According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), age-diverse teams demonstrate both deep business experience and a network of friends and colleagues built over 3-5 decades. They also found that workers over 55 are more loyal. In 2016, workers above the age of 55 had a median tenure of more than ten years with an employer vs. 2.8 years for Millennials. We’re not knocking Millennials, just making sure you are aware of why skill sets are not always the answer. When recruited and managed purposefully, multi-generational work forces are more productive and have less turnover than those in companies without age diversity.

1. Use them or lose them, but
don’t hold them back!
Age Diverse Work Groups, built upon the Silver Tsunami,
are significantly and measurably more productive
than homogenous work groups
2018
Joe Slade

2. The scope of ageism
&
work diversity challenges.
• In 2017 the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC) received 20,857 charges of
age discrimination.
• Few issues could be more mainstream or be
relevant to more people. Statistics reveal that
10,000 people in the U.S. turn 65 every day.
• This is a significant public health, public finance
and corporate health issue.

3. Reverberations.
• Stereotypes of people born from
the early 1980s to 2000s make
some companies reluctant to hire
anyone under 40.
• These attitudes include opinions
that young workers are lazy,
spoiled, unpredictable, unreliable
and unprofessional.
• According to the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS), employees
45–54 stayed on the job twice as
long as those 25–34.

4. The sink hole: Habituation and Dependency.
• A company can be blind to its own
biases by prioritizing younger
candidates because they are
looking for traits often associated
with youth.
• Common concerns that lead to
conscious and subconscious age
discrimination include:
• Energy and Stamina
• Tech Savviness
• Adaptability
• Money

5. How willing are you to change?
• Ageism is a weird prejudice.
• It’s a bias held by younger people
against a group to which they will
eventually belong – if they are
lucky!
• The key to getting the best
business results is about
understanding the distinct merits
of young and old.
• Start thinking of old age as “a time
of growth, learning, exploration,
adventure”.

6. The data tells us what matters.
• Sixty-five percent of employees age 55
and up are "engaged," vs. 58 to 60
percent of younger employees.
• They also offer employers lower
turnover rates and greater levels of
experience and expertise.
• Today approximately 50% of
millennials are minorities and if you
look at Texas, California and adjacent
states is it much higher. Boomers are
still 80+ % Caucasians.
• By 2022 the workforce is expected to
comprise 47% women and 40%
minorities.

7. Let’s build on that. First get a positive mindset.
• Attitudes, talent and skills are
what matter.
• To give your customers excellent
service, hire older people.
• If you can afford to replace them
frequently, hire young people.
• Let’s not be trapped by the
pointless argument about which
is better.

8. What happens to performance?
• So, how do you develop a diversity
strategy that gets results?
• Link diversity to the bottom line.
• Diverse teams find ways to increase
corporate profits, looking to new markets
or to partnering with your clients more
strategically.
• Consider how a diverse workforce will
enable your company to meet those
goals.
• How can your diverse employees help you
reach new markets?
• Diverse groups produce better products
than young male technology employees.
“When given clear
responsibility and authority,
people will be highly engaged,
will take care of each other,
will figure out ingenious
solutions, and will deliver
exceptional results.”
McKinsey & Company Insights 2018

9. Leverage and sustainability become possible.
• High turnover (churn) consumes
dollars, time, and energy.
• Getting new people on board
translates to less time and fewer
assets to fully execute your plan.
• If you recruit a bundle of skills, that
person will likely leave you holding an
empty bag 24–27 months from now.
• Change always happen.
• Continuity, scalability, remarkability,
and sustainability emerge from your
drive to be a winner and to get and
keep winners on your team.

10. There are details, but no devils.
• While many large companies prefer
hiring skill sets compared to training
employees, this needs to change;
• Provide practical training using
relevant success examples for
diversity in small groups.
• Training needs to emphasize the
importance of diverse ideas too.
• Train leaders to move beyond their
own cultural frame of reference to
recognize and take full advantage of
the productivity potential inherent in
a diverse work population.

11. Failure matters! It means you’re learning.
• An alarming number of companies deal with
newly minted leaders failing at the jobs for
which they have been groomed and these
mismatches are common across industries,
geographies and roles in almost all
organizations.
• As the number of challenges increases, the
more likely it becomes that leaders will fall
short of their objectives.
• Frequent leadership changes, a culture of low
support or collaboration, high uncertainty and
a high-conflict work culture have the
strongest negative impact on a leader’s
performance.
• Match the right leader to the right challenge.
• Adapt. Align. Learn. Do. Fail. Learn. Do. Rinse
and repeat. Leaders can learn.

12. Visualize, create, search and acquire.
• Employ a diverse set of
interviewers.
• Reconsider how you define
diversity. This is huge.
• Learn how to value the journey. We
often over value indicators of past
success, such as elite schools or
work experience.
• We are less skilled at recognizing
unique talent, or those whose
journey is possibly longer and less
traditional. Look for winners.
.

13. Get happy. Get better.
• Everyone feels good about
winning. Emotions soar.
• A positive culture affords
employees respect while
expecting quality work daily.
• A positive leader is emotionally
intelligent and gets comfortable
with change—listening, allowing,
and giving frequent positive
reinforcement.

14. Use technology intelligently. Tools, not rules.
• If you follow the latest hiring trends, you
may have noticed that many recruiters
are turning to artificial intelligence (AI)
tools to tackle discrimination in
hiring―and with high expectations for
success.
• The successful use of AI in hiring depends
on whether the tool is built to generate
fair, balanced and useful results.
• Machine learning and analytics promote
what worked in the past.
• A study from McKinsey and Company
found that companies that have a diverse
workforce financially outperform
companies that don't.

15. Find winners. Visualize them on your team or
teams. They drive ROI.
• The danger of too much
homogeneity is that your teams
aren’t as creative in their problem
solving.
• Encourage your hiring managers to
consider their own biases.
• Remind your hiring managers that
their job is to identify the best
person for the job, not a person
who fits their preconceived notions
of who should have the job.

16. Recruit talent. Skills are learned
and come from practice.
• A candidate with great skills will
require less on-the-job training. A
candidate with great cultural fit
possesses something that is often
untrainable – the embodiment of
your organization’s values and the
ability to mesh with the team.
• Just remember – each employee is
an investment in your company.
With a little time and training, an
employee who initially lacked
certain abilities, but fit in perfectly
with the organization, can flourish
into a skilled team member.

17. Authenticity, responsibility and accountability.
• One company that has realized the value
of older workers is BMW. A decade ago,
the German car manufacturer realized
that the average age of their employees
was increasing. Rather than ignore that,
they took action.
• The 70 management tweaks that BMW
made–from introducing part-time work to
providing workers with shoes designed to
reduce the pains of standing brought
about a 7% increase in productivity.
• Diversity in the workforce is now widely
acknowledged to be a benefit as well as a
necessity for companies that want to stay
relevant. Make a difference.

18. Document the process. Tweak it. Rinse and repeat.
• Think about the company you want
to build—not just the one to two
spots that are open.
• What matters in the long run?
• We often get caught in the short-
term need to add someone with a
functional skill/skills.
• Remove subconscious biases from
the hiring process. Write a job spec
and test it out to make sure it
doesn’t only appeal to one group
of people, such as Anglo men.

19. Ripple out and share your victories.
• It’s vital to move beyond
attempting to reduce bias and
toward putting inclusion into
action. It’s a winning approach and
the data supports it.
• Winning enlarges your circle of
backers, including influencers and
your best new customers.
• When your top performers are
striving to exceed objectives, they
also create new processes that
strengthen your corporate fiber.
• Share your struggles & successes.

20. Document the results with your own case studies.
• Measure your results.
• Keep doing what is working and
stop doing what is not working.
• Create internal and market-
related case studies:
• Problem. Methods we used.
Results.

21. https://www.dropbox.com/s/bi66sx1vaeea33x/Age%20Diverse%20Slide%20Deck%2012.22.18.pptx?dl=0
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