I recently received a story pitch with the subject line, “Do Baby Boomers Need to Go Under the Knife to Keep Their Edge at Work?”
Sure, roll your eyes. Scoff at a pitch with a pandering subject line that cries “Open me!” like a pricey bottle of booze at a five-dollar white elephant holiday gift exchange. Crinkle your nose and sniff a haughty sniff at the thought of someone actually undergoing plastic surgery to keep an edge at work.
I don’t think it’s a silly question at all.
But you do. Then again you look like an Olympian thanks to that Lagree ultimate strength workout in the corporate fitness center. If Adonis was your co-worker he’d stare slack-jawed at your chiseled body as you passed by in the company cafeteria with your meatless burger, bowl of elderberries and glass of oat milk.
Perfect hair, stylish glasses (not that you need them; it’s just accessorizing to make you look smarter), glowing skin (of course you use product, doesn’t everybody?), and the shoes. Yes, it’s all about the shoes.
You’re at the top of your game. You crush it daily.
Until, well … until you’re getting ready for work one early spring morning and the bubbly yet acerbic TV personality on your go-to morning news program blurts out that your company has been acquired. The deal is just a passing mention following the always informative “Mr. Fix-It” segment but the chill racing down your spine buries a big fat pit in your stomach. Your knees buckle and your cup of freshly brewed raspberry chai tea trembles like a swimming pool in an earthquake.
Your company was acquired by an out-of-state competitor. You’re stunned. And you’re angered because you didn’t hear about the multimillion-dollar acquisition from the CEO via a hastily called all-hands teleconference call, or a posting through the corporate intranet. Not even a terse, one-paragraph companywide email announcing the deal. No, it was a giggly morning news show delivering a body blow that radically alters your perfectly coiffed life.
It’s been your corporate casa for nearly three decades, which makes sense given that its inviting, folksy motto is “It’s our business to make you feel at home!” Sure you’d bounced from job to job early in your career searching for the right fit. I mean, who hasn’t? And after three decades on the job it’s OK to admit that you’ve toyed with the thought of retiring — not immediately mind you. There’s still a lot left in the tank.
Your “home,” however, has other ideas that don’t take into account your distant fantasy of spending part of your golden years mountain biking across the Peruvian Andes. The mentoring of junior executives whom you suspected were already at your pay level despite being half your age has come to mean nothing. The weekends spent hitting near-impossible deadlines, all the sweat equity dripping from that slightly wrinkled brow onto your place of employment — wow, reality sure bites sometimes.
Within a month it’s clear your job is in peril. A week after regulators were pleased and stockholders were paid out you also are out … out of a job. Because you know, as the new CEO proudly boasted on your go-to morning news show, “After any acquisition, there is a duplication of efforts, which results in some synergies, and unfortunately for a lot of people today, we’re realizing those synergies. These synergies will ultimately provide a better experience for the consumer.”
Well naturally. I mean, synergies.
So now you are just another older worker in the job market. Self-doubt creeps in as you realize after your third rejection notice that ageism is a cold, cynical, perpetual workplace cycle that many employers flaunt in their never-ending search for younger, cheaper labor.
Where once you dismissed studies that found more than half of full-time workers in their early 50s were at some point forced out of their job and then experienced long-term unemployment or a huge cut in pay for years after, you now see that you are its living embodiment.
Two months ago you were a highly respected senior VP of product development. Now you’re unemployed, trips to the gym are infrequent and toast with butter and jam has replaced elderberries.
Those kids you mentored, the ones you took under your wing, not to mention out for happy hour? They are the ones interviewing you now. They all look so young and vibrant. You’ll do most anything to get back in the game, because you still have a lot to offer!
And, well, a nip here or a shot of botox there is justified to level the playing field. Going under the knife? Given your life’s new realities it’s not so silly after all.
The number of age-related discrimination charges filed with employers and the EEOC by workers aged 65-plus doubled from 1990 to 2017.
44 percent of employees report that they or someone they know experienced age discrimination in the workplace.
21 percent report they faced age discrimination themselves.
36 percent feel their age has prevented them from getting a job since turning 40.
26 percent feel there is some risk they could lose their current job because of age.
Only 40 percent who experienced age discrimination filed a charge or complaint.
Employers paid $810.4 million to settle age discrimination charges filed with the EEOC between 2010 and 2018 (excluding litigation).
These numbers are only going to get worse. By 2024, workers age 55 and older will represent 25 percent of the nation’s workforce, with the fastest annual growth rates among those aged 65 and older. Indeed, according to the Hiscox survey, 67 percent of surveyed workers age 40-65 plan to continue to work after they turn 66.
This trend is not without its cost to employers. Age discrimination hurts employers, and I’m not just talking about the $810 million paid in settlement costs.
It demotivates employees, which can hurt productivity, customer service, and product quality.
It causes a loss of talent and institutional knowledge, due to experienced workers leaving from a stalled career or hostile environment.
It causes employers to miss the opportunity of hiring and retaining workers who possess knowledge, experience, good judgment, and commitment to the job.
So, how can an employer help prevent age discrimination from permeating its workplace? The EEOC, in its State of Age Discrimination Report, published last year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the ADEA, offers the following five suggestions.
1. Leadership needs to create and foster a workplace culture that is committed to a multi-generational workplace where all workers can grow and thrive, which extols ability and reject discriminatory stereotypes and words.
2. Employers and employees must recognize and reject stereotypes, assumptions, and remarks about age and older workers, and treat them no differently than stereotypes, assumptions, and remarks about sex, race, disability, national origin, religion, or other protected classes.
3. Companies should work to increase the age diversity of the workforce by hiring, retaining and engaging employees of all generations,
4. Businesses should implement recruitment and hiring strategies that avoid age bias by seeking workers of all ages and not limiting qualifications based on age or years of experience. These strategies should include training recruiters and interviewers to avoid ageist assumptions and common perceptions about older workers, assessing interviewing strategies to avoid age bias, and having an age-diverse interview panel for prospective employees.
5. Employers should develop retention strategies to keep older workers. I’ve written about this point before, which you’ll find here.
Tony Cortese of Herman Miller, left, and Amy Hiles-Maynard offer thoughts and experiences regarding age bias at work.
Amy Hiles-Maynard knew that the odds were against her when she found herself job-hunting at age 62. So she pulled out all the stops.
In addition to updating her resumé, Hiles-Maynard overhauled her social media pages with professional headshots and upbeat posts worded to convey youthful exuberance. She dyed her salt-and-pepper hair, revamped her wardrobe and scoured websites for older women that offered tips on acing job interviews and turning back the clock with clever makeup techniques.
“I’ve learned that mascara for someone who is older should never be worn on the lower lashes,” said Hiles-Maynard, a former travel industry executive. “It casts a shadow and makes you look tired.”
She searched for role models of a certain age and found her fashion muse in actress Susan Sarandon, who according to one article, favors white tuxedo shirts. Hiles-Maynard bought one.
She even resorted to stalking the parking lots of prospective employers, studying what people wear to get a sense of the company culture.
“I sat in my car with my cellphone and took the occasional photo of someone who looked particularly nice and noted differences between people in entry-level positions and those in business suits,” she said. “It was a humbling experience.”
While her methods might seem extreme, her struggles to rebuild a career at an age when many people plan to retire are likely to be familiar to people over 45.
The number of older workers is on the rise. As their ranks grow they will play an important role in the U.S. economy, according to the National Council on Aging. By 2019, more than 40 percent of Americans over 55 will be employed, making up more than one-fourth of the U.S. workforce, according to the not-for-profit advocacy group. In 2014, older workers made up 22 percent of the workforce, according to the council.
Today’s mature workers are generally healthier and more active than their predecessors and offer a wealth of experience and knowledge, yet they are far more likely to experience age-related job discrimination than their younger counterparts, according to a 2013 study by the AARP. In fact, age discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have increased dramatically in recent years. Between 1997 and 2007, 16,000 to 19,000 annual complaints were filed, compared to 20,000 to 25,000 filings per year since 2008, according to the EEOC.
“It was clear that they were expecting someone younger. It seemed like they were thinking, ‘She can’t cut it.’ ” — AMY HILES-MAYNARD
The notion of retirement is changing with workers staying on the job longer than ever before. While some companies believe older employees provide a competitive advantage, most cling to outdated stereotypes, according to Ruth Finkelstein, associate director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University.
“We are comfortable making fun of old people and we do it routinely,” she said. “Ageism is alive and well. We show old people as decrepit, ugly, forgetful, yet at the same time many of the most powerful people in the world are old. The pope is old, the presidential candidates (were) old, most members of Congress are old, and the Supreme Court justices are old. There is this really weird disconnect.”
The most common stereotypes of older workers are that they are expensive to employ and to insure, they are slow learners and they lag technologically, according to Finkelstein.
“The idea that older workers are more expensive to employers has been hard to prove,” she said. “Many don’t want to work full time so if there is more flexibility, such as job sharing or phased retirement, you get the benefit of their knowledge and experience without the determinant of higher cost. Also, when it comes to the idea that older workers are most expensive to insure, as rules around health insurance change, Medicare becomes the primary payer and the employer becomes the secondary payer. Then these workers become bargains.”
Ageism, or discrimination based on someone’s age and not objective performance criteria, is one of the last “isms” to be tolerated in the workforce and is far more socially condoned than sexism or racism, according to a recent report by the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation. In fact, about two-thirds of older employees say they have seen or experienced workplace discrimination and an overwhelming 92 percent say that it’s common, according a 2013 study by AARP.
“Our belief is that if we can continue to invest in employees irrespective of where they are with their career we will have a much stronger workforce.” — TONY CORTESE, SVP PEOPLE SERVICES, HERMAN MILLER
While the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 protects workers over age 40 from harassment and discrimination in all aspects of employment, such as hiring, firing, training and promotions, such cases are extremely hard to prove, said Laurie McCann, a senior attorney with AARP.
“Age discrimination is viewed by the courts and society more as an economic issue and we defer to the employer’s prerogative,” she said. “Even employees will say, ‘Well it’s their business and I understand why they want to save some money.’ But you wouldn’t say that if the employer said, ‘We want to save money so we’ll get rid of all of the women,’ but we tolerate it when it’s age.”
Age discrimination in hiring is even harder to prove, which accounts for the high number of older workers who are long-term unemployed, according to McCann. While the overall unemployment rate for older workers is slightly lower than the national average, nearly half of all those who have been out of a job for more than six months are over 50, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“You’re putting all these resumés out there and they’re going into a black hole,” said McCann. “You don’t know who got called for the interview or why, so it’s hard to prove that age was a factor.”
It didn’t take long for Hiles-Maynard to conclude that her age was working against her. Although she had decades of executive experience in the travel industry, nearly all her cover letters went unanswered. When she did get an interview, she said that the look on the interviewer’s face spoke volumes.
“I could tell that they were surprised,” said Hiles-Maynard, who was laid off from her job as vice president of marketing for a cruise ship line in 2013. “It was clear that they were expecting someone younger. It seemed like they were thinking, ‘She can’t cut it.’ ”
After losing her job, Hiles-Maynard spent time in the vacation rental business with her husband and had a short stint at an advertising firm, but her goal was to return to the industry that she loves. She was starting to lose hope when earlier this year she read an article in Forbes magazine about an internship program for older women at a New York advertising agency. The firm’s founders were inspired to create the program after watching the Robert De Niro film “The Intern.” In the movie, De Niro plays a retired executive who applies to a senior citizen internship program at a fashion startup.
Called an “enternship,” the program at Wunderlich Kaplan Communications is designed to help older women return to the workforce with updated skills, like using social media and personal branding, according to Gwen Wunderlich, cofounder and CEO.
“You can’t say I’m too old, I don’t know this,” she said. “You need to project confidence.”
The notion that older workers are resistant to change doesn’t fly at furniture design firm Herman Miller, according to Tony Cortese, senior vice president of people services. The Zeeland, Michigan-based company is frequently recognized for its efforts to attract and retain older workers.
“Our belief is that if we can continue to invest in employees irrespective of where they are with their career we will have a much stronger workforce,” said Cortese. About one-fourth of its 8,000 employees worldwide have been there for at least 20 years.
In addition to continued training for older workers, Herman Miller also offers a phased retirement program that allows employees to gradually exit the workplace by reducing their hours.
“We recognized that we’re poised for a significant amount of potential retirements in the next decade,” Cortese said. “Phased retirement gives us more time to think about how to transfer knowledge and it helps the employee be deliberate about their retirement planning, both economically and socially. There is a significant psychological change that comes with retirement.”
One of the more unique programs that the company offers is a mentorship program called “water carriers.” The concept is based on the idea that older workers carry institutional knowledge that must be passed on to the younger generation.
“When somebody has been somewhere for a long period of time they’ve probably developed job skill expertise and know how to navigate the culture,” he said.
Employers who are not actively trying to retain and hire older workers are missing a golden opportunity to boost their bottom line, according to Kathleen Christensen, director of the Working Longer program at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a philanthropic organization based in New York.
“If they are thinking of older workers at all, they are thinking only about graceful exits,” she said. “It’s a major missed opportunity for American businesses. They are framing the question in terms of how will our older workers leave, rather that how can we harness the potential productivity of our older Americans. That’s the real challenge.”
Rita Pyrillis is a freelance writer in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
There are a number of things that employers can do to create a workplace that is friendly to older employees, according to Ruth Finkelstein, associate director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University.
Every year the center and the New York Academy of Medicine select the winners of the Age Smart Employer Awards. The initiative, which is funded by the Sloan Foundation, recognizes employers for their age-friendly policies and practices. Past winners include clothing retailer Brooks Brothers, NYU Langone Medical Center and pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
Here are recommendations for employers seeking to improve their efforts to recruit and retain older workers from the Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College:
Identify opportunities for older adults to support organizational missions and/or business strategy.
Explicitly state in job notices that mature workers are welcome.
Educate managers and HR leaders to identify and address misconceptions about older workers.
Create non-virtual, alternative pathways for job applicants.
Partner with community-based and/or educational organizations to reach older adults.
Provide technology training as part of the job applicant screening process to ensure access to a wide possible pool of talent.
Use older adults as interns to try out the “job fit.”
The EEOC has sued a Colorado hospital for age discrimination. The key allegation? That it forced employees to resign because of their age. The lawsuit claims hospital managers made ageist comments, including that younger nurses could “dance around the older nurses” and that they preferred younger and “fresher” nurses.
According to Phoenix District EEOC Regional Attorney Mary Jo O’Neill, “Research shows that pervasive stereotypes about older workers still persist — for example, there are widespread stereotypes that older workers are less motivated, flexible, or trusting and that a younger workforce is preferable. These stereotypes are flatly untrue and must be recognized for what they are — prejudice and false assumptions.”
Image: Slate
While not necessarily on point, this case does segue into an important issue — mandatory retirement. It’s still a fairly popular misconception that businesses can force employees to retire at a certain age.
In truth, with the exception of a few limited circumstances, mandatory retirement ages are about as close to a slam dunk case of illegal age discrimination you can find. The exceptions permit — but do not require — mandatory retirement:
At age 65 of executives or other employees in high, policy-making positions.
At age 55 for publicly employed firefighters and law enforcement officers.
Forcing an employee out is the same as requiring an employee to retire. While lessening duties and responsibilities, demotions, and reductions in pay could cause an older employee to retire, it could also cause that same employee to claim a constructive discharge. However, there is no law that says that an older employee does not have to meet the same legitimate expectations of the job as any other employee. If an older worker is not performing as needed or required, document and treat as you would any other employee.
Treat the employee’s performance, not the employee’s age.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
