunnings, which is recognising the value of employees’ past experience.

“You’re actually talking to an ex-plumber or an ex-electrician who could know exactly – or better – what you might need to do your home renovation,” Williams says.

Another reason to employ older workers is to better reflect the demographics of your customer base, she says. The banking, retail and hospitality sectors particularly stand to benefit from taking on older workers for face-to-face roles, as the customers most likely to use these services (rather than going online) are themselves older individuals.

How can companies overcome the barriers that are making it harder for older workers to find and keep rewarding jobs?

One important step is to counter the perception among younger workers that the older generation are competition for increasingly scarce employment and advancement opportunities.

“It tends to intensify these negative attitudes, and particularly attitudes that suggest that perhaps by staying in the workforce longer, older people might be taking opportunities from younger people in society,” Gahan says.

But when this mindset is challenged, research has shown it has a positive impact on the attitudes of younger workers towards their older colleagues.

Younger workers also stand to benefit significantly from the experience, wisdom and insights of older colleagues, whose own professional focus might shift as they reach peak points in career development.

“They turn their attention to things [which] they perceive as legacy issues; how can they help others in the workplace, how might they be a mentor and help develop younger people in the workplace,” Gahan says.

There are lessons to be learned from efforts used to counter sex discrimination in the workplace. Williams says using quotas could be one way to at least kickstart better recruitment of older workers, as could having older staff involved in recruitment and hiring.

Williams argues we still have a long way to go to address the many challenges facing older Australians who want to stay in the workforce, and efforts to counter ageism in the workplace are still very much in their infancy.

“There’s a growing demand but at the moment it is kind of like lip service really; there’s not a great deal being done at this point in time,” she says. “However, there’s more of a groundswell for things to happen, so we’re at a tipping point.”