By Neil
Patrick
Age related
behaviours in organisations are not random. They are determined by measureable
factors and here’s what they are.
When we are early in our careers, we seek an employer that
will support our career progression goals. When we are older, we want our age
and experience to be duly valued and utilised. For all of us, knowing which employers
have the most enlightened attitudes and policies in relation to their
employees’ age is valuable.
The young grumble that employers don’t invest enough in
their career development. That they cannot become experienced if they aren’t
given opportunities to prove themselves and grow. The old complain their skills
and experience are disregarded. That they are overlooked in favour of younger
candidates.
 |
| Are employers' attitudes to age set in stone? |
These are heated debates which often revolve around opinion
and anecdote. Neither are very helpful in establishing what’s really going on.
So I recently turned to the world of academic research to try and get some hard
facts.
I wanted to know what information existed about the
behaviour of different employment sectors in this respect. Could these things
be measured? And if so, what can we discover about the different behaviours of
different employment sectors?
This topic is now important to employers. Not because of a
sudden growth in organisational empathy, but for the simple fact that
demographic shifts are compelling organisations to recognise and respond to an
aging workforce, which risks the loss of key skills and knowledge unless they
can adapt to these changes.
But many employers
are struggling with this
From an employers’ perspective, it is clear that many are
struggling to adopt effective strategies to cope with current demographic
shifts. According to Deloitte and the Boston
College Center on Aging and Work, almost 6 in 10 businesses report that
they have a weakness in creating and managing age diversity programs for their
workforces:
“Among global business and HR leaders, 58% reported that their organizations have 'weak' capabilities in 'providing programs for younger, older, and multi-generation workforces’"
Source:
Global human capital trends 2014: Engaging the 21st-century workforce. Deloitte
University Press.
Do different employment sectors have different attitudes?
Yes and the good news is that age-related behaviours across
different sectors can be measured. And when we measure it, we find that
different sectors are behaving
differently.
In this post I have distilled some of the findings of an
academic study titled: “Looking
up to regulations, out at peers or down at the bottom line: How institutional
logics affect the prevalence of age-related HR practices”.
A couple of weeks ago I was delighted to hook up with one of
the authors* of the study, Monique
Valcour, Executive Coach, Faculty Affiliate at the Third Path Institute and Professor
of Management at EDHEC Business School in
Nice. Monique is also a contributor the Harvard Business Review. She has
also been kind enough to review and edit this post with her expert insights.
Thank you Monique!
What was the scope of the study?
The paper looked at the aging workforce in the US and which
business sectors are doing the most to progress their HR practices to respond
to the changing demographics. As the baby boomers steadily exit the workforce,
this places an imperative on organisations to respond.
Apart from the demographic shift, the recession has forced
many organisations to become ultra-lean versions of their previous selves,
making them more vulnerable to the loss of key skills and intellectual capital
as the most experienced employees retire from organisations.
The research sampled 420 organisations in the USA with an
average of 455 employees.
What factors determine employers’ HR practices related to
employees’ age?
The research postulated that employee age-related policies,
attitudes, behaviours and HR practices are determined
by the presence or absence of three main “organisational logics”.
These are the beliefs and
assumptions that drive the way an organisation’s leaders interpret information
and make decisions related to workforce aging and age diversity. These
categories are not mutually exclusive - multiple organisational logics can
coexist within a single organisation.
The three organisational logics identified in the study
were:
- A strategic logic exists in
organisations that are focused on the financial impact (e.g., ROI,
staffing costs) of HR issues and management practices
- A benchmarking logic exists in
organisations that seek to emulate peers in their sector, for example, by
benchmarking their competitors’ practices and seeking awards that are
recognized within their industry.
- A compliance logic exists in
organisations that are focused on adherence to legal obligations, such as
those relating to non-discrimination and to safety.
Takeout: Like people, organisations often behave according
to overall sets of assumptions and beliefs that affect what information they
pay attention to and how they respond to the information they take in.
What did the research find?
Organisations are more likely to actively assess the age
demographics of their workforce when they are focused on benchmarking
competitors and/or on regulatory compliance. These two logics also tend to be
reflected in HR practices targeted at older workers (like transferring
knowledge from older to younger employees and providing options for phased
retirement).
Organisations are more likely to use age-neutral HR
practices, such as recruiting and promoting employees of diverse ages, when
they have a strong strategic and/or benchmarking logic.
Which sectors are most likely to assess age so that they
can respond to shifting demographics?
The research found little difference across sectors, except
that organisations in the mining and oil and gas sector are more likely to use
age-neutral HR practices, while organisations in the arts, entertainment and
recreation sector are less likely to actively assess the age demographics of
their workforces or to use age-targeted or age-neutral HR practices.
Which sectors are most likely to respond to the practices
of their peers in relation to employee age?
The financial and STEM sectors were slightly more likely to
adjust their behaviours and decisions with external references to their peers,
while the health care and social assistance sectors were slightly less likely
to make use of this benchmarking logic.
What this tells us
There are two elements in organisational behaviour required
to create an effective response to the ageing workforce. First is the gathering
and interpretation of relevant data. Second is the conversion of this data into
HR policies, procedures and practices which contribute to addressing the
problem.
This research proved that a correlation exists between these
three organisational logics and behaviours which contribute to positive
practices with regard to employee age. In other words, the greater an employer’s
focus on strategy, benchmarking and/or compliance, they more likely they are to
measure employee demographics and attempt to respond to the changes with
positive practices to protect their future human resource.
The inverse is also implied – if an employer pays scant
attention to strategy, benchmarking and/or compliance, they are less likely to
have adopted positive practices for managing the demographic aspects of their
workforce.
If you are seeking an employer with the most progressive
attitudes and positive practices relating to employee age, don’t rely on
hearsay or anecdote, but instead consider the presence or absence of these
three organisational logics. It’s not a guarantee, but it is a statistically
proven indicator.
*The full
list of contributing authors was:
Ariane
Ollier-Malaterre Rouen Business School, France (now at the Université du Québec
à Montréal)
Tay McNamara
Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Boston College, USA
Christina
Matz-Costa Graduate School of Social Work, Boston College, USA
Marcie
Pitt-Catsouphes Graduate School of Social Work, Boston College, USA
Monique
Valcour EDHEC Business School, France
