The one unavoidable discrimination we’re guilty of

Opinion

Let’s be frank: we all get older. Does the industry need to consider the missed opportunity of both hiring and targeting older generations?

This year’s IPA Talent and Diversity Conference coincided with the publication of a paper carefully researched and authored by Anna Sampson called Time for Some New “Age Thinking”.

It is a subject that the IPA has investigated before but, as the demographic of the UK tips significantly towards the dominance of over-45s, it is a timely subject to revisit.

Preference for under-35s

The marketing sector has always favoured the young, who have reinvigorated it with the energy and challenge of fresh thinking and progressiveness with each new generation.

As an industry that thrives on innovation, creativity and an “always on” attitude, it has benefited from the regular influx of bright young talent who worked hard and weren’t afraid to question the status quo.

So it is not surprising that this new IPA report finds that there is still a significantly lower proportion of older talent in our industry compared with others.

The report notes that, as a result, advertising tends to focus on younger audiences both in terms of message and targeting. And it asks the inevitable question: do we need to consider the missed opportunity of targeting wealthier older generations?

Advantages of a diverse workforce

One of the reasons most large employers seek to have a workforce that is representative of every generation is that they know it makes it easier to be in tune with their diverse customer base.

Yes, it is possible to conduct research to understand a different target audience and, of course, it is possible to put yourself in another person’s shoes.

But not only are older people immensely skilled and experienced workers, they will let you know there and then if a typeface is too small and hard to read, or that showing people with greying hair in their fifties using a stairlift is absurd.

They also know that many grandparents are helping to look after their grandchildren while their parents are working. In that capacity, they are often the ones making the decisions about entertainment, meals out and purchasing all sorts of items of clothing and sports equipment.

And let’s not forget the ongoing and significant purchasing power for their own needs. Failing to market to the over-45s doesn’t make sense commercially.

Old dogs can still learn new tricks

I suspect there may be a bias at play that it is hard to get older people to switch brands or change behaviour because they are conceived to be set in their ways. Thus any marketing effort with a recruitment rather than retention objective tends to be pointed at a younger demographic.

This is clearly absurd.

It’s the same in the recruitment of apprenticeship and internship roles, which are targeted at school leavers and graduates rather than older people who may be returning to work after a parenting break or seeking to forge a new career path.

Why don’t we think about actively recruiting people into roles that require training from the 40-plus demographic? Why do assume they are unwilling to either retrain as a worker or try new things as a consumer?

Ageism affects us all

I worried about ageism in my early twenties when I entered the advertising business. I wondered what happened when you reached 40, because there didn’t seem to be many older people around. I also clocked that those older people tended to be men.

It is only as I progressed through my own career that I have been confronted with the realities of intersectional bias and discrimination.

Much was made during recruitment of looking for people who would “fit in”. I know of a large agency that, once the essential academic and personality criteria were met, discriminated based on who would strengthen the all-male cricket team. This was spoken about quite openly.

Essentially, if you didn’t get into the industry at entry level, that was pretty much it. There weren’t opportunities further down the line to switch into middle or senior management roles from an adjacent industry, because by then you were considered too old.

And, despite more women being brought in, the gender and pay balance at the top is still skewed in favour of men. So the reality of the impact of employment ageism is worse if you are a woman.

Once you leave, you don’t come back

For most people fortunate enough to get in, retirement was a very unlikely exit outcome. Those who hadn’t already left voluntarily because of inflexible working conditions or burnout have exited through restructuring and redundancy programmes.

And although we don’t know the numbers, I know anecdotally that too many have gone after signing settlement agreements following workplace disputes.

Once out of their jobs, there has been a distinct failure to rehire older people in favour of younger, cheaper and more malleable alternatives.

For many people, losing your job, whether client or agency side, ran the risk of effectively exiting the sector. It’s one of the drivers of the high number of startups, consultancies and freelancers.

The ability of older people to reinvent themselves as self-employed workers makes tangible the truth that experience has always been needed and valued, but tends to be acquired only on a pay-as-you-go basis. In the long term, that is an expensive route.

Working at a reduced rate

Most older people want and need to keep working far longer than previous generations. We are all healthier, living longer and not necessarily able to retire on the pension pots that have been accumulated. Most people are going to experience a significant drop in income once they stop earning and rely solely on their pension.

This means that older people who, for whatever reason, find they are no longer in full-time employment are willing to contemplate part-time work, or full-time jobs at a lower salary than they previously earned, just to keep an income coming in.

So the idea of a working lifetime in which the income curve grows relentlessly on an upward trajectory and then simply hits a cliff edge called retirement is incorrect. Far more likely is a gentle slope downwards combining pension income with employed income until working is no longer possible.

Ageism is real

Against that background of highly experienced talent available at a lower pay rate, it’s ridiculous that people over 40 are being advised to remove dates and swathes of experience from their CVs to be considered for roles.

The idea that older people are effectively self-editing and hiding their age and experience because they will be discounted based on the prejudices of hiring managers is depressing. And wasteful.

There is one certainty in all our careers: we will get older. And it is in all our interests to stop this commercially suboptimal discrimination while we are in executive roles with the power and influence to do so.

There is no downside.

Jan Gooding is one of the UK’s best-known brand marketers, having worked with Aviva, BT, British Gas, Diageo and Unilever. She is now an executive coach and is also chair of Pamco and Utopia. She writes for The Media Leader each month.