Are D&I initiatives ignoring age discrimination?

The 2010 Equality Act (in the UK) is designed to protect people from unfair discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics such as age, sex and race. Some of these characteristics are well protected in many companies, a number of them marketing these initiatives very prominently in their branding materials and email signatures. But concern about discrimination on the basis of age doesn’t seem to be so widespread.

This has come to mind as in the last couple of weeks, 5 clients (all in different industry sectors and roles) have shared their suspicions with me that their job or promotion applications are being rejected (or simply ignored) due to their age. We are always careful to avoid making assumptions which may well be incorrect but in 3 of these cases (at least) the person concerned clearly met the stated criteria to a greater extent than the successful (and much younger) applicant and yet none of them were even interviewed. If we’re lucky, we’ll all get older so we all have an interest in this...

This HBR article from a couple of years ago nails it: https://lnkd.in/dccZdpq

#diversityandinclusion #agediscrimination #employment #recruitment