Culture toolkit — leadership
Culture flourishes when it is embraced at the grassroots of an organisation, but that can only happen when leadership is supportive and leads the way.
How leadership can support an age-friendly culture
As a leader you have a huge influence on the culture of your organisation.
You set both the tone and the priorities so it’s important that your commitment to tackling ageism is visible and authentic.
It’s not enough just to tackle active discrimination — leaders need to recognise the more subtle forms of ageism. We need to make sure that all workers feel supported regardless of their age.
It’s really important that you consider age from a balanced point of view as young people report feeling age discrimination too. However, this toolkit focuses on the needs of people who are 50, 60 and beyond.
Building a culture that is age-friendly means we will get the full benefit of the skills, experience and perspective that older workers bring, including their very valuable help and support for younger workers.
We have provided a diagnostic tool and an action plan to get you started. Clicking the download links will download the resources directly to your downloads folder.
Leading change
Any shift to your culture will have an impact on all employees. It’s important to be clear about what improvements you are making, why the change is necessary and what the future will look like.
The ‘case for change’ document may be helpful for you when considering your communication to colleagues as to why you are focusing on age and the benefits you hope it will bring.
As a leader you will need to show ongoing commitment to becoming more age-friendly, while being very clear about the roles that others will play. We’ve developed a presentation to help you make the case.
No cultural change is straightforward and there will be challenges. To help you prepare for this we have prepared a discussion guide with a suggested agenda for a board or executive team meeting.
Ageism and the DEI agenda
Age-inclusivity should be part of your broader equity, diversity and inclusion agenda.
It is important to remember the role of intersectionality — research shows older people of colour face more discrimination and the experiences of older LGBTQIA+ individuals are likely to be very different from those who are younger. It is important to remember that everyone’s needs and wants are not the same.
There is more on this in the policy and processes section.
Resources
These resources will help you assess your current culture and identify next steps. Clicking the download links below will download the resources directly to your downloads folder.