Older worker stereotypes overturned

A new academic study confirms that almost all negative generalizations about employees over the age of 40 are untrue.

A recently published article, Evaluating Six Common Stereotypes about Older Workers with Meta-Analytical Data by Thomas W.H. Ng (University of Hong Kong) and Daniel C. Feldman (University of Georgia) presents the findings of an analysis of around 400 studies of older workers’ performance.

The paper finds that nearly all negative stereotypes about this group are unfounded and suggests, as the number of older workers continues to increase, that managers should reconsider widely-held misconceptions that often lead to age discrimination.

The study examines six of the most common and damaging stereotypes: i.e. that, compared with younger workers, older employees are (1) less motivated, (2) less willing to engage in training and career development programs, (3) more resistant to change, (4) not as trusting, (5) more likely to experience health problems that affect their work, and (6) more vulnerable to work–family conflicts.

The authors found empirical support for only one of those stereotypes. Older workers, on average, are indeed less likely to engage in career development—an attitude that relates, at least in part, to training programs designed for younger employees. The five other stereotypes were unfounded.

For further information, see http://www.strategy-business.com/article/re00225?gko=70968

A great step forward in upskilling for older workers?

Interesting and potentially exciting news at the end of 2012 that a group of established UK learning institutions are joining forces to enter the world of MOOC provision. For the uninitiated (which, until reading this article, included me) MOOCs are ‘massive open online courses’ – training courses that typically free, conducted online and open to anyone who wants to participate

In 2013 12 UK universities will be getting together to form a new company that will offer the online courses – under the brand name of FutureLearn Ltd. The universities are: Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, East Anglia, Exeter, King’s College London, Lancaster, Leeds, Southampton, St Andrews and Warwick, along with UK distance-learning organization The Open University (OU).

Several U.S. universities including Harvard and MIT are already involved with MOOCs as are a few other UK universities but this will apparently be the first large group to set up a dedicated MOOC business located in the UK.

Details of courses and operations are yet to be finalised but the OU said FutureLearn will be open to students in the UK and internationally. It will:

• bring together a range of free, open, online courses from leading UK universities, that will be clear, simple to use, and accessible.
• draw on the OU’s expertise in delivering distance learning and pioneering open education resources to underpin a unified, coherent offer from all of its partners.
• reimagine class-based learning rather than trying to replicate it online – using the potential of digital technologies.

Commenting on the development, Martin Bean, the Vice Chancellor of The Open University said: “MOOCs represent an enormous development in higher education, one that has the potential to bring about long-lasting change to the HE sector.” 

The potential role of MOOCs in ongoing learning and upskilling, particularly for older workers is theoretically vast and could be a key tool for helping people stay in work for longer. Let’s hope that this is borne in mind by those designing and marketing the courses.

Read more at http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/12-u-k-universities-forge-moocs-alliance-futurelearn-consortium-will-offer-uni-branded-open-online-courses-starting-next-year/

You can teach an old dog new tricks

 

 

Guest Blog by Stephen Mutch, Employment Associate, Pannone LLP

Older Employees can take a joke but more fool you if you think you can’t teach an old dog new tricks

When the age discrimination legislation was first introduced back in 2006, a large number of claims were expected based on ageist comments being made in the workplace. This was based in part upon a concern that age related comments simply did not have the same taboo as those based around gender or race and, as such, were more likely to occur. Jokes based on age were (and still are) regularly seen on TV and in greetings cards etc and were heard around the workplace – Bob’s first car was a T-model Ford is one that sticks in my mind.

However, a deluge of age-based claims simply didn’t happen and hardly any reported decisions based around hurtful ageist comments were seen, with most claims under the age discrimination legislation dealing with the application of benefits based on length of service. Perhaps people are less ageist than we gave them credit for, or perhaps the comments are out there but the recipients accept them as within the course of normal office banter.

Not so for Mr James, claimant in the recent case heard before the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) James v Gina Shoes who, rightly, challenged the position he found himself in.

During the course of being disciplined for poor performance Mr James was told by his manager that if he was younger he could be trained up (he was in his early sixties) but you ‘can’t teach an old dog new tricks’.

Unsurprisingly, the EAT held  that such comments created an indication of an inclination to discriminate on grounds of age, and consequently found that age discrimination had taken place that led to Mr James’ subsequent resignation,  and that the employer was required to prove it had not discriminated against him.              

The case is a timely reminder that ‘off the cuff’ comments touching upon the age of colleagues can land an employer in hot water and that any equal opportunities training can usefully include a refresher on age-related comments. For older employees and jobseekers it also shows that a job that involves regular training is not one they are excluded from or one that they won’t thrive at doing.  As inmyprime wrote in a previous post, with people expected to work for longer, training for older employees is increasingly reported, a fact highlighted by the BBC two programme ‘The town that never retired’.

Understanding the bigger picture on employability

One of the biggest responsibilities older people must surely have is trying to ensure that those who come behind us learn from our mistakes and benefit from the insights we’ve gained through having lived a greater number of years. While intergenerational conflict is a current flavour of the month for rationalising challenges and apportioning blame (“those old people stole our future – they don’t care about us”), in fact most older people are hardwired to care for and advise those coming up behind them, if only their own children.

A recent US article on the fastest dying jobs of this generation and those that have replaced them reminded me of the duty we have, more than ever before, to remind younger people of the inherent fragility and transience of employment. While as a nation we have embraced the aim of a university education for all, we have at the same time seemingly raised expectations for a comfortable and ongoing career for those who graduate based on the old notions of “careers for life” that no longer exist.

Although it is easy to see from the list in this article (and there’s plenty of other similar data around relating to the UK situation) that the major swing has been from manual to white collar occupations, the change goes much deeper than that. What the charts underline is that, today, no one can afford simply to secure a job and work hard in the expectation that this approach will earn them a right to employment for life.

Our current situation has been evolving for decades yet as a society we seem to have been slow to learn. The mismatch between what the workplace wants and what prospective employees have to offer seems to have increased. Despite high unemployment, employers report skills shortages – while economists, demographers and others predict that as older people retire, the situation will become even more dire. But, as we know, unemployed older people can’t get jobs either; a situation undoubtedly caused at one level by ageism but, for some, especially those who have worked in dying industries, a lack of sufficient “transferable skills”.

As working lives will now become ever longer we have a duty to stress to those coming up behind us to be vigilant about the nature of what constitutes “work” and “employability” throughout their career. It not feasible at an individual level to wait until the curtain comes down on a particular industry, job type, or even employer before focusing on “what next”.

Employability has now become an individual responsibility and to remain in work throughout life many of those just starting out may need to change direction and re-train several times. There’s nothing particularly threatening or onerous about that if we take it as the norm. Many older people now are starting to realise that if they want to continue to work into older age they will have to adopt this approach. It’s a challenge but it can be done. For many the biggest hurdle is getting over the mental barrier of “I’m over 60, what’s the point?”

Yet, with increased longevity a career change at 60 could result in 10-20 more productive and rewarding years. Of course, there’s a lot to consider concerning type and amount of work and motivation for taking on the challenge – and of course, overcoming the ageism barrier.  But, if old dogs can learn new tricks, then it demonstrates that career change is possible, making it even more acceptable and feasible for younger people to consider similar changes throughout their career.

To ensure more successful working lives we have to start making real changes somewhere. Let it start with us.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/the-fastest-dying-jobs-of-this-generation-and-what-replaced-them/257154/

SOS – Financial education needed in the workplace

A recent joint report by the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) and the Pensions Institute (PI) at Cass Business School has found that half a million people retiring each year are being dramatically short-changed in terms of their total future pension income because of overwhelming obstacles that prevent them getting the best deal.

When they retire, people in the private sector saving in a ‘defined contribution’ pension – now the most common form of company pension scheme – use their pension pot to buy an annuity from an insurer. This gives them a regular income and is a one-off, irreversible decision that sets the size of their pension for the rest of their life.

According to the report, fewer than one in five people have the financial know-how needed to pick the right annuity at the best price. The rest lack sufficient understanding of factors like interest rates, inflation and longevity, and need some form of advice. And those savvy enough to ‘shop around’ for the best rate struggle to do so because the best shops are not signposted. It is virtually impossible to find a specialist adviser who covers the whole market and who is willing to help those with smaller funds.

The report also uncovered evidence of sharp practice and murky pricing in the annuity market, putting unsuspecting consumers at a huge disadvantage.

David Blake, director of the Pensions Institute at Cass Business School comments: “This report is a wake-up call to the pensions industry, the government and the regulators. If the annuity system is not radically overhauled, employees in defined contribution schemes in the private sector will continue to suffer massive detriment and the government’s new auto-enrolment regime will fail the very people it aims to help secure financial independence in retirement.”

However, more immediately it concluded that people get “too little support” from employers or providers when making a decision about their annuity – often they get nothing more than a leaflet pointing them to a website with a postcode-based search engine.

As ever, the workplace is the best place for providing education and knowledge – whether related to pensions, annnuities, general financial planning, health, or myriad other topics. Good employers will hopefully rise to the challenge in supporting their employees to reap the best rewards from a system that most have paid into with the best intentions and trust in future rewards.

And for those who are younger, financial education is definitely needed about the options available, aside from pensions and annuities, to provide for future financial needs and retirement.

For more: 

http://www.napf.co.uk/PressCentre/Press_releases/0176_Savers_left_short_changed_and_bewildered_by_unfair_annuities_system.aspx

Older workers: doing the right stuff

Back in 1992 an academic article* was published examining differences in the rates of career progression between male and female managers. It took the approach of examining the importance for female managers of “doing all the right stuff” in terms of the behaviours that their male counterparts demonstrated that got them promoted (e.g. getting a similar education as the men, maintaining similar family responsibilities, working in similar industries, not moving in and out of the work force, not removing their names from consideration for transfers).

While, unfortunately, the article demonstrated that doing all these things was still not enough to overcome the significant disparities in men’s and women’s salary progression and geographic mobility it was a fascinating approach and one which might usefully be applied to improving the position of older workers in today’s employment arenas.

It appears from numerous reports that discrimination against older workers, despite legislation, is still ingrained and invidious across many workplaces even though it is no longer acceptable for older workers to be turned down or disregarded for opportunities due to vague notions of inadequacies relating to their age. This being the case, identifying what “the right stuff” is for employees within a particular organization could at least open a dialogue and potentially make the achievement of those qualities more accessible to older workers.

Taking this perspective would help clarify exactly what the key behaviours for success are considered to be within that organization. For example, if employees are expected to be “dynamic” and “innovative”, what types of behaviours demonstrate this? What might younger people be doing in behavioural or attitudinal terms that their older colleagues are not?  Having decided this, those of any age who required development to better achieve and exhibit those behaviours could then be given support to improve their position and performance and their chances of future employment success.

One of the criticisms which is often leveled at older workers is that they are resistant to training and development activities. Research has shown that where this occurs this may be because they perceive the training on offer as irrelevant to their needs. Perhaps this approach might engage older individuals more and help to bring them into organization-wide talent development programmes that at present, seem to largely exclude the over 50s.

In the worst case scenario such an exercise would at least demonstrate – as in the article mentioned above – that even doing all the right stuff will still not be enough to ensure older workers receive the same opportunities as younger people.

Hopefully, though, any organization that had been through such a process would have improved recognition of the need for fairness for all.

* All the right stuff: A comparison of female and male manager’s career progression. Linda Stroh, Jeanne Brett and Anne Reilly, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 77(3), Jun 1992, 251-260

AWARE – Aging Workers Are Reliable Employees

Most of the terminology and acronyms around growing older are horrific – last week’s news reports about the “grankini” (a bikini worn by an older woman) being a typical example.

So I was pleased recently to come across an acronym that, for once, is positive, motivating and appropriate:  AWARE – Aging Workers Are Reliable Employees.

AWARE is a career counselling programme designed for people aged 50 and over, based in the US. The programme provides skills such as CV writing, interview skills and computer training to help older adults compete in today’s job market.

The name exactly reflects the findings of research by Dr Roy Canning from the University of Stirling who recently undertook an exploration into the employment of older workers in a range of organisations:”Older workers are generally seen as reliable with excellent customer service skill-sets and a strong work ethic”.

The study further showed that training and development interventions for older workers should, on the most part, concentrate on team building, skill utilisation within collaborative practice and encouragement of self-directed learning. “There is a need to prioritise skill utilisation rather than skill acquisition in the case of older workers,” Dr Canning said. “This is about valuing their experience and acknowledging the role older workers can play as informal mentors to younger staff.”

This in itself is something all employers should be aware of.

For further information about the programme see: http://www.positivematurity.org/programs/aware

For further information about the University of Stirling research see: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/about/CI/CP/societynow/issue7/older_workers.aspx