Employers Don't Care If you Have 5 Years Experience, Or 25
But We Do. What's to Be Done?
This article first appeared on FORBES behind a paywall reporting on the OECD’s report on The MidCareer Opportunity. As I’m off to the OECD in Paris again Monday for their next report, on Promoting Better Career Choices for Longer Working Lives: Stepping Up Not Stepping Out, it seemed like a good time to revisit the prior one. There is an important disconnect between employers and 50+ employees, and it’s mostly a perception problem. Time for both sides to address it head on.
New research reveals a chasm between ‘experienced’ workers and employers. The former value the years they’ve put in and the knowledge they’ve accumulated over decades. Companies don’t. It’s time to help both sides understand what they’re missing.
The old demographic shapes that we have been used to forever are morphing, for the first time in human history, from a pyramid into a square. The emerging reality that there are now as many older workers as younger workers is a shift not many companies are whole-heartedly embracing. It hasn’t really made it onto the agenda in most organizations. At least not yet. A recent report from the OECD and Generation is trying to change that.
A Whole New Era: Generationally Balanced Workforces
Titled the Midcareer Opportunity: Meeting the Needs of An Ageing Workforce, it draws a clear picture of the new generational balance of today’s workforce. For the first time, there are almost as many older people as younger people in the workforce. People 45 to 64 are already 40% of the working-age population in OECD countries. The potent pairing of lengthening lifespans and falling birthrates are creating an ever-older workforce. Do employers know – and do they care?
The OECD and Generation, a global employment nonprofit, teamed up to measure to what extent individuals, organisations and governments are aware, interested and ready for the shift. How many have started adapting to an ageing workforce? The answer is: not many.
Proof of Systemic Ageism – The Stereotypes Run Deep
It’s sobering. Hiring managers surveyed have strong negative stereotypes of 45+ candidates, clearly preferring candidates more comfortably aged between 30 and 44. The ‘older’ are seen as less able to adapt to tech, less ready to learn new skills, less open to innovation. While they perceive the younger as more “impressive in interviews,” and a better fit for the industry, the culture – even the team.
Sadly, it’s not just employers who are biased against older workers. Turns out, older workers are biased against themselves, in a strange sleight of mind referred to as ‘internalized ageism.’
No surprise then that workers over 45 find it hard to find work, lose a degree of confidence, start lowering their salary expectations and end up as a disproportionate share of the unemployed. It gets even worse for the 55+. Only 13% of the hiring managers surveyed in the report say they would definitely hire someone between 55 and 65 – let alone older.
Yet the very same managers recognise that when they do hire older workers, they perform as well or better.
“Rising longevity and rapid technological change means that some workers may choose to change their career ambitions due to evolving health or care needs, while others might be forced to switch careers as new jobs are created and others are destroyed” Shruti Singh, Senior Economist, OECD told me at a recent conference presenting the findings. Changing attitudes and giving workers opportunities for good mobility at all stages of their career is therefore key to retain talents of an age diverse workforce.
The ‘Age-/Performance’ Paradox
The authors call this the ‘age-performance’ paradox. The gap between expectations (of lower performance) and reality (actual performance). While older workers are regularly rejected and under-valued, fully 89% of employers agreed that when hired, they performed as well or better than their younger hires.
How to bridge this slightly irrational gap? By understanding what employers care about when recruiting – and what they don’t.
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