To think diversity and inclusion in employment rarely includes age

[teneastereggs]

Just that really. I've noticed that there's a lot more emphasis on diversity, which is great, but then for example even in the photos of staff they're all young. It doesn't feel to me as if diversity in workplaces has extended to age yet. AIBU?

Spot on. I can't get interviews for jobs that I am 100% qualified and currently experienced for. I have a name that means I was clearly born in the early 60s. I have thought about using something else on Applications tbh. It's depressing.

True.

And arguably even worse if you’re self-employed. Every single diversity-positive opportunity is aimed - overtly or covertly - at the young.

Mid level and senior management in almost every sector still skews older. If everyone in the photos you’re looking at is young, it’s likely to be people at entry level. Is that the context?

This doesn’t reflect the data though, there are more people in employment between 50-65 than 25-34 for a start.

Mid level and senior management in almost every sector still skews older. If everyone in the photos you’re looking at is young, it’s likely to be people at entry level. Is that the context?

Perhaps so but surely it's more men at that level. But yes I'm thinking about entry level/ mid level jobs, returners, internships, job moves, rather than senior management.

This doesn’t reflect the data though, there are more people in employment between 50-65 than 25-34 for a start.

Is this employment/unemployment or just the numbers of people in different age groups?

Perhaps so but surely it's more men at that level.

Yes, but that’s a patriarchy/sexism issue - you asked about age.

But yes I'm thinking about entry level/ mid level jobs, returners, internships, job moves, rather than senior management.

You’ve mixed a lot of different levels there. Some tend to skew younger (internships) and some don’t (mid level jobs generally aren’t going to ‘young people’). There’s lots of reasons for this and a lot of them are just practical: you don’t get a lot of people over a certain age applying for internships, you need to have been in employment for X amount of years to climb to middle management and so on.

Well age is a tricky one isn't it because it relates both to experience and to physical fitness?

I am quietly reassured that the surgeon who operates on my son has considerable experience, Im not looking for an 18 year old in her role to make it inclusive. On the other hand I did a full day of hard physical work yesterday and it nearly killed me. At 52 it made me realise that I'm getting too old to spend 8 hours in the rain humping big pieces of timber about. Luckily that's not a major part of the role. But for people for whom it is a major part of the role the max age seems to be about 45 by which time the number of injuries and back complaints they've picked up start to outweigh the benefit of their experience.*

• unless they're farmers. Farmers seem to go on til they drop.

@teneastereggs Is this employment/unemployment or just the numbers of people in different age groups?

There more people in the older age brackets as a percentage of the overall workforce.
There is then also a lower unemployment rate from 50-65 vs age brackets below.

It’s simply not true that “all of them are young” in terms of working people in the uk.

But the point I'm making really is, in the context of diversity and inclusion, age isn't one of the things anyone seems to be trying to include

I suppose it also depends on what you’re terming ‘young’.

‘As of January 2023, the employment rate in the United Kingdom was highest among 35 to 49 year olds, with 85.4 percent of that age group employed. By contrast, 11.1 percent of over 65 were employed, and just over half of 16-to-24 year old's.’

https://www.statista.com/statistics/280228/uk-employment-rate-by-age-group/

Because there’s not perceived to be any need. Diversity and inclusion initiatives aim to remove obstacles for underrepresented groups. Older people (however you define ‘older’) aren’t underrepresented. Younger people are, in some sectors, so there are initiatives aimed at them.

To what extent though? Because you seem to be implying that all workers are young and it’s older people who need to be more represented in the workforce when the employment data doesn’t back that up.

In terms of supporting younger people into the workforce that’s why internships, training funding, apprenticeships exist. To give younger people the tools and skills to enter the labour market.

You can’t break down a company by the age its employees should be. A financial services or specialist law firm will rely on experience which typically comes with age and also qualifications which also take time for. It’s highly unlikely many 19 year olds could be employed at a law firm.
However many more 19 year olds could be employed in a shop because it doesn’t take 5+ years of further education.

The point of inclusion within certain brackets relies on the fundamental assumption that white people aren’t smarter or ‘better’ than those within marginalised groups, that men aren’t smarter than women. We can’t automatically say the same with age because although you can have tech wizz of 19 and a poorly educated jobs worth who’s 58, the experience factor comes into it.

YANBU. Age, disability, neurodiversity don’t get a look-in. Women past 45yo.

In fact most “diversity” seems to fall within certain very restricted parameters of corporate desireability, e.g.:

• you can be a Black Caribbean male, but extremely well-spoken and from a top uni
• you can be a lesbian, but ideally white and not look like one

The whole thing is farcical. Tokenism and lip service.

In the industry I work in, we have people from 18 to 70s across a few different departments

A good range of ages

Far too much 'EDI' focuses on not offering trans people, IME.

Very little actually focuses on age or people with disabilities. So YANBU.

In my industry it’s the opposite. We aren’t allowed to request x years of experience in a job application because it obviously favours older candidates and we are heavily skewed to older people in senior roles

Disability (which for most employers covers neurodiversity) is a huge part of every EDI policy.

There's lots of things around age diversity but specifically your point in the OP about the photos

We get marketing/HR/internal comms asking for people to appear in photos 2 or 3 times a year and inevitably it's always the same people who are willing to volunteer - younger people, usually skinny

If you ask a middle aged woman to appear to she will inevitably turn it down, and to be honest so will a lot of middle aged men

So if you are judging age diversity in the workplace on photos of the workplace alone what you are probably judging it on is people's insecurities not the actual age diversity.

We have a team with ages between 19-62, and in recent photos only the 19-30 year old volunteered, but that doesn't mean we aren't age diverse

The promo type stuff we do at work, so where you’d see staff photos, is aimed at recruiting at entry level which does tend to be recent grads. The organisation as a whole skews older and I’m in an ageing process I’m.. They’re deliberately trying to get more young people into it for succession planning because otherwise there’s a big gap in 5-10 years when the older staff potentially retire within a few years of each other and we don’t have staff coming through with enough experience to replace them. So yes, looking at the website etc., you’d probably think we were deliberately aiming at younger people, because at the moment we are.

@PousseyNotMoira Policies that don’t translate into real life action are lip service.

I get tangentially involved in DE&I projects from time to time. It's not just about photos in the company brochure — this is a very narrow view of what it entails.

For example — one of my recent projects has been easy read documentation for people with learning disabilities.

Interesting about promo pictures, that makes sense. But if you're older a lot of the way jobs are marketed is towards the young

Really? In what way? I'm genuinely curious because although my work is not related to diversity and inclusion its something our team discusses a lot and as a disabled person I am heavily involved with our I&D team in coming up with ways to increase awareness and make our workplace and roles more disability friendly etc. So I'm curious as to how you are seeing jobs as being 'marketed towards the young' as we wouldn't want our adverts to be excluding anyone

You’re making some pretty wild assumptions and don’t seem to be able to back it up.

In what way are jobs marketed to the young?

It's great your company's taking those steps Mycathatesmecuddling

There's a lot, when you're older and looking, that feels exclusionary, some of that is reactions at interviews when people see that you're older (if you even get an interview.) But in initial stages yes photos and claims of diversity which totally leave out anyone over about 35. Initiatives like company outings or holidays etc and pictures of them, where again everyone is young. Wording that makes it sound like you have to be young. Asking for young people or things around that. Sometimes it'll specify they want a young person for their team. Maybe posters have other examples.