June 2006 – Can older minds be fresh minds?

A shop assistant I know, a woman in her mid-sixties who has that special quality of putting customers at their ease – she always has a smile and something pleasant to say when she’s manning a counter – is settling in to a new area after moving house.

The other day she popped down to the local greengrocer to ask whether there was any work. “Well you can unload my van,” said the grocer, a man in his early thirties. For the next hour she struggled to unload crates of pineapples, bananas and potatoes while the shopkeeper talked on his mobile phone. Finally she had to admit the lifting and carrying was too tough for her.

“Never mind,” said the grocer, handing her a bag of fruit, “Have this for your efforts.” This kind of behaviour that still passes for management among hundreds of small employers reminds us that legislation alone will not change attitudes overnight.

It is arguable that when age discrimination in the workplace is outlawed in October, an employer might have some justification for such an apparently heartless approach. Had the grocer simply refused to employ the woman he might have faced a discrimination claim. In the event, the applicant disqualified herself when she realised her physical limitations.

Given the same job trial I dare say I would have dropped a case on the grocer’s s foot at the first opportunity but this woman is never going to do that. Her good nature is the quality that makes her so good at her job.

No matter that the grocer is the loser, since the shop assistant would have proved a treasured asset to his business in the customer service work that she does best; he and other unenlightened employers will continue to use people as they wish, simply because they can.

A change in the law is not going to alter attitudes overnight but it may encourage people to think a little more about the value of older workers in the same way that legislation on sexual discrimination led employers to think more broadly about the way women could do jobs, such as fire-fighting, previously undertaken only by men.

In its rawest manifestation the labour market tends to adopt “route one” thinking on work. For market gardeners in East Anglia the questions that dominate selection are: what is the work that needs doing and where is the cheapest labour supply? Hence their eagerness to employ workers from overseas.

For most people in the UK, the employment market has more sophisticated demands yet recruiters do not always accommodate this in their thinking, particularly when it comes to placing older workers in jobs for which they are best fitted.

As Patrick Grattan, chief executive of The Age and Employment Network – formally known as the Third Age Employment Network – pointed out at a London-based seminar last week: “While the number of jobs available for older people appear to be growing we must begin now to concentrate on the quality of the available work. We need to find ways of ensuring that better work is extended to people who have the skills and experience to match.”

A healthy jobs market needs to ensure that people’s talents are employed efficiently across all the various diverse sections of the market. But the market has been poor in its approach to flexible working that meets diverse needs. It continues to focus myopically on work rather than the worker since apportioning tasks is one of the simplest jobs of management. It does not help that much of the work available for older employees is part-time.

Sue Yeandle, a professor of sociology at the University of Leeds, speaking at the same seminar, highlighted the need to change approaches in part-time working where people’s talents were often wasted doing work that was several rungs below their capabilities.

She quoted a Sheffield Hallam University study she co-authored last year that found that more than half of the 219 women surveyed in low-paid part-time jobs were working below their potential. “The biggest part of the gender pay gap is to be found in part-time work,” she said.

“One of the problems we found,” she said, “Is that there are simply no good part-time jobs available on the open labour market. You don’t see them advertised. One simple remedy would be for more employers to offer their jobs on a full or part-time basis. This would mean that they were broadening their field to reach the best candidates. At the moment they are closing down opportunities for older men and women who may want to work part-time.”

The problem for many in part-time work is the way that the “us and them” attitudes that used to apply among management and workers have been supplanted in attitudes to work and time-keeping.

When people used to clock in and out of work, the time people spent at work was closely monitored. As hours have come to be less strictly-governed in many jobs, so discretionary involvement in work has changed.

Part-time workers, by definition, tend to be focused on their hours at work (it is usually the reason they seek to work part-time). Many full time workers, on the other hand, have grown less concerned about time-keeping. This does not mean they do better work. Indeed some have internalised flexibility, doing odd errands and domestic work within their daily routines.

Today these different approaches can be a breeding ground for resentment. “I don’t have children so don’t have to get out of work at certain time every day to pick them up from school but I do have other commitments which tend to get overlooked,” said a male friend when I asked him for his views on part-time workers.

Perhaps this helps to explain why employers appear to have a different attitude to part-time work than they do to contract and project work. Katie Sorene, head of marketing at FreshMinds, a company that specialises in providing people at graduate-level or early in their careers for project and contract work, was stressing the earnings potential of project work last week.

“A lot of our people want to work on projects because it gives them more flexibility,” she said. But she drew a distinction between this kind of flexibility and the flexibility extended in part-time working.

“This is full-time work on a project-by-project basis according to the need. We draw on people with different skills to handle projects in the same way that consultants work. Maybe the perception is that to do something well you have to put everything in to it. In a part-time arrangement you can’t throw yourself in to the projects in the same way,” she says.

I suspect her perception is typical of many managing employment today. How many employers interpret a desire for 100 per cent commitment as an expectation that people should live their job?

This confusion of expectations is undermining job-sharing arrangements, particularly at senior levels. Yet it does not seem to prejudice expectations of people in non-executive director roles. If it is accepted that directors can switch in and out of roles why can we not accept that other work can be accomplished in the same way?

Employers must appreciate that some of the freshest minds are sitting on old shoulders. More than that, some of these are minds refreshed and that can add a dimension rich in potential. But how often are older people referred to as “high potentials”? Only when that starts to happen we will be able to view age discrimination as a thing of the past.