Before putting plans in place to improve how age-friendly the culture of your organisation is, it is useful to first understand where you are starting from and what improvements could have the most impact.
This diagnostic tool is designed to help you think about how age-friendly your culture currently is and to identify areas for improvement. It is not exhaustive but provides prompts for discussion and planning. It will help you assess your culture across the organisation, from the data you have available about your 50+ employees and how they feel about their workplace, to what leadership are already doing to foster an age-friendly culture and where they could do more.
The first section takes you through how you can assess your culture. Every culture will be different, so part of the process should be thinking about how you would like your culture to feel for older workers, as well as assessing the current reality. It will encourage you to look at what you know about your older workers and potential older workers — for example are they taking up flexible working and development opportunities, and are older applicants making it through to interview stages? It will also encourage you to think about how your older feel about working in your organisation, and how you’d like them to feel.
The following sections then encourage you to think about how leadership can commit to building a more age-friendly culture, and the actions that could be taken by the organisation and by employees. It’s important that this commitment towards building an age-friendly culture is embraced throughout the organisation for this work to be successful.
Some actions may not feel relevant to your organisation, but this exercise should help you to see where there are gaps, and you can start to identify next steps using the action planning tool.
