Age-inclusive toolkit for employers launched

Read about National Older Workers Week

A new toolkit has been launched which sets out the key actions employers can take to make their recruitment more age-inclusive, including debiasing job adverts and putting age into equality, inclusion and diversity policies.

The toolkit, published by the Centre for Ageing Better, the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development [CIPD] and REC,  comes as studies show a mismatch between employers’ and older employees’ perceptions about ageism in the recruitment process and amid rising concerns about long-term unemployment among older workers who have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic.

Based on the Centre for Ageing Better’s Good Recruitment for Older Workers (GROW) project findings, the toolkit provides practical suggestions for employers to become more age-inclusive.

It offers five key actions employers can take to make their recruitment more age-inclusive:

1. Put age into Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI), for instance, by saying in job adverts that you are an age-inclusive employer
2. Know your numbers – monitor data about the recruitment process and check for under-representation
3. Debias your job adverts – for example, emphasise benefits that might appeal to certain demographics, such as flexible working, and circulate jobs to as many channels as possible
4. Check your process – for instance, structure your interview process using multiple decision-makers, predefined
   questions and scoring mechanisms.
5. Build awareness and confidence, for example, ensure that staff are aware of how best to reduce bias and avoid discrimination in the interview process and address ageist assumptions.

The aim is to help employers take advantage of the benefits of being more age-inclusive, including increasing productivity and knowledge-sharing, boosting their reputation as an age-inclusive workplace, mitigating the discrimination felt by older and younger jobseekers and ensuring their organisation is prepared for an ageing workforce.

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