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Workplace Law

Age Equity in Employment: An AARP Checklist for Employers

American businesses are facing tough decisions. They have to compete against companies not just in the same state or nation but all over the world. This fierce competition demands ever-higher levels of employee productivity and creativity.

Tomorrow's Workforce

You've restructured, downsized, and reorganized. You've acquired, merged, and divested and the question remains: Where are your experienced and qualified workers going to come from? More of them are going to be older workers. Here's why:

  • The highest growth rate in the workforce will be among persons aged 55 to 64. At the same time, there are fewer potential workers between the ages of 16 and 24 to replace retiring older workers. The resulting labor shortage could have an adverse effect on business productivity and economic growth.
  • More job shortages are occurring in occupations requiring highly skilled professionals. Many of the jobs (E.g., engineers and scientists) will demand higher levels of skill than ever before in math, language, and reasoning.
  • Increasingly there are shortages of qualified workers for service jobs traditionally filled by younger workers. Employers will have to look to new sources for find workers, including mid-career and older workers.

These are just some of the reasons many human resource managers are eager to make their jobs more attractive to good workers including older workers. They want to know what they can do to improve recruiting efforts, management style, training policies, work arrangements, benefits and other company policies to attract and keep valuable employees of all ages.

Audit Your Business Employment Practices

This interactive checklist of best practices helps you assess your company's practices and policies. The Checklist is not a complete list of all employment policies and best practices, and not every company can implement every suggestion. But, the Checklist is a starting point to help you build the experienced workforce you need to compete in today's business environment.

Instructions: Click each item that applies to your organization. After answering all questions, click "submit". You'll get a copy of your selections and a tally of your organization's score. Your answers will help you see what resources you can use to help you attract and retain workers of all ages including older workers.

Recruiting

1. We state in our job advertisements that we seek employees with:

Maturity
Good judgment
Work experience

2. We are familiar with organizations and agencies that:

Help older workers find jobs
Provide training for older workers

3. We implement other age-neutral recruitment practices such as:

Incorporate images of mature workers in recruiting materials
Utilize age-diverse interview panels
Rehire our own retirees for part-time and full-time jobs
Maintain a job bank including retirees and other qualified workers to fill temporary positions

Hiring, Retention, Evaluation, and Promotion

4. We provide all new hires and job candidates with information on:

Social Security earnings caps, if applicable
Employee benefits
Alternative work schedules
Workplace accommodations
Job training opportunities

5. We conduct age audits of our organization to identify possible barriers to:

Equal hiring
Promotional opportunities
Training for older workers

6. We periodically review our organizational policies and practices as they relate to older workers in the following areas.

Recruitment
Hiring
Training
Evaluation
Promotion
Termination

7. We educate our managers, supervisors, and interviewers on:

Age discrimination laws
Age-neutral performance evaluation systems
Age-neutral accessibility to training
Benefits of hiring and promoting older workers

8. We educate the following populations about age stereotypes:

Managers
Supervisors
Lead staff
Workers

Employee Training

9. We provide flexible training opportunities including:

A mentoring program
Job rotation
On-the-job coaching
Peer training
Internships
Individualized training

10. We provide training opportunities to all employees and incentives for participating in training, including:

Technical skills training
Computer and software training
Tuition assistance
Training stipend for instruction and/or education materials

11. We talk about assessing and redesigning jobs for workers with special needs with our

Managers
Supervisors
Lead Staff

12. We provide, as needed, equipment and other reasonable accommodations to assist employees in performing their jobs, including:

Amplified telephone equipment
Computer screens for visual enhancement
Special/ergonomic keyboards
Flexible workstations (i.e., sitting and standing alternatives)

Compensation and Benefits

13. We offer alternatives to full-time work:

Part-time work
Temporary work
Seasonal work
Consulting
Job sharing
Flex-time
Telecommuting
Compensatory time

14. We offer a number of benefits such as:

A defined benefit pension plan
A generous match amount for the 401(k) plan
An automatic enrollment process for the defined contribution plan to raise participation
Employee educational materials and guidance on how to prepare for retirement
Retiree health benefits
Health coverage for part-time workers
Solicit employee input on benefit plan providers, such as pension plan providers and/or health plan providers

15. We offer benefits alternatives:

Our benefit package takes into account that our older workers may desire a different set of benefits than other workers
We offer similar or pro-rated benefits to our part-time employees

Your score is:

Compare your score with the following gauge:

1-16: You are likely to have trouble attracting older workers.
17-32: You are somewhat older-workers friendly
33-48: You are mostly older worker-friendly
49-65: You are older worker-friendly.

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