Create an age-friendly culture with the Centre for Ageing Better

Zoe Raymond (ZR) Right, there we go. Everyone’s coming in. Fantastic. Right, hello and welcome to this CIPD Trust webinar about creating an age-friendly culture with the Centre for Aging Better. We’ve got our fantastic speaker with us today, Tracy Riddell from the Centre for Aging Better, where she’s a Senior Programme Manager. And we’re going to hear about how to create a culture in your workplaces that’s really inclusive of people of all ages and what that looks like and why that’s important. So, really looking forward to hearing from Tracy. First, I’m just going to introduce myself and our work. So I’m Zoe. I’m the Programme Design Manager at the CIPD Trust. And the CIPD Trust, we are part of the CIPD and we work alongside HR professionals to tackle barriers to work and create inclusive workplaces. And our work really falls into kind of three key buckets. So, we run programmes to create access to and a better experience of work for individuals. So, where HR people can really volunteer their time to support individuals to access work. We also promote organisational practice that improves working lives. So, particularly around particular groups, we look at promoting inclusive practice for HR professionals so we’re really supporting them to look at them to how to make their workplaces more inclusive and as you’ve probably guessed, that’s one of the things we’re doing today with this webinar. And we also work with our colleagues in the policy team and stakeholders across the country to create a diverse, equitable, and prosperous society, which provides fair work for everyone. So, that’s our kind of key work. There is absolutely loads of information about what we do on our website, which is CIPDtrust.org so please go and check it out. I just wanted to tell you about one specific project that we have just launched. So, we are just beginning some work with the Pavers Foundation. So, the Pavers Foundation is the charitable arm of Pavers Shoes, which is a family-run UK footwear retailer. You may have seen their stores. They’re kind of all across the country and we are working with Pavers to support individuals to find work and inspire employers to recruit and retain workers in their 50s and 60s. So, very relevant to the stuff we’re going to be talking about today. And we’re going to be launching this project in central southern England, which covers a few different counties. ZR It’s Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire, Dorset, and some of the nearby areas and we’re looking for people, professionals like yourselves who are kind of keen to get involved in those areas and support people in their 50s and 60s through coaching, CV clinics, interview practice to help them get into work. So if that interests you at all, whether you’re in that area or if you’re not in that area, you can find out more information on our website, do get involved and we will also be sharing some great stuff around inclusive practice so we’ll be doing that as well. And I guess part of our first step is hearing from Tracy today about creating an age-friendly culture. So, I’m going to hand over to Tracy and let you yeah take it away. Tracy Riddell (TR) Thank you, Zoe. And thank you so much for the invite and the opportunity to come along and present some of our work around age-friendly culture and hopefully have some conversation and some chat at the end. And from what you’ve shared about the work of the Trust and, in particular, the current work that you’ve got with Pavers, it’s obviously very, very relevant. Let’s share my slides. Frozen. Sorry, I might have frozen there, so hopefully I’m back again. It’s me. There you go. I’m sharing my screen. It might be a bit slow. So yes, this is me. I’m Tracy Riddell. I’m a Senior Programme Manager for age-friendly employment at the Centre for Ageing Better. My background, I’ve been working in the voluntary sector for about 25 years now, range of different organisations, range of different roles and I’ve been working with the Centre for Ageing Better as the lead for the Age-friendly Employer Pledge since November 2022, I think. So, I’m just going to start with a couple of context slides around the problem. Some of this, I’m sure you will be very, very well aware of why we created the pledge and then aspects of the pledge, which is around culture. So a third of the workforce in England are aged 50 or over. So, that’s nearly 11 million people. So that’s not an insignificant amount of the workforce who are represented but again I guess our question is you know, to what extent do we know about this workforce and the conversation that we have around them? There’s currently 1.4 million people who are aged 65 or over in the workforce. We know that there’s about a million job vacancies in the UK and that 22% of the population will be aged 65 or over by 2032. TR So, there’s a really strong argument here about how older workers are the workforce of the future. And we can see here in the bottom right-hand corner, that the overall skills and labour shortage is costing UK businesses up to £6.6 billion annually. Just some other background information here based on our own research, workers made redundant over 50 are three times less likely to return to work within three months than those under 50. Again, I’m sure a lot of this is going to be very familiar to yourselves. From our research, we know at least a third of people hold ageist beliefs. So, we’re thinking about that as we go through the presentation and what that might look and feel like in your workplace. One in five employers believe ageism exists in their workplace. Something there to ponder on. You are 60% more likely to be out of work if you are aged 50 to 65 and have a long-term health condition than if you were 35 to 49. So, just a few stats there from our research and there’s lots more available on the Centre for Ageing website if you’re interested. So, what was our response to this problem? Well, we created two and a half years ago or nearly three years ago, the Age-friendly Employer Pledge. So, this is an initiative that employers of all shapes and sizes from all sectors can get involved in that, which supports them to take action to improve the recruitment, retention, and the development of workers over 50. And we ask them to look at taking action in one or more of the following areas, and these are five areas that make up our action framework, which again based on research and consultation with employers. Creating an age-friendly culture, which is why we’re here, looking at higher in age positivity. So, again, inclusive recruitment practices, being flexible about flexible working, encouraging career or learning development at all ages, and ensuring everyone has the health support that they need. So, that makes up the action framework, and the Age-friendly Employer Pledge. And I’m going to go on now to talk a little bit more about creating an age-friendly culture. However, before I do that, I’m going to have an awkward moment of silence for a bit of personal reflection. I’m not going to ask you to share anything afterwards or to put anything in the chat unless you particularly wanted to, but just a moment to pause and to reflect on some of these questions, or similar questions. So, when I say the word ageism, what does that mean to you? What beliefs about ageing in the workplace do you hold? And do you think ageism exists in the workplace? And if so, what might that feel like? What might it look like? So, we’re going to have one minute of some quiet reflection time on these questions and then I will come back to you. TR So, that was my slides moving on. OK, like I say, I’m not going to ask anyone to share anything, but maybe it’s considered you to think about some of your experiences, some of the perceptions that you might have or some questions that you might have for the future. What does age-friendly culture mean? Well, when we’re again, I know very aware that I’m talking to some HR professionals, so hopefully this isn’t going to be anything new to you. We talk about culture in the general terms around how we do things around here. It reflects the values, the purpose and the strategy of the organisation but when we’re thinking about an age-friendly culture, we talk specifically about one where employees feel included and valued regardless of their age, and that people of all ages should feel valued and able to contribute at their best. Why is it important for older workers? Well, there are specific issues that can affect workers in the 50s and 60s and beyond. As we age, maybe we start to take on more caring responsibilities, for example, needing to spend more time with parents. Or maybe, again, we’re in that sandwich generation where we’re spending more time with elderly parents, but we’re also still very much supporting children or maybe grandchildren. Also as we age, it might be that we do start to experience some new health conditions that requires us to take some time away from work. So, the care and extra caring responsibilities we might have or health conditions that we start to experience can be quite specific to older workers that might require us to need a little bit more flexibility in our role. But also older workers, and I am an older worker, bring experience, creativity, resilience, stability and in a fantastic position to be able to support and mentor younger workers. And we know that multi-generational workers are more productive when it comes to output and the work that’s created. So, it’s really important, again, that we’re thinking about creating workplaces where we can really support our older workers to retain and thinking about the recruitment of older workers back into the workplace so that we’ve got an opportunity to really benefit from the positive aspects that we’ve listed here. TR Now, what can I see? Yes, so what shapes an age-friendly culture. Sorry my computer likes to do things itself. There you go. What shapes an age-friendly culture? We’ve identified five areas of work that we think shapes an age-friendly culture. So in the chat, I’d want you to think about what you think shapes an age-friendly culture and then we’ll come back to the presentation and talk about the areas that we’ve identified. So what, in your experience, in the chat, shapes an age-friendly culture? Think about the things that you know about that shapes a culture in general. What do you think might shape an age-friendly culture? Anyone brave enough to put a first suggestion into the chat? Yeah, leadership, psychological safety, relationships. Yeah, great. Providing benefits and support that are relevant for a range of ages. Good one. Role modelling. Yeah, values, wonderful. Flexibility at work, absolutely. Great. Let’s come back to the presentation. If again it has revealed itself. Slideshow, on the current slide, let’s flick through these. Yeah, so some of the things that we’ve identified, leadership, it sets the tone, the priorities and vision for the organisation. Again, some of you in the chat talked about leadership and role modelling, really, really important. If you have a leader who maybe isn’t actively or very visible in celebrating age or challenging ageism, or maybe even subconsciously is contributing to some of the tone and the culture, maybe through self-deprecating, comments or harmless banter, then that can really have an effect on culture. Line managers. This is where we talk about line managers are really responsible for delivering the vision. And it’s often where employees will feel the culture. They’ll feel the experience. They’ll feel the culture that is set by leadership. So, really, really important there. Policies, processes and HR systems, something I’m sure you’re all very familiar with. So, robust and well understood policies is essential in supporting an age-friendly culture. I think somebody in the chat had mentioned around flexible working policies. Absolutely. It’s a really, really key policy for supporting culture and supporting older workers. But if that policy is not known by the worker, by the older worker who might want to benefit from it, then they might not feel empowered, they might not feel confident enough to then be able to take up that opportunity of the policy. TR So, making sure that well-understood policies is really essential in supporting an age-friendly culture. And finally, internal communications. Now, internal comms can say a lot about what we value, whether or not it’s the stories that we’re sharing, it’s the language that we’re using, or maybe it’s the images that we’re using in some of our internal comms. So, those are some of the four areas that we’ve specifically pulled out and highlighted that shape an age-friendly culture in organisations. How to talk about ageism at work? We know through our work and the conversations that we have with many people, whether or not it’s the employers who are part of our Age-friendly Employer Pledge, that it can feel very uncomfortable to talk about ageism at work and age at work. Maybe there’s other areas of protective characteristics that people have had more training on or have had more exposure to and have been able to find their voice and have to be able to feel a bit more comfortable confident about talking about ageism at work. So, often you might find that people’s reluctance or feeling uncomfortable talking about ageism at work or age means that it doesn’t get talked about and we don’t then start to normalise having a conversation. Here are some of the prompts that we’ve created. This is one of the resources that is included in our culture toolkit as part of the Age-friendly Employer Pledge. And I think some of these were the prompt questions that I used as part of that reflection exercise. So, just thinking about some of these questions that hopefully you might want to use in team meetings or in staff surveys or in any ways you have communication and interaction and engagement with your staff. So, what does the word ageism mean to you? What beliefs might you have? Do you think ageism exists? If so, what does it look like? These are some really good prompt questions to have a conversation within your workplace. Like I say, there’s more resources and more support available around this in our age-friendly culture toolkit, but just a few ideas there to get you thinking. TR OK, Five Points to Challenging Ageism. Again, this exists in one of our resources. Shifting associations with frailty, vulnerability and dependency. Again, quite a stereotypical approach when we’re thinking about ageism we might automatically shift towards images or languages that really depict frailty, vulnerability and vulnerability. So, we want older people can still be active. We’re still creative. We still contribute in many ways. So making sure there is a regular rounded perception and association with how we might talk and demonstrate ageism. Using preferred terminology. So, here at the Ageing Better, our preferred terminology is older adults, older person or people in later life. It might be the particular circumstances that you’re working with that you decide to use different terminology or maybe asking the person or the group that you’re working with what would be their preferred terminology but those are the terms that we prefer to use. Avoiding othering and compassionate ageism. So sometimes othering and the compassionate ageism can really evoke undue pity and make older people sound like a separate group. And we also ask people to be very mindful of compassionate ageism, where in the being compassionate and being kind, actually you might make somebody feel more vulnerable than they actually feel themselves. Don’t state conflict between other generations. We feel that this is quite prominent in public life at the moment and you might feel it more so in workplace. So we avoid jargon around boomers, millennials, Generation X, Generation Z, some of the other languages and terms that you might be familiar with. We don’t find that it’s particularly helpful when we use quite lazy stereotypes. And in particular, it marks the other areas of diversity that will exist beyond those labels. So, we really encourage and challenge ageism. Don’t state conflict between other generations. It’s just not helpful all round. And finally, again, it’s thinking carefully about the imagery, the language and the stories that you might use. So, just five key points there for you to remember when it comes to challenging ageism, all of which are available in a lengthier guide called Challenging Ageism, a guide to talk about ageism and older age. OK, so we’ve got another exercise in our chat. So, we’ve identified four main areas where we believe ageism shows up in the workplace. So, I’m going to go to stop sharing and see what other ideas and suggestions you might have in the chat about where does ageism show up in the workplace. TR Yep, Leah, in recruitment, promotion, and progression. Branding and imagery, learning and development. Absolutely. Promotion, career development. Training and development, absolutely. Thanks, Alison. Any more? Any more ideas or suggestions or thoughts about where you think ageism shows up. Yeah, assumptions and stereotypes. Excellent. Let me come back in the presentation. OK, so where does ageism show up in the workplace? Give yourself a point if you said recruitment. Very slow today. So recruitment, learning and development. I saw that there was a few of you mentioned learning and development. Access in health and work benefits. Again, I saw that appearing in the chat. And finally, social spaces. So, these are the four main areas that we’ve identified and we talk about, about where ageism shows up in the workplace. So for recruitment, we know that 36% of 50 to 70-year-olds feel at a disadvantage applying for jobs due to their age. Again, some of these statistics will probably be quite familiar to yourselves. So, how does it show up? So, we talk about job adverts not being very inclusive. Again, that might be the images. If you use images in your job adverts. And again, it might be the language, especially when we’re thinking about some of the language that might be more associated with younger workers. Again, the word dynamic is something that we often use as an example. People do not know what to expect at a job interview, now if you are an older person, you are an older worker, person who has maybe been for quite a long period of time and then comes along to a new job interview. Maybe things have changed. Maybe what they expect or what their past experience was around job interviews have shifted and they’re not as practiced or familiar with how job interviews might be at the moment. Flexible working options are not spelled out specifically. Now, we know that flexible working practices are one of the key drivers that will encourage an older worker to apply for a job in the first place or will keep them in the job. But if flexible working isn’t spelled out in the early stages of your recruitment practices, from the job advert through to any other additional conversations and in the interview, that person might not put themselves forward for applying for that job in the first place. TR So, when you think about your job adverts and your early stages of communications about interviews and recruitment, please be as specific as you can, as clear as you can around flexible working options. It might be that hiring managers simply don’t want to hire someone older. This might be because of biases that they hold about older people in general, assumptions that they’ve made about individuals’ capacity, or because they’re worried about managing someone with more experience. What can you do? So, take time to do a bit of an audit, review your job adverts and review your job descriptions. Again, we have lots of resources available that you can audit yourself against to see where some of your gaps might exist when it comes to inclusive recruitment of older workers. As I’ve said, be really clear and upfront about the flexible working options available. Conduct some age bias training for your recruiting managers. And again, know your data. Have a look to see where older workers are not applying for jobs or where they are applying for jobs. For those of you who have got data, just take a bit of time to understand where you may see that there’s a high percentage of older workers who are not applying for specific jobs and see what that might be telling you. Coming back to learning and development, workers aged over 50 are less likely than any other age group to receive on-the-job training. How that might show up. People managers not proactively talking to workers in the 50s and 60s about learning opportunities. Maybe there’s an assumption that’s been made that people in the 50s and 60s no longer want to continue to learn and to grow. Again, maybe it comes down to the people manager feeling uncomfortable about having a conversation with an older worker about how they might want to continue to grow and develop either personally or within their career so the conversation isn’t being had. Workers over 50 not taking part in learning and development initiatives again have a look at your data, kind of question and challenging yourselves where you’ve done recent training courses or whatever it might be, what’s the percentage of having a look in the age groups of people who are attending that. Sometimes having a one-size-fits-all training programme it assumes a lack of prior knowledge and experience. TR Again there might be some older workers who have done some of these training courses on a number of occasions because of the length of their experience. So, it might be that they don’t show up because again it’s just not relevant maybe to them, and sometimes there can be a lack of opportunity for learning by doing or job shadowing. What can you do? Again, conduct agewise training, especially for people managers or for your learning and development teams, ensuring that learning and development is being discussed each month at one-to-ones. Make sure you’re creating the space for the conversation to be had in the first place. And positively promote learning and development options using examples and imagery featuring workers over the age of 50. If you have brochures or catalogues or intranets, anything, where you’re talking about your learning and development programmes and your training programmes, use stories, positive stories and positive examples of a range of ages. And again, review the data, know your data, know who is and who isn’t taking up training options and just question and challenge yourself as to why that might be. Social spaces, how it shows up. Maybe your workplace social gatherings always happen informally amongst people of similar ages. We know this might be the case. It’s where the groups will informally socialise together, whether or not it’s at lunchtime or it’s in the evenings. But again, you might see that those social gatherings are not. Yeah, they’re not inclusive. They’re not consistent with lots of different ages. Older workers can be excluded from social events on the on the assumption that they don’t want to go. So, maybe in the invites, older workers aren’t even invited in the first place to be able to say yes or no. And this is a really important one but ageist banter. The birthday card that emphasises ageing stereotypes, you know, the birthday cards with candles on it, the birthday cards with harmless jokes around age are still very much a thing in shops. So, thinking about age where the ageist banter might exist within your social spaces. What can you do? Again, conduct age biased training. Maybe you can proactively get involved in holding breakfast socials or team lunches, something that might be a little bit more flexible, ensuring that everybody is invited. TR And really stand up and call out if you see inappropriate banter and ageist comments. Don’t let it slide. Know your survey data. So, if you’re an organisation who routinely conducts staff surveys, again, making sure that you have questions in there that will help you understand a little bit more about the culture and the social aspect of your organisation and what are some of the comments or some of the questions that might be coming from some of your older workers when you get down and look at the data in a little bit more detail. Finally, accessing health and work benefits. How might that show up? People in the 50s and 60s are afraid to ask for support or adjustments from their line managers because they think that this will be used as an excuse to push them out. This is, again, from our research and from the conversations we have with older workers, this is a thing that people in the 50s and 60s might be afraid to talk about they need to take time off every Friday morning to go and attend some treatment that they’re having or they need to be able to take Monday afternoon off to be able to take their parent to a medical appointment or they’ve started to experience a little bit more back pain or whatever it might be, but they’re too afraid to talk about it or to ask for those adjustments because they fear it will be used against them when it comes to work in the future. Line managers maybe don’t know how to make those adjustments. They don’t know how they can redesign jobs around people’s capabilities or current needs. So, they don’t feel they have the autonomy to be able to have those conversations about the different ways that we might be able to work in a much more flexible way to support people’s needs at that time. How it shows up is that people in the 50s and 60s will leave the workplace early because their needs are not being met. So, what can you do? Again, there’s a theme here about conducting agewise training. Ensuring your relevant policies are being regularly shared and discussed. So, not just once induction, but we really want to use those very useful and very important policies to normalise the conversation around age. So, we do create that psychologically safe space that I think somebody mentioned in the chat that allows these really important conversations to be had between line manager and their employee. You might want to think about having health and work as the standard item at meetings or one-to-ones or at least making sure at quarterly meetings the subject around health and work and associated policies are visible and being present, again, helping to normalise the conversation. TR And train your managers to feel comfortable having conversations with their audit reports. Coming back to some of the questions that we posed in that earlier on slide around helpful prompt conversations, prompt questions you could have that will support people to feel a bit more confident talking about age at work. Maybe you could consider using one of those. And again, a theme here about knowing your data, who is and who isn’t taking up some of the essential health and work benefits and policies and processes that you will have in place particularly support an older worker. This is mainly all come from the Age-friendly Employer Pledge culture toolkit. You can see a screenshot of here, which forms part of our Age-friendly Employer Pledge. It’s a free to access pledge. It’s free for employers. The Culture Toolkit, again, currently is free for anybody to be able to access, whether or not you are part of the pledged network (inaudible) or not. (Inaudible) joining the as the culture toolkit, we do regular webinars, we have a regular newsletter, we have regular opportunities for people as part of the network to have a deep dive into some of these subject matters that I’ve shared with you today. And we have a mantra, get it right for older workers, you get it right for everybody. So, I think you can imagine that if you thought about the areas of the action framework, you thought about some of the areas that we’ve talked about as part of this presentation and around culture. If you get it right for older workers, you’re going to get it right for everyone. Just to finish up. This is my contact details if anyone wanted to get in contact directly or you can connect with me on LinkedIn. There’s the website for Ageing Better, our organisation. And again, if you go to Ageing Better, you will find the Employer Pledge. I’m going to stop sharing now so I can see faces I can see chat which I haven’t been able to before. ZR That was great. Thank you so much, Tracy. I think we all learned something really interesting there. We’ve had a few questions that I saw pop up in the chat and I’m sure people have more questions to come. So, one of them was about setting up an employee resource group for older colleagues. Is that something that people do? Is that something like how would you go about doing that if you thought that was necessary? Yeah, what are your thoughts? TR Yeah, we have lots of examples. We’ve got about 530 employers who are currently part of our age-friendly network. And we see lots of when we do reviews and we have discussions and conversations with them, we see lots of examples of setting up specific groups. Some organisations will set up groups specifically for 50+ and some organisations will be more of a kind of multi-generational approach. So, I think it’s very much within maybe yeah, kind of who you have within your workplace as to what approach you want to take. So, yeah both of those I think they’re brilliant especially when you’re talking about culture and about having opportunities to listen and to have conversations. So, very much fully support that. I think on our age-friendly culture toolkit we might even have a guide a bit more information about how to approach doing that. ZR Oh, that’s fantastic. Someone has asked, what would you call this group? Which I guess depends on yeah how you’re going to set it up is it for only people is it people over a certain age? Is it kind of across all ages, but yeah any thoughts? TR No, I mean, again, I think it could be, you know, multi-generational staff work, staff network. It could be, you know, older workers, staff network. You could even ask the group itself what would they like to be called. But I think it’s about, you know, the concept behind it is that you want to create a space where these conversations can be had, where the voices of everybody, if you want to go for multi-generational or if you’re going for older workers, can be heard. Yeah, and the conversations can be had. ZR Yeah, great. If anyone has any questions, please do put them in the chat. Definitely. We’ve got we’ve got quite a few minutes here to answer any questions. So, please do ask. Nothing is too difficult or complicated, I think, or too easy or stupid. We did have another question, which I think there’s been quite some discussion about already around if you are trying to run some social events in your organisation to kind of try and be a bit more age inclusive and think about not just going to the pub after work. What language can you use to make those kinds more age-inclusive? Is there language or is it best just to run them and hope that people come? What’s the best approach? TR Yeah, I was just looking at Robina’s comments there. I think, again, using inclusive language like, all welcome’ or open to all colleagues, I think is a really good suggestion. I think, like I said in one of the slides about language and talking about ageism, I know that sometimes we can get ourselves really tied up in doing the wrong thing and saying the wrong thing. Often it means that we don’t do anything. So, my advice is you can look at some of the comments that people have put here. You can look at some of the resources that Centre for Ageing Better has on the website, especially the one around language. If that’s something you want to feel a bit more familiar with. Give it a go. Don’t let that be the reason why you don’t try to normalise having conversations at age. You can be really open and honest if this is something new for you. Be really open and honest about, we recognise that maybe age is not something that we talk about as much in this organisation. It’s something that we haven’t addressed before. It’s something that we’re learning about but we really want to be opening up the spaces to have these conversations. So, this is what we’re going to do. If it is something that’s new to you and you feel a bit tentative, you feel a bit uncomfortable, seek support and advice externally from websites like ourselves, and then give it a go. But just be I think people will value creating opportunities and trying something rather than not trying it at all, and then we continue to perpetuate stereotypes and stigma, and not creating the spaces for people to have those open, honest, and respectful conversations. ZR Great, yeah. TR Exactly as Alison says, there’s one thing worse than getting it wrong is not doing anything. ZR Yeah, and I think we hear that kind of across the inclusion agenda don’t we for all sorts of different groups. It’s like, don’t be afraid because yeah, the doing nothing is also an action, we’ve had a really great question here from Elena which is, she says, I struggle if I open a conversation about learning and development and progression and an elderly person, which is the language she’s used, says, I’m too old for this now or I’m thinking about retirement now. Do we just respect that or how would you approach it? Yeah, do you have any thoughts about that? I guess some of that is like internalised ageism there, isn’t it? TR Exactly, exactly. And that’s a really good point to make there, Zoe, about which we didn’t cover in the presentation about internalised ageism and thinking about where that internalised ageism comes from. You know, we are impacted so much through external messages, you know, as a society, we are impacted so much through the messages and the images that we see in our media, that again, we start to believe these things about ourselves. So, some of this might come from internalised ageism. I’m too old for this now or I’m thinking about retirement now. Do we disrespect that or how would you approach that? I guess, I mean, some of it is going to be about the context and the culture that already exists, I think within your organisation and the relationship that you might have with that individual. So, if it’s something I think that, again, the conversation around learning development is not normalised, that it’s not something that is happening on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, then I guess it can feel unusual to then start having these conversations. So, one thing I think I would say, again, is really normalising the conversations around learning development. So, it’s not something that happens once a year at appraisal, but it’s something that happens once a month in team meetings. So again, you get used to having that conversation. I mean, I would do what any line manager, I guess, would do if they’re having a conversation along these points. It’s just asking a little bit more about where this has come from. Why do they think that they might be too old for learning and development and progression? It’s not always about career development and promotion. It can be about linear. It can be about just ensuring that somebody still feels valued, is encouraged to take up the opportunities. So again, I think it’s gently and gently pushing back and just asking a little bit about where some of those perceptions might have come from. And if they are thinking about retirement, maybe some organisations will have programmes, will have some really good programmes, will have some additional support for people to be able to kind of think about phased retirement. Is that something that is something that’s available to you and your organisation? ZR Yeah, great. What else? What other questions have we had? We had a good one about apprenticeships. Yeah, Christine is really interested in promoting apprenticeship opportunities to older workers. Do you have any specific advice? She’s already doing some great stuff around imagery and case studies, but yeah, great to think outside the box. TR Yeah, we just received our latest case study from an organisation called ISS, which if anyone, if I can, if anyone has access, I will share with you so you can share it because I know it’s posted on our website at the moment. It’s all about apprenticeships. It’s all about how ISS have taken positive action to increase the numbers of older workers who take part in the apprenticeship schemes. I’m really trying to kind of rack my brains. We’ve just finished doing it with what some of the top tips are. But in our case study, we’ve actually got top tips and things to think about. And I think a lot of it was about having, again you’re your internal communications, making your internal communications around apprenticeships again, you use the range of images you’re thinking about the language, you’re posting positive stories, you might even want to share the ISS case study that we’ve just finished using which is about apprenticeships and it is about just doing a bit of a PR job on apprenticeships that it’s not just for younger workers, that again everyone can benefit from them and can be a really good tool for career development and enhancement. But I’ll dig out the ISS case studies Zoe and that can be shared with the network. ZR Yeah, I think someone’s actually found it already and put it in the chat. We’re ahead of you there. That’s great. Thank you very much for doing that. Oh, we’ve had loads of great questions here. Let’s see this one. This is from Robina. I work in an organisation with an ageing workforce that are trying to encourage younger applicants. How would you tackle this as the older employees are feeling undervalued? So, I guess it’s that, yeah, bringing people in from different age groups into a kind of existing structure. TR Yeah, I think, again, it will be around the internal communication and the openness and the transparency of the communication that is being had within your organisation about why the organisation is currently wanting to encourage younger applicants. I think there might be a real kind of business need or, you know, a strategy or business decision about why the organisation is taking that approach. I think that’s looking at the openness and the transparency of the communication that’s being had around that. There’s also really good evidence from the OECD, always get it wrong, which again, we can share, where it talks about the advantages of having multi-generational workforces. So, I think there’s something there about really recognising, celebrating and promoting some of the research that exists that really demonstrates that multi-generational workforces are truly valued. How would you tackle this as the older employees are feeling undervalued? Yeah, I think it’s, it’s the communication from the top. Again, what are the messages that are coming from leaders? I think also kind of looking at the wider culture and the wider promotion and communication about the value of everybody in the organisation and the value that older workers bring with that as well. But I would, again, look at the transparency and the communication maybe about why this might be the case for the organisation at this particular point, but also on the other hand still recognising and celebrating the promotion, the positivity that everybody brings to the workplace and drawing on some of the research. ZR Great. Yeah, that’s excellent. And this question from Lynn. What advice would you offer to older workers who are either looking for work or would like to return to the workforce? And how can we further promote awareness that there are organisations out there that are keen to receive applications from the older age group? I can think of one very good way to raise that awareness, which is organisations signing up to the Age-friendly Pledge. TR What advice would you offer to older workers who are either looking for work or would like to return to the workplace? Advice for older workers. I mean, we focus on advice for the employers. So, I think for employers, I think, think about what you are doing to positively promote yourself as an age-friendly employer. TR So, whether or not that is joining the Age-friendly Employer Pledge and being able to use that as a visible sign that you are an age-friendly employer or you’re working towards age-friendly practices. Again, thinking about your job adverts, the images that you use, the language that you use. Look at our grow guide, good recruitment of older workers as a way of being able to benchmark and audit yourselves against good inclusive practice. How can we further promote awareness that there are organisations out there that are keen to receive applications from the older age group. Thinking about where you recruit some of the organisations or agencies that you might partner with when it comes to recruitment using positive stories, if you’ve already got really good positive stories from some older workers about their experience of working in your organisation. You can think about getting some case studies and getting some stories. So, I think as an employer, it’s looking about where there might be some barriers to inclusive recruitment that maybe you weren’t aware of in the first place. So, again maybe looking at our Good Recruitment of Older Workers guide as a way to understand a little bit more about where some of those challenges might exist. ZR Great. And do you have any examples of organisations that are doing it really well? Maybe ones that are already in the Pledge Network? TR Yeah, we have. We’ve got so many examples. We’ve got examples of organisations where there’s three employees and they’re just starting their journey. Maybe it’s something that they’re not used to, or we’ve got organisations where there’s 10,000 employees. And again, initiatives like this are something that they’re very confident and familiar with. So, there’s a whole kind of range and a whole spectrum of where employers will start and enter their age-friendly journey, because it is a journey. Not everyone is going to be at particular points of their practices and their confidence and experience. I would say, go onto our website, go onto the pledge part of the website, and you can see some of the stories and some of the case studies. I think we’ve probably got a good, there’s probably about a dozen different case studies there now that hopefully might inspire some ideas. And again, some of those case studies and stories really do come from small community organisations. It’s not just about all the big corporate organisations that maybe have resources and money and training to be able to put towards this work. ZR That’s great. And then I think this might be our final question. Sorry, I’ve been jumping around the chat a little bit. But someone mentioned about the intersectionality of age and other characteristics, gender being the one they called out specifically. But I’m sure there are others around kind of ethnicity and race. And yeah, how can employers kind of tackle that, all those kind of factors coming together? TR Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, I would think having a look at some of your existing policies or processes that you might have for other areas of diversity and protected (inaudible). First of all, I would look do you have an age policy? And then you might want to look at some of your existing policies that you have around race, gender, ethnicity or the other areas that you cover to see. You might want to incorporate and embed age within your existing policies. Some organisations might have age as a separate policy but again, sometimes depending on your organisation, depending on the size of your organisation, you might want to see how can you embed age into existing policies. So again, doing a bit of a kind of policy audit, it’s quite helpful to see what is it saying about that particular area of protected characteristic for example and then just thinking about looking at that through the lens of age and seeing whether or not they might be refreshed or updated. Yeah, just having a look through some of the other questions around that but yeah. ZR Yeah, fab. I think a theme that has also kind of come up a few times, I don’t think we’ve got a question about this, but it’s just around tech and how it’s unhelpful that people often assume that older people don’t know how to use tech and younger people do. And certainly in my experience, that’s often the opposite. And I’ve known a lot of people who are under 30 who actually kind of really lack technical skills had them. TR Yeah, yeah. We had to be having a similar discussion this morning on another part of our work in digital inclusion in the community. And while that might be that it might be the case that, you know, older workers, older people are kind of less exposed or use it less. Then again, it’s one of these is the lazy stereotype that we that we talk about and not making those not making the assumptions as we as we wouldn’t do with any other area. ZR Yeah, great. Right. Well, I think that’s all our questions and that’s great timing as we’re pretty much out of time. So, I guess that just remains for me to put one final link to the Employer Pledge in the chat and tell everyone to go up and at least sign up to receive more information about it and do get more involved in the Centre for Ageing Better’s work. I think it’s just a fantastic way to start tackling ageism in your organisation, really, really good evidence-based approach that they take. So, definitely go and do that. And finally, just to say thank you to Tracy for delivering a great session for us. I think we’ve all learned a lot and had some really great discussions. So, yes, thank you so much for giving up your lunchtime.