This discussion guide is designed to be used by leadership to establish how Age-friendly their culture is and decide upon any actions that should be taken and what to prioritise.
This may mean an item on the agenda of a formal leadership team meeting or it might mean bringing together a few people for an informal conversation — whatever is most appropriate for your organisational structure.
We recommend that you allocate a good portion of time to explore the issues and make sure everyone is able to contribute.
Before this conversation, we recommend you collate the available information you have on how older workers experience working in your organisation. Use our research guide to help.
You may not have formal information, or the resources to collect it. In this instance we recommend using the questions in the diagnostic tool to think about what you can observe about your culture. You should also speak to workers over 50 about how they experience working in your organisation, ensuring you get views from a wide cross section of older workers.
If possible, share the available information before you embark on the rest of the discussion. You will also need to identify where there are gaps in your knowledge.
Self-reflection is an important tool here, if leaders are truly committed to creating a safe and inclusive culture for all. If ‘leadership’ does not reflect the general make up of your workforce (e.g. a predominantly racialised older workforce) it may lack credibility and the messages it ‘sends’ about equity and inclusion may not add any meaningful value.
Changing the composition of leadership teams may not be a realistic action to take but it’s important that there is some acknowledgement of where (and who) some of the views and decisions are coming from.
