How Emotional Intelligence Can Improve The Future of Work: The Case for Hiring Older Workers

“In the U.S., job vacancies have outnumbered job applicants since 2018. This is largely a result of baby boomers reaching retirement at a rate faster than millennials are able to step into their place. To continue to grow our economy, companies need to take action by bringing older people back to work and giving them meaningful, important jobs. This may seem simple, but age bias is a serious hurdle. Many companies prioritize hiring cheaper, younger workers who they believe are more valuable than someone more expensive with more expertise. Contrary to popular belief, however, older, more tenured people are more successful entrepreneurs. Those over the age of 40 are three times more likely to create successful companies as a result of their patient, collaborative natures, and their lack of have a “need to prove myself” attitude. Companies that want to see our economy flourish need to take action and give them more opportunities.” ( Harvard Business Review , 2022)?

Human resource management discussions in 2022 will include gender bias, racial bias, and cultural bias. Age bias, however, is more prevalent in the workplace, eroding the very nature of equality. Additionally, age discrimination, or calmly put, age bias, exists.???

To identify and explore the concept of age discrimination the following question must be addressed, “Is age a competitive advantage or competitive disadvantage in your organization?” According to 德勤 (2022) two-thirds of individuals age 45 to 74 have experienced age-related discrimination.?

According to Deloitte's research on the wider worker-employer relationship, talent supply and government impact are two of the most important elements of modern human resource management in relation to age bias.???

Talent Management and Age Bias??

Since the Great Recession, talent management has taken on new forms as employees are leaving multiple industries by the tens of thousands. Learning For You's independent research pinpoints the reasons for the great resignation first to mental health issues arising from the death of loved ones, followed by the loss of ideal recruitment and selection procedures. Therefore, Age Bias becomes a difficult Human Resource Management issue.???

Tight Labour Market Conditions and Age Bias??

A number of factors, including the War in Ukraine and the energy crisis, contribute to the current state of the global economy and to the issue of age bias. This happens when companies both fail to see the worth in older employees in the recruitment process, and the complexities surrounding the economic inactivity rate - which measures the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 not looking for work - increased to 21.7% in the June to August period.?

As a result of the current global market analysis, there is more tension around how to fit and design a talent pipeline for ideal candidates while remaining competitive to external market forces - which further ignites alignment with Business Strategy. Further, Chief Human Resource Officers are asking themselves whether it is good for our future growth to turn away experienced older generations under our current talent management and recruitment policies.????

Why is Age Bias Even happening???

As humans, we are living longer, and that creates a different set of labour market conditions. Additionally, employers and employees can adversely create their own talent pipelines that can cause turbulence in global markets. There are times when employees, even CEOs, decide to leave the workforce because of changes in the workplace, for example, depression.????

While retirement at scale across multiple regions of employment can alter age bias in different directions, the problems remain the same for brands. As people mature and leave markets, firms have less well-equipped talent to choose from, and the supply chain of skilled talent is broken, resulting in the global skills gap. As firms have failed to innovate around behavioural systems, such as emotional intelligence training, leaders underestimate the value of recruiting based on potential rather than traditional experience.?

How To Combat Against Age Bias??

Employers will continue to see young talent as more valuable due to the moulding employee technique long used in different workplaces, making it a challenging task for sure.???

Employees themselves might champion new mature models of learning around coaching styles and practices. Older employees are paired with younger ones to stimulate brain health gains through coaching. As a result, emotional intelligence training becomes a real commodity.????

In addition to the current government job search programmes, another idea could be to install more commercial partnerships into job gain programs. In the UK, for instance, the Department of Work and Pensions or the Job Center created a contract deal with Reed in Partnership to return a certain number of workers.?

What can companies gain from older workers??

It is true that human brain health can improve with proper diet and alignment to life's visions after the age of 30 and beyond. However, this is a derogatory product under the domain of Emotional Intelligence. In addition, younger employees aren't necessarily smarter - on the contrary, their EQ is still developing. In this case, mature and younger coaching partnerships work best.???

Also, when brands begin to effectively match older and younger employees in coaching partnerships in the workplaces, the notion of emotional diversity becomes a highly beneficial cognitive science element. The concept of emotional diversity can be viewed as having multiple levels of EQ in a department where cross-cultural skills, such as empathy, are used to erode the displeasure of toxic leadership.???