Recruiting for experience makes dollars and sense
The Issue
If I had been able to collect a dollar from every person who has said to me over the years that companies were losing out by not harnessing the experience of older workers, I could now afford a ticket on Elon Musk’s next space flight with change to spare! Somehow this idea makes sense to many in the general population but sadly not in the business world.
The corporate equivalent of a Goldilocks and the three bears scenario seems to exist, in which younger workers have too little experience, older workers have the wrong experience, with those workers between the mid-20s and 40s having just the right experience. Yet, in the worlds of for example politics, science and medicine the experience of older professionals is accepted and valued. What makes the production of a widget or provision of a customer service more difficult or complicated than running a country or large religious institution such that the experience of an older worker is detrimental to business success? But this is what research is showing. Deeply built into organisation recruitment processes and recruiter attitudes within the business world is a view that experience only represents a basic competence to perform the technical aspects of a job. As said to me in my PhD interviews ‘experience is only a ticket to the ball that won’t necessarily guarantee you a dance’. Softer and more ambiguous factors including organisation fit and potential occupy greater significance in the recruiting decision. Let’s examine why companies are short-sightedly ignoring the value of older worker experience
Ignoring Older Workers’ Experience
1. A selective view of expertise
Experience is an important foundation underpinning notions of expertise and mastery. Expertise reflects an individual’s ownership of superior skills or knowledge within a specific field. A notion of mastery is recognised with the building of expert performance through constant practice and learning from experience. In this context, greater work experience and the opportunity to continually refine and practice the skills supporting ongoing expertise should be regarded in positive terms.
Much of the research on the value of expertise and experience suggests the greater the experience the greater the business benefit. Clearly, the more experience a worker has then the older they may be. This should be a win:win:win for the organisation, the older worker and the workforce in general. Yet, this is not the current reality within the work environment. Whilst experience is broadly understood as a positive business contributor, nonetheless in many business environments we are witnessing practices that discriminate against experience because of a systemic negative bias toward experienced, that is mostly, older workers.
2. A narrow understanding of experience
Part of the problem is that recruiters might understand experience in narrow technical terms. If the technical nature of work is assumed to be radically changing then recruiters assume all prior experience becomes redundant. Such a static and limited world view ignores the rich amounts of organisation learning and experience older workers have acquired through implementing strategies of growth, of cost containment, scaling business processes, flexing work in lean organisation structures and implementing culture change initiatives – activities all still strongly alive in today’s business world – as well as living through a multitude of economic and geo-political scenarios. Harnessed effectively, the value of this experience and expertise pays big workplace dividends. Mercer has observed the contribution of older workers materialises in the increased productivity of those around them.
3. Too much experience as a recipe for stagnation
Another belief about having too much experience is that it is a recipe for stagnation and gradual decline. Doing the same thing over and over locks people into a comfort zone which they strive to maintain. Research provides some support for this criticism of a reliance on experience. Doctors who have been in practice for twenty or thirty years have been found to do worse on certain objective measures of performance than those who are just two or three years out of medical school. Their daily work environment does not encourage an improvement in ability or provide challenge to stimulate learning. Clearly there is a big difference between having 30 years of experience and having 30 years of the same experience.
4: An underappreciation of wisdom
Neuroscience is helping demonstrate that ageing is no barrier to learning. Analytical intelligence is preserved in old age if it can still be practiced. Experience also is a foundation of wisdom, although just because people become older does not necessarily mean everyone naturally becomes wiser. Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist, describes wisdom as the ability to see patterns where others don’t see them, to extract generalised common points from prior experience and use those to make predictions about what is likely to happen next. Whilst he acknowledges that older people might not be as quick as younger people in adapting to technological change, they are much better and faster at seeing the big picture which comes down to decades of generalising and abstracting. What gets lost by business in valuing experience is acknowledgement that many current events are like many past events that seem to cycle around again and again. Wisdom then enables those with greater experience to more quickly and effectively resolve problems than younger workers lacking a broader world knowledge.
Why Recruiters Potentially Might Reject Older Worker Experience
Reviewing ageism academic literature and interviewing senior HR professionals as part of my PhD research, two strong themes emerged for the potential rejection of older worker experience:
1. Recruiting older workers represented a potential job security threat to those that hired them. In these circumstances it was difficult for any hiring manager to have confidence in any future relationship with an older worker, highlighting the latent job loss fears and insecurity of organisational managers.
2. Organisations expect employee compliance as an operational norm. A management suspicion exists that older workers may be less compliant, more judgemental of their employers and more likely to voice criticism then younger workers. An age bias in a preference for more culturally compliant younger workers has been noted in HR recruiting activity.
How This Organisation Practice Maybe Harming Your Business
A trend in organisations is the appointment of many young leaders to senior roles long before they might be ready, risking a negative impact on the quality of business decision-making. Rather than seeing older worker experience as a threat, innovative organisations could harness their wisdom, specialised knowledge and willingness to coach and mentor by pairing them with these young leaders as a way to build sustainable businesses. As Chip Conley observes “With five generations coexisting in the workplace for the first time, it’s essential that we embrace and develop more means for such intergenerational collaboration.”
Do you know how much your existing recruitment practices may be penalising your business?
If the above questions have made you reflect on your workplace dynamics, please contact us and let us help you take practical steps to transform your existing workplace into an inclusive age-neutral one that develops your competitive and performance capability.
Selected References
Ahmed, A. M., Andersson, L., & Hammarstedt, M. (2012). Does age matter for employability? A field experiment on ageism in the Swedish labour market. Applied Economic Letters, 19(4), 403-406.
Conley, C. (2018). How Do We Combat Ageism? By Valuing Wisdom as Much as Youth. HBR (June 21)
https://hbr.org/2018/06/how-do-we-combat-ageism-by-valuing-wisdom-as-much-as-youth
Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise. London: The Bodley Head.
The Economist (2017). “Footloose and Fancy Free: The recently retired may have a promising future as entrepreneurs and giggers” (July 8th)
Hessell, T. (2021). ‘Talent and age: How do Human Resource Manager meanings of talent influence their perceptions of older workers?’ PhD Thesis. University of Newcastle, Australia
Levitin, D. (2020) Successful Aging: A neuroscientist explores the power and potential of our lives. Dutton. New York
Porcellato, L., Carmichael, F., Hulme, C., et al. (2010). Giving older workers a voice: Constraints on the employment of older people in the north-west of England. Work, Employment & Society 24 (1), 85-103
Spedale, S. (2018). Deconstructing the 'older worker': Exploring the complexities of subject positioning at the intersection of multiple discourses. Organization, 1-17. doi:10.1177/1350508418768072
Thomas, R., Hardy, C., Cutcher, L., & Ainsworth, S. (2014). What's age got to do with it? On the critical analysis of age and organizations. Organization Studies, 35(11), 1569-1584.
Taylor, P., Brooke, L., McLoughlin, C., & Di Biase, T. (2010). Older workers and organizational change: memory versus potentiality. International Journal of Manpower, 31(3), 374 - 386.
