By: Yvonne Sonsino

We have known for some time that an intersectionality effect occurs with age and gender. By taking an evidence-based research approach to diversity, equity and inclusion, Mercer’s most recent study entitled ‘When Women Thrive – let’s get real about equality’ surveyed more than 1,150 companies in 54 countries, representing over seven million employees worldwide. This research has uncovered key data points that help us to understand the extent of these effects, and we share some of the key findings in this article.

Learnings from this research can help guide organisations to successfully institutionalize policies, practices and programs to ensure equality of opportunity, experience and pay — and ultimately nurture a more inclusive culture.

Method:

We examined an extract of this data comprising organizations where there were significant numbers of older employees (defined as workers aged 55+) in the employee population, in order to see if we could establish any particular patterns or trends. We know that ageism remains a challenge in the workplace, and also that demographic pressures create additional labour-related hurdles for employers; our recent Next Stage research illustrates how companies can address these important aspects most effectively.

Findings:

The survey revealed interesting associations between the presence of older workers and organizational practices. Specifically, organizations with greater proportions of employees age 55+ have more extensive practices supporting the inclusion and diversity for all groups, not just for older workers. The data can’t tell us for sure why this is so. Is it that the older workers are a force driving such practices or is it that they are drawn to employers with such practices already in place? We like to think that both dynamics may occur, one supporting the other. The sample* of 240 organisations across 26 countries and 22 industries, representing 1.7 million employees was extracted and examined, and here is what we found:

Organizations with greater representation of employees age 55+

• In the area of employee engagement, organisations have more senior officers serving as personal sponsors and mentors to underrepresented talent.
• In the area of DEI governance, they have more staff dedicated exclusively to DEI activities and there were proportionally more internal groups, committees or councils accountable for DEI strategy. Similarly these organisations had proportionally more well-documented, multi-year DEI strategy and a Chief Diversity Officer or Chief Inclusion Officer, or equivalent.
• In terms of pay equity commitment, organisations more often design programs and initiatives specifically for women of colour and publicly document their commitment to racial and ethnic equality.
• They track rates of hiring promotion and exits among late career employees, as well as track exits by gender and career level, and employee representation by race ethnicity and career level.
• There were some interesting findings around wellbeing, health and caregiving support. Organisations more frequently identify the healthcare needs of late career workers and offer specific health programs in addition to core health plans. These included, but were not limited to, infertility coverage, domestic violence support, breast cancer diagnosis/treatment, and menopause as well as providing health education and engagement campaigns aimed at supporting women or those with chronic conditions.
• In terms of organisational flexibility, they more often provide company sponsored access to elder care, part-time schedules, compressed work weeks and more often agree that their culture was equally supportive of men utilising family leave, extra time off and flexible working options.

The data tells us that there are a number of differences in the approach to DEI and workplace flexibility for companies with proportionately more older workers. In particular, they appear to apply more resources to DEI governance and tracking, and have made additional efforts relating to wellbeing, health, caregiving and flexible work patterns.

Finally, we found some interesting and important results regarding age, gender, hiring and promotion rates by career levels:

• Younger women (below age 55) get hired into top positions such as Executive, Senior Manager and Manager at substantially higher rates than women aged 55+. Women under age 55 do seem to be ‘favoured’ therefore in terms of hiring into senior roles but the opposite seems true for men: Men aged 55+ are hired into those levels at higher rates than men under age 55. That is, older men appear to be ‘favoured’.
• Another place where there is an age by gender intersectionality effect seems to be promotion from Support Staff to Professional Level where women below age 55 get promoted into the Professional Level at substantially higher rates than men below age 55, or than older men and women.
• Part of these rate differences could be a function of the comparatively low representation of women, particularly women below age 55, at higher levels.

Concluding remarks:

In conclusion, promotion rates for women tend to favour the young, but the opposite is true for men, much of which can be explained by under representation of women in senior roles. As we know from our wider research, career equity is even more important than pay equity when it comes to the ability of organizations to achieve full equity in their workforce. Organizations may get their “adjusted pay gaps” — that is pay differences that remain after accounting for other factors that legitimately influence pay — down to less than 1% but will generally still have sizeable gaps in the average or median pay of women compared to men. This is because of differences in where women and men sit in terms of career levels, roles, occupations.

Age is a contributing factor to these inequalities, and organizations need to address age specifically as part of a balanced DEI strategy. This can be done by careful audits and checks of processes and outcomes, applying an age lens to ensure fairness, as well as through employee voice listening studies – the most effective of which are now delivered as digital focus groups.

Notes

ILC is currently running an international innovations competition: Work for tomorrow: Innovating for an ageing workforce, supported by the Innovation Resource Centre for Human Resources, which will be looking for innovations and policy ideas to respond to the opportunities and challenges of an ageing workforce. To find out more or to apply before 31 October 2021, visit here.

*Data sample criteria:
• Minimum of 3 career levels present
• Minimum of 100 employees in the organization
• Minimum of 5% women employees
• Minimum of 5% of employees age 55+
• Sample then divided into top, middle and lower quartiles for comparison, based on numbers of workers aged over 55 years