This week, our debunking ageism communication assignment was due. I chose to narrow my topic on debunking ageism myths regarding the tech industry! While leading tech companies openly publicize their organizational diversity data in terms of ethnic and gender composition, little data has been shared about the age makeup of the tech workforce. However, Visier, a cloud-based analytic application designed to answer critical workforce strategy questions, published their findings from an aggregation of anonymized and standardized workforce databases to debunk ageism in tech myths, and I referred to the findings of their research for this assignment. I published the findings into a neat and portable booklet. I focused on debunking four myths: (1) older tech workers are valued less; (2) older tech workers experience a drop in salary; (3) newly hired older tech workers are not paid equitably; and (4) older workers in tech resign at higher rates. Visier provided analytic proof to debunk all four myths, and I published the data in my booklet to support my findings. Yet despite these findings that older workers in tech are increasingly rated as top performers as they age compared to non-tech workers, there is systemic ageism in tech hiring practices. Tech hires a higher proportion of younger workers and a smaller proportion of older workers than non-tech. I included in my booklet some suggestions of important steps that employers can take to ensure they root out the risk of ageism in their workforce, and acquire the best and brightest talent available, regardless of age. One of these steps is keeping in mind that, as with ethnic and gender equity, age equity is a cultural issue — if pockets of ageism exist within your organization, you will need to devise plans to address them not only via better HR practice and policy rollouts, but through culture change. Another step would be to develop hiring practices that specifically do not screen out candidates based on the length of their unemployment — while this report focused on systemic ageism, many individual stories suggest older unemployed workers struggle to get hired, and studies indicate recruiters screen out candidates that have been unemployed for longer periods of time. Companies may be missing out if they don’t consider the age composition of specific teams, departments, and business units and how managers can build diversity. Legal issues aside, designing a recruitment strategy around younger generations can be shortsighted from a business perspective. Older workers tend to be more loyal, and an over- representation of millennials in the workforce can impact retention. My group is continuing to work on our intergenerational walkathon HAP, which will be taking place on June 1st. More updates to come!
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Tanveer MoundiWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2019
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