Ten years on – what leading the age agenda has taught me about inclusion, capability and leadership

Reflections from the CEO

Reaching a ten-year milestone prompts a different kind of reflection. Not just on what has been published or achieved in a single year, but on what becomes clear when you stay with an issue long enough to see patterns form, progress take hold, and familiar challenges reappear in new guises.

When I founded the Age Diversity Forum in 2015, the aim was simple but ambitious, to shine a light on age inclusion and help organisations unlock the value of every generation in the workplace. At the time, age was often acknowledged quietly within diversity conversations, but rarely addressed with the same intent or structure as other inclusion priorities.

Ten years on, what strikes me most is not just how much the conversation has grown, but how it has matured. Leading this work over a decade has seen progress, albeit, slow, in shifting the age agenda from the margins towards the centre of organisational thinking, driven by demographic change, skills pressures, longer working lives, and a growing recognition that inclusion must translate into everyday practice.

2025 felt like a particularly important point in that journey. Not because age inclusion suddenly became relevant, but because the questions organisations were asking changed. Across our newsletters and publications this year, the emphasis shifted away from whether age inclusion matters and towards how it can be addressed in a way that is credible, structured, and sustainable.

Looking back on the year from the perspective of a decade’s work, several themes came into sharper focus. These weren’t new issues, but signals that the conversation is moving into a more applied phase, one that requires capability, evidence, and leadership ownership.

In this thought piece, I’ve brought together some of the insights that emerged most clearly through our 2025 work, viewed through the lens of ten years spent working on age inclusion. They reflect not just what we observed this year, but what experience has taught me matters most as organisations look ahead to 2026 and beyond.

Insight one – awareness remains essential, but capability determines progress

Over the past ten years, one lesson has become increasingly clear to me, awareness is a vital starting point for age inclusion, but it is rarely enough on its own to deliver lasting change.

This tension was particularly visible in 2025. While some organisations are now asking more advanced questions about how to embed age inclusion into workforce strategy, many others are still at an earlier stage. Across different regions and sectors, age remains absent from inclusion strategies altogether, or is acknowledged only superficially.

That tells us something important. The age agenda is progressing, but unevenly. Raising awareness is still very much part of the work, especially for organisations that have yet to recognise age as a strategic issue. At the same time, there is a growing cohort of employers who understand why age inclusion matters and are now grappling with how to act on it.

From a decade-long perspective, both realities coexist. Where awareness has been built but not followed by investment in skills, frameworks, and ownership, progress tends to stall. Where organisations combine awareness with capability, equipping leaders, HR teams, and managers to make age-inclusive decisions, change is more consistent and sustainable.

What 2025 reinforced for me is that the next phase of the age agenda must work on both fronts. We need to continue raising awareness where age inclusion is still overlooked, while also supporting those organisations ready to move further to build the capability required for meaningful, long-term impact.

Insight two – evidence changes the quality of the conversation

Another lesson that has deepened for me over the past decade, and became particularly clear in 2025, is the role that data and evidence play in moving the age agenda forward.

For much of the time I’ve worked in this space, conversations about age have been shaped by assumptions. Assumptions about who is adaptable, who is nearing the end of their contribution, who should be invested in, or who is most at risk of leaving. These narratives are often deeply embedded and rarely questioned unless something forces a closer look.

What stood out in 2025 was how often the conversation shifted when organisations began to examine their own data through an age-inclusive lens. Looking at workforce demographics, recruitment patterns, progression rates, learning access, and retention by age doesn’t just surface gaps, it reframes the discussion entirely. Age inclusion stops being an abstract or emotive issue and becomes a practical, strategic one.

From a ten-year perspective, this is a critical inflection point. Where organisations rely solely on perception, progress tends to be slow and contested. Where they use evidence, discussions become more focused, more honest, and more constructive. Data creates a shared reference point. It reduces defensiveness and helps leaders see where systems, rather than individuals, are driving exclusion.

That said, 2025 also reinforced that many organisations are still at an early stage when it comes to measurement and accountability around age. Data isn’t always readily available, consistently analysed, or actively used to inform decisions. This remains a barrier to progress, but also a significant opportunity.

What experience has shown me is that age inclusion accelerates when organisations commit to understanding their reality, even when the findings are uncomfortable. Evidence doesn’t solve the problem on its own, but it changes what is possible. It enables clearer choices, better prioritisation, and more meaningful accountability.

As the age agenda continues to mature, the role of data will only become more important, not as a compliance exercise, but as a tool for learning, improvement, and sustained change.

“Without awareness, organisations don’t engage at all….without capability, engagement doesn’t translate into action.”

Insight three – leadership ownership is what turns limited activity into lasting impact

If there is one lesson that has been reinforced consistently over the past ten years, it is this… age inclusion only becomes sustainable when it is owned by leadership. Without that ownership, progress remains fragile, and activity, where it exists at all, rarely translates into lasting impact.

Throughout 2025, this pattern became clearer. In many organisations, age inclusion is still not being actively addressed. Where it is on the agenda, it is often through isolated or exploratory actions, a conversation sparked by a campaign, a piece of guidance shared internally, or a one-off intervention rather than a sustained approach.

From a longer-term perspective, this is a familiar challenge. Inclusion efforts that rely on occasional activity, without clear leadership ownership, tend to lose momentum. Age inclusion is particularly vulnerable to this, as it cuts across so many aspects of organisational life, workforce planning, recruitment, progression, learning, performance, and culture, yet is rarely owned by any single function unless leaders make it a priority.

What 2025 reinforced for me is that meaningful progress depends less on the volume of activity and more on where responsibility sits. Leadership ownership is not about statements of intent or sponsorship roles alone. It is about leaders being willing to examine how decisions are made, what behaviours are rewarded, and where age-related assumptions may be embedded in systems and processes.

Over a decade of working on the age agenda, I’ve seen the difference this makes. When leaders take responsibility for age inclusion, it stops being an occasional topic and becomes part of how the organisation thinks about talent, capability, and sustainability. That shift is gradual, but it is decisive.

As the age agenda moves into its next phase, leadership ownership will remain one of the most important determinants of whether organisations move beyond sporadic activity and towards meaningful, system-level change.

From reflection to responsibility – how this perspective is shaping 2026

Taken together, these insights feel less like a summary of a single year and more like a point of convergence. Many of the issues that surfaced in 2025…uneven awareness, reliance on assumptions, limited leadership ownership…are not new. What has changed is the context in which they now sit, and the urgency with which organisations are being forced to confront them.

From where I sit, 2025 marked a moment where the age agenda began to separate more clearly into two distinct needs. On the one hand, there is still significant work to do to raise awareness and visibility in organisations where age inclusion has yet to feature meaningfully at all. On the other, there is a growing need to support those employers who are ready to move beyond intent and towards implementation.

This dual reality is shaping how I think about the next phase of our work. After ten years of building momentum for the age agenda, the challenge now is not simply to keep the conversation going, but to help organisations move through it, from awareness, to understanding, to capability, and ultimately to embedded practice.

That thinking is directly informing our focus for 2026. The emphasis will be on structure rather than statements, on systems rather than one-off activity, and on leadership accountability rather than delegated responsibility. Age inclusion will only become sustainable when it is built into the mechanisms that shape everyday organisational decisions, workforce planning, recruitment, progression, learning, and leadership practice.

For me, this feels like a natural transition from the Forum’s first decade into its next. The early years were about making the case for age inclusion and creating space for the conversation to exist. The years ahead are about helping organisations act on that conversation with greater confidence, clarity, and consistency.

Looking ahead – carrying the work forward

Reaching a ten-year milestone inevitably invites reflection, but it also brings responsibility. Staying focused on the age agenda for this long has taught me that progress is possible, but rarely quick, and never sustained without commitment.

What continues to motivate me is not the milestone itself, but the potential of the work ahead. Demographic change, longer working lives, and persistent skills pressures mean that age inclusion will only become more relevant to organisational success, not less. The question is not whether organisations will need to address age, but how thoughtfully and deliberately they do so.

As we move into the next phase, our focus is on helping organisations engage with age inclusion in a way that goes beyond intention. That means supporting leaders to build capability, use evidence, and take ownership of the systems and decisions that shape people’s experience of work over time. It also means continuing to raise awareness where age is still overlooked, while deepening practice where organisations are ready to go further.

I’m proud of what the Age Diversity Forum has helped to build over the past decade, and grateful to the organisations, partners, and individuals who have contributed to that journey. The progress we’ve seen has been collective, and so will the work ahead.

The next ten years will require persistence, collaboration, and a willingness to engage honestly with complexity. We remain committed to that work, and to continuing the conversation with those who share the ambition of creating workplaces where every generation is valued and able to contribute fully.