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Recruiting more over-50s

Steve Bridger

Interesting...

Firms pledge to recruit more over-50s

  • Aviva, Barclays, Atos and five other firms have agreed to promote over-50s employment by publishing data about the age of their workforce. 
  • They are responding to a call from the government's Business Champion for Older Workers, Andy Briggs. 
  • In February, he asked firms to increase older worker numbers by 12% by 2022.
  • Mr Briggs warned that by then, there will be 14.5 million more jobs, but only seven million younger workers entering the workplace.
  • He said older workers were vital in filling the UK's "colossal skills gap".

Do you know how many employees you have 'Over 50' - and the proportion of your workforce?

What practical steps would you take to make this happen? Positive discrimination?

Parents
  • So many interesting and potentially crossing paths on this one....

    The demographics make it inevitable (short of a catastrophic economic crash) that more over 50's will need to be employed - it wont be a nice to do but a need to do.

    Some over 50's will have options about retirement, semi retirement and flexible patterns of work. these will be the lucky ones with capital and pensions behind them

    Some (many) over 50s will have mortgages, children going through college and lifestyles / bills meaning they have little choice but to continue in full time work as long as they can.

    Some of the latter group will be in roles that don't lend themselves (due to physical etc requirements) to continued full time employment as employees age. This group may end up on social benefits (if they exist) neither fit or skilled enough to work or wealthy enough to retire. (It will be fascinating to see what the Companies you mention Steve are doing for this group - I wonder if much at all)

    Brexit (because it has to be in every debate) is only likely to make the issues more pressing as we have to become more self sufficient in labour - as our youth population isn't growing fast enough the "slack" has to be taken up elsewhere.
Reply
  • So many interesting and potentially crossing paths on this one....

    The demographics make it inevitable (short of a catastrophic economic crash) that more over 50's will need to be employed - it wont be a nice to do but a need to do.

    Some over 50's will have options about retirement, semi retirement and flexible patterns of work. these will be the lucky ones with capital and pensions behind them

    Some (many) over 50s will have mortgages, children going through college and lifestyles / bills meaning they have little choice but to continue in full time work as long as they can.

    Some of the latter group will be in roles that don't lend themselves (due to physical etc requirements) to continued full time employment as employees age. This group may end up on social benefits (if they exist) neither fit or skilled enough to work or wealthy enough to retire. (It will be fascinating to see what the Companies you mention Steve are doing for this group - I wonder if much at all)

    Brexit (because it has to be in every debate) is only likely to make the issues more pressing as we have to become more self sufficient in labour - as our youth population isn't growing fast enough the "slack" has to be taken up elsewhere.
Children
  • in reply to Keith
    When I became a decidedly-'mature' student, to do an employment law LLM, it did rather shock and astonish me when we were debating the then-much-mooted abolition of compulsory retirement age the extent to which otherwise-intelligent decent and rational young people were unjustifiably prejudiced against older workers. Furthermore, I've once closely observed such blatant prejudice being espoused by a young, talented CEO when he found out I'd endorsed selection (based on ability!) of a candidate aged well over 50 for a senior vacancy and that shocked me deeply too.

    For these reasons, I applaud and endorse the view of Julie above.