Older workers are a hot topic right now.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the 1.93 million people aged 55 or over working today is almost double what it was a decade ago. That should be good news. Last month the World Economic Forum in Davos heard economies with a high proportion of healthy, older workers were stronger than those without them.

Makes sense. Older people who work are topping up their retirement savings as well as contributing their skills and tax dollars to society.

Consulting firm Mercer warned employers only this week that managing their older workforce should be a top priority in 2012. However, what should “managing” mean? I reckon it should mean access to training and development, promotion on merit and a workplace free of discrimination.

The World Economic Forum was told that is little difference between the productivity rates of older and younger workers.Yet new research from the Financial Services Council reveals many older workers are experiencing aged related discrimination in the form of verbal abuse, being passed over for promotion and being denied access to training and development opportunities.

From what I have seen, it has been the older decision makers that have short changed older workers most of all.

At the height of the skills shortage I went to seemingly endless presentations featuring the “inverse pyramid”. That’s the diagram showing the dwindling number of people entering the workforce at the bottom and the much larger proportion of older workers at the top.

At those seminars, the speaker advised the mostly boomer employers in the room how to attract and retain Gen Y by using incentives like training, challenging work, funky offices and rapid promotion. At the same time, he or she would urge employers to hold onto their older workers pointing out that they didn’t need full time work or anything fancy. They were just happy to turn up and slot in.

There was no talk of challenging work, access to training or, heaven forbid, promotion. When I asked why older workers would want to put up with that I was usually met with a blank stare. That was 2004.

In 2010, the Australian Human Rights Commission released Age discrimination – exposing the hidden barrier for mature age workers a compilation of research on mature age workers. (MAWs are defined as those aged 45 and over).

The report outlined a working world of exclusion, ill informed assumptions and even humiliation for older people in Australia including a reluctance by employers to promote older people or invest in them via training and development. Now in 2012 we are hearing the same thing in a report from the Financial Services Council. Men aged 50 on middle incomes of $70,000 to $80,000 were the worst off with a third of those surveyed experiencing discrimination such as being targeted for redundancy and not having access to flexible work options. Age related discrimination is also rife when hiring new workers.

Diversity Council Australia’s Grey Matters research showed mature age workers are keen to learn.

Around 80 per cent of the mature-age people involved in the research cited working for an organisation “supportive of their learning and development needs and careers was important or very important in influencing their decision to remain in the workplace.”

And in a column on The Hoopla, Age Discrimination Commissioner Susan Ryan promotes the need for more Internet training for older people not just for work reasons but to help them connect with a range of important services.

Commissioner Ryan says: “Research shows that one-on-one training works best [for older people] and that savvy young people make very good tutors for older users. With government and community support, we could get such classes going most places.”

I would definitely like to see older people given access to training in social and digital media to help them stay relevant at work but believe employers could provide a lot of this.

All this should not be a young worker versus older worker issue.

I for one am grateful to Gen Y for using their influence to reshape the workplace. They have helped to move organisations away from a command and control style of management. Gen Y’s presence at work has also driven other important changes such as greater flexibility and diversity. They just won’t put up with the old ways.

However, why shouldn’t older workers want to be challenged, learn new things and be considered for promotion too?

As a Sydney-based business owner in his 70s quipped last night: “In Australia, when you reach 50 they expect you to head to the career cemetery.”

What a waste.

Source:news.com.au