This discussion guide is designed to be used by your leadership team to establish how age-friendly their culture is – for all older workers, not just on average – and to decide upon any actions that should be taken and what to prioritise. The conversation needs to start at the top.
Culture that feels age-friendly to one 50+ employee may not feel that way to another, depending on their race, health, employment status or role, so this conversation should hold space for that variation rather than assuming a single, shared experience.
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. If your leadership team does not itself reflect the ethnic diversity of your 50+ workforce, consider who else needs a voice in this conversation before decisions are made.
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. Ideally this information will be broken down by ethnicity and other relevant characteristics wherever your data allows, rather than treated as a single "over 50" group. Averaged data can hide the experiences of the workers most affected by inequality. 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 – being mindful that willingness to speak candidly may depend on how much trust has been built over time, and that some workers may prefer to share views through a route other than their direct line manager.
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 – including gaps in ethnicity data, and gaps in your understanding of workers who are not on standard employment contracts.
