Today’s workforces are already fairly age diverse. According to our research, both HR professionals and employees believe that this is the case. 

But forward-thinking businesses should be preparing for the scope of diversity to increase even further. Indeed last month, the UKCES published its vision for 2030 – a '4G' workforce, where employees from four generations will work side by side for the first time in history.

To understand the potential challenges associated with increased age diversity, we surveyed employees and employers to get their perspectives. Encouragingly both groups identified many benefits that age diverse teams can deliver for business. In particular, employers highlighted knowledge sharing and the diverse perspectives this brings, while employees working at the coal face cited increased innovation, new ideas and problem solving as the key benefits. 

However, as the talent pool available to business becomes increasingly age diverse, companies need to be much more proactive if they are to capitalise on the opportunities. Despite well-publicised skills shortages, our research revealed that employers today are most likely to say their organisation does nothing to ensure it has access to enough skilled and diverse people of all ages. 

Clearly, these businesses will be at a competitive disadvantage in the future and experience further skills shortages unless they change their ways and make age diversity an integral part of their recruitment activity now. The following are some of the practical steps they can take to be more age inclusive:

Create an inclusive brand image

Your marketing campaigns should reflect the diversity of the business you’re recruiting for, so ensure that your brand image is attractive to talent of all ages. For example, make sure marketing campaign images feature a mix of employees from different generations and career stories on recruitment sites come from employees who joined the organisation at different points in their careers.

Break down barriers

Think about whether there are currently any barriers in your recruitment processes that might put off certain age groups from applying to work for your organisation. Such barriers might include the type of language or images you use in your organisational branding. When thinking about selection, consider training on unconscious bias for HR and hiring managers that might impact on your organisation’s ability to bring in talent of different ages.

Embrace multi-channel marketing

Broaden your talent pool by ensuring that your recruitment strategy includes multiple recruitment channels rather than relying on only one. While younger generations will be more likely to interact with companies via social media, older audiences might use more traditional jobseeking methods such as newspapers. Place job adverts in a variety of places, such as commercial job boards, corporate websites and social media to maximise your reach. 

Monitor your progress

Find out how well your organisation knows the demographic characteristics of its workforce. For example, does your organisation collect data on your employee profile by age? This information could be used to identify possible age and skills gaps and influence your recruitment activities.

Claire McCartney is adviser for Resourcing and Talent Planning, CIPD

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