The problem of work ageism It is gradually penetrating companies and institutions. In Catalonia, the lawyer Tirso Gracia is one of the strongest voices against this form of discrimination based on age. In this interview, the founder and managing partner of the boutique Galibier Legalspecialized in labor law, and Carlos III Award for Legal Excellence 2021, denounces the reasons behind a very widespread practice and proposes solutions to put an end to it.
Let’s start with the basics: why do companies start laying off their workers after the age of 50?
Basically, because there is a cultural fact, almost a cultural DNA, that predisposes us to consider that older people do not have the technical skills that jobs currently require. I call it unconscious ageism. This is thought, mainly, due to digitalization. This is a stereotype that harms older people and benefits younger people, and that leads us to the false belief that just because they are older, they are more qualified.
But dispensing with this human capital goes against the interests of any company.
Yes, that’s why I like to talk about experts in experienceexperts in experience. The most important element that older people have in an organization, apart from their knowledge, is their experience, a differential fact that they can contribute to the company. At a time when companies have increasingly shorter strategic cycles, the fact that we find people who have lived through several cycles in the same organization is an essential element for new generations. We must be aware that the loss of a person with that value who is expelled from the company at the age of 55 or 58 has several drawbacks. First, the cost of repositioning another person in that place. It is estimated that this cost represents approximately 20% of the salary of the person who leaves. But, furthermore, the person who repositions himself, does so with a loss of knowledge regarding the person being replaced! Although we have digital systems, intuition, knowledge of the market, the global vision of the company, the prudent response and the considered decision, together with having experienced similar situations in a company… that is an intangible of incalculable value.
Then the fundamental thing is a change of mentality.
We find young managers who are super prepared, with languages, with new techniques, with a lot of theoretical and less practical information in the sector or in the company, and who come to it with the aim of achieving great results. But only the focus on results is a short-term vision that allows, and even causes, the removal of salary costs from employees. experts in experience which, due to this approach, they consider to be non-essential. For this reason, people who are a wealth of experience are often dispensed with. Knowledge is a long-term bet, and its loss is a challenge to the company’s loss of value. We must ask ourselves, why in traditional societies those who made community decisions were the oldest people, emphasizing the value of being experts in experience.
But could young managers change their point of view?
Young people also have an integrated stereotype that older people have to be replaced in an organization just because they are older. That seems to me to be a fundamental element to highlight. In recent years, the only focus has been on protection against discrimination in the business world, basically for policy reasons, on gender equality and LGTBI equality, but this protection is non-existent for age discrimination. It would be a sensational step to do so, since it would be, on the one hand, a measure that would prevent the loss of knowledge, and on the other, we would realize that it is not enough to train and integrate new people, recruited from business schools, to achieve greater efficiency, since this will not be achieved, without adding that expertise that you already have in your own organization. This lack must be resolved with a change in management mentality, above all, from a strategic and human resources point of view, which allows the integration of generations into work groups that lead to joint decisions.
Does discrimination only exist during dismissal or also when hiring?
There is an interesting study carried out by Iseak in the Basque Country. Two exactly identical profiles were created on Linkedin with the only difference being age and it was found that the gap between them was 50%. Recruiters blindly opened the profile of a 35-year-old person twice as often as that of a 50-year-old person. Furthermore, on the other hand, it is estimated that 40% of human resources departments discard those over 55 years of age without evaluating skills or knowledge.
Another cliché: older people get sicker and take more sick leave.
Another false belief. Just like the fact that older people have greater anxiety, absenteeism from work, or are less involved. We must dissociate age from the disease and keep the elderly in strategic projects without taking their age into account. This belief that I neither train them nor involve them in or for new projects, because they have fewer years left to develop them, is a false belief, since, if we think about it, involving young people in new projects has a greater risk. of loss, due to the inertia of the hiring market itself, which can lead them to change companies and take all their knowledge to another company that could even be a competitor. We must recurrently train the best, and at the same time think about taking advantage of the conditions of older people, because they tend to be more loyal and committed, and due to the seniority compensation effect in Spain, each time, with age, it will be more difficult for them. plus the change of company. We must also be careful with ageist language, avoiding phrases like “we need young blood” to focus on organizational change, when doing so leads to the loss of knowledge and opportunities, or expressions like “carca”, “that one is old” , “chochea”…
On some occasions he has proposed rethinking the remuneration system based on seniority.
The fact of paying seniority, that is, the fact of paying not for what one contributes, but for the time one has spent in a company regardless of the performancefavors making employees older, rather than more expert. The concept of seniority has always been promoted by unions, without realizing that it does a disservice to the elderly because it unequals them in the workplace simply due to their age.
He has also criticized incentives for early retirement, especially in large companies. Many times promoted by the governments themselves.
There has been institutional collusion between governments, unions and business organizations to facilitate exits with early retirements. It is, in my opinion, another error resulting from that unconscious prejudice. Expelling someone from work due to their advanced age strains social benefits, because it advances the collection of retirement years. I also tell you that I don’t like the idea of establishing minimum quotas to favor discriminated groups, because it may mean choosing poorly qualified people to occupy a position simply because of age and that is unfair. Setting quotas is still discrimination. Another thing is tax incentives, which are elements that always help raise awareness. The combination of self-employment activity with retirement should also be facilitated, helping the administrations so that those people expelled from the labor market due to their age, but with full work capacity, which is still a setback, can create employment, and economic activity, with self-employment or entrepreneurship activities since they are experts in experience with full capacity, so that they contribute to society as much as they can and want. In short, we must carry out very important awareness campaigns in business organizations and also demand that public companies set an example, committing to experience, and turn around the cultural stereotype of contempt for age.
What is the judicial response to these cases?
The cultural stereotype is so powerful that social collusion leads to judges also being victims of this discrimination. But not only them, the majority of labor lawyers do not consider that age is the cause of many dismissals, and they remain silent about it, without exposing it to the courts. There are very few rulings on age discrimination. The most recent is from the Supreme Court in September 2023. The ruling shows that, in a company with only 11% of people over 50 years of age, an elderly person was chosen to be fired from a department in which there were seven people. Of the seven, only one was over 50 years old and, coincidentally, this was the one who was said goodbye.
Are measures being taken at the European level?
In France, the public employment service sends applications to companies based solely on skills, it does not indicate age. In the Netherlands, awareness campaigns have been carried out and there is a label for companies that reduce age discrimination. But they are very isolated elements. We must encourage each company to carry out personnel performance evaluation systems, regardless of age, but also with the training they have been receiving in recent years, since, from the age of 45, the stereotype begins to affect us. embrace and confuse.
How will artificial intelligence impact this debate?
I trust that it will help us discriminate against discrimination. That is, it allows us to focus on what the person can contribute without considering sex, origin, race, religion… AI can help us detect the best candidates regardless of their personal conditions.
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