Age bias in recruitment doesn't necessarily begin with a hiring decision. It can begin much earlier, with the words, images and signals organisations use to describe an opportunity. Most employers would probably say that they want to attract the widest possible pool of capable candidates. Job advertisements routinely describe organisations as inclusive, careers pages feature commitments to diversity, as recruitment processes are increasingly reviewed for accessibility and fairness. And yet, before a candidate reaches any of those things, something more subtle may already have happened…they may have decided…“This job isn't really for someone like me.” Recruitment starts before the application When we think about bias in recruitment, attention naturally turns towards selection. Who gets shortlisted? Who gets interviewed? Who gets appointed? Those are important questions, but they begin relatively late in the process. There is an earlier stage that receives less attention…self-selection. Potential applicants interpret signals about an organisation long [...]

The publication of Keep Britain Working: A National Growth Opportunity puts a significant challenge in front of employers, policymakers and those of us concerned with the future of work. The challenge isn't simply how we get more people into work, it is how we create working lives that people can enter, sustain, develop within, return to and remain part of. That distinction matters, because if working lives are becoming longer, careers less linear and people's circumstances increasingly varied, simply encouraging greater labour-market participation will only take us so far…we also need to look at the design of work itself. From participation to sustainable working lives The scale of the challenge identified through Keep Britain Working is considerable. Ill health and disability are contributing to high levels of economic inactivity, while hundreds of thousands of people leave employment each year following the onset or worsening of a health condition. But one [...]

Artificial intelligence is changing what people do at work, but there is another question we may need to ask…what did people learn by doing the work that AI is now taking away? Much of the debate around AI and employment has concentrated understandably on jobs. Which roles will disappear? Which will change? Which new skills will people need? But recent research points towards a different challenge, one that may have significant implications for organisations managing increasingly multigenerational workforces. AI doesn't only automate work, it can also automate some of the experiences through which people historically learned how to work. The work beneath the work A recent McKinsey article, Building expertise in the age of AI: Who trains the next generation?, highlights an important consequence of changes to entry-level work. Tasks such as research, documentation, data preparation, basic coding and preliminary analysis are increasingly capable of being streamlined or undertaken using [...]

Sometimes the most useful first step isn't finding the answer, it's asking the right questions. Over the past few years, our conversations with employers have changed. There is greater recognition that age belongs within the inclusion conversation. Organisations are also becoming more aware of longer working lives, multigenerational workforces, changing career patterns and the need to retain skills and experience. But recognition creates another question - Where do you start? For an organisation that has never specifically examined age inclusion, moving immediately into policies, programmes or measurement can feel like a considerable leap…that's why the Age Diversity Forum has created Discovery. A place to start, rather than a test to pass Discovery is a free resource designed to help organisations begin thinking about age inclusion in a simple and accessible way. It isn't an accreditation, it isn't an audit, and it isn't intended to tell an organisation whether it is [...]

We are extending working lives faster than we are redesigning them. That may be one of the more important workforce challenges hidden within today's debate about economic inactivity, retirement and longer working lives. A new labour-market measure introduced by the Centre for Ageing Better provides a useful example. NETER - Not in Employment, Training, Education or Retirement - has been created to identify people aged between 50 and State Pension age who are neither working nor retired. The Centre estimates that around 2.9 million people currently fall within this category. The problem it seeks to illuminate is real. Too many people leave employment earlier than they intended, while others who want to return to work encounter barriers that make doing so unnecessarily difficult. But at the Age Diversity Forum, we think the new terminology also raises an important question…Do we need another label for a particular age group, or do [...]