Ensure Age Awareness is Integrated Throughout Our HR Infrastructure
Designed for various HR functional teams
1. Engage the Talent Acquisition team
Age-friendly recruiting and hiring are key building blocks of any high-performing team. Engage your talent acquisition team to review your current practices and data through a lens of age. Then prepare them to bring research-backed best practices to the hiring managers they support.
Actions To Consider
Use this worksheet to do a quick assessment of where you can integrate age awareness in your talent acquisition policies, processes and tools. This will be helpful input when you design your talent acquisition team's action plan.
Assess where you can integrate age-friendly principles in your talent acquisition policies, processes and tools.
From sourcing to onboarding, use this guide for an age-friendly hiring process with customizable templates and team activities.
This 1.5 hour workshop is designed to prepare HR team members to then lead 1 hour trainings for all employees involved in the talent acquisition efforts of the organization, including hiring managers and interviewers. It translates research-backed best practices to hands-on activities for all members of a hiring team to play with during the workshop, then apply in their daily work when recruiting and hiring new employees.
All HR team members working in talent acquisition
Leader of talent acquisition team
Free
3 hrs planning, 1.5 hrs hosting
Steps and Resources
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01DRAFT PROPOSAL
Secure approval to offer this workshop using this draft proposal
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02SLIDE DECK
Facilitate the workshop for your talent acquisition team using this slide deck, which is based on AARP’s Say This, Not That: A Manager’s Guide to Age Inclusive Hiring. You can print worksheets from the guide for your team’s use during the workshop (or to integrate into your other work).
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03MARKETING ASSETS
Now that your talent acquisition team members are prepared to facilitate the workshop with employees, ask them to lead the workshop for all hiring managers they support. To get the invitations out, use these marketing assets
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04SURVEY
At the end of the workshops, ask participants to fill out this sample survey
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05DRAFT EMAIL
Follow up with participants after the workshop using this draft email
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06DRAFT EMAIL
Update the leader(s) who approved the workshop using this draft email to highlight wins and learnings from the completed workshop.
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07SURVEY
Help AARP improve the workshop resources by completing this short survey.
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Do you find that your recruiting and hiring processes unintentionally skews to a core set of age ranges and skillsets? While personalities may mesh well, this may come at the expense of costly mistakes, litigation risks and high employee turnover. This can occur in certain industries which naturally attract younger or older applicants, but it can also happen if your recruitment methods are geared toward a particular demographic. Using the self assessment worksheet, check the career stages of the workers most often recruited using each method, and calculate your totals to find out whether you have career stage gaps in your recruitment practices.
Use this assessment to review recruiting by career stage and identify gaps in your internal and external sourcing strategies.
2. Engage the Benefits team
Age-friendly benefits are key to engaging and retaining a high-performing team in a multi-generational workforce. Engage your Benefits team to review your current practices and data through a lens of age. Then prepare them to bring research-backed best practices to their work.
Actions To Consider
Use this worksheet to do a quick assessment of where you can integrate age awareness in your benefits offerings, HR policies, and communications. This will be helpful input when you design your benefit team's action plan.
Use this worksheet to assess where you can integrate age-friendly benefits, HR policies, and communications.
For the 50th anniversary of the Age Discrimination Act, AARP surveyed workers 45+ on their experiences with age bias.
One way to integrate age awareness into your existing benefits practice is to create and distribute a Tip Sheet for a specific type of employee experience. Use this template to create a Benefits and HR Policies Tip Sheet for Workers Navigating Menopause. You can create similar tip sheets for other employee experiences that are often correlated with age, including parenthood, family caregiving, navigating disabilities.
Creating benefits tip sheets for specific “life moments” can be a welcome way to integrate age-friendly practices into benefits.
Use this report template to digest benefits utilization and satisfaction data through the lens of age. Get a more nuanced view by considering chronological age, life stage and career stage. These overlap in very personal ways, and understanding how benefits are used and perceived can help you continually improve your benefits strategies.
Use this report template to digest benefits utilization and satisfaction data through the lens of age.
3. Engage the Learning & Development team
Age-friendly Learning and Development work is key to any high-performing team in a multi-generational workforce and quickly-evolving skills landscape. Engage your Learning and Development team to review your current practices and data through a lens of age. Then prepare them to bring research-backed best practices to their work.
Actions To Consider
In the context of Learning and Development, age awareness is both a content topic that needs to be covered in training AND a set of best practices for age friendly design and delivery of learning experiences. Use this worksheet to map opportunities to add age awareness as a topic in your programs and content.
Use this worksheet to map opportunities to add age awareness as a topic in your Learning and Development programs and content.
Share and discuss this article, Make It Part of Your Business to Provide Training to All, and make a plan to incorporate some of the suggested best practices into the (re)design and delivery of your L&D offerings.
Ensure that your employees of all ages feel supported in their upskilling efforts. Use this template for a survey to gather feedback, especially from your older employees. Employers often want to understand this demographic but are sensitive to ingrained stereotypes. Our survey language can give you a head start.
Use this worksheet to ensure that your employees of all ages feel supported in their upskilling efforts.
4. Engage the Workforce Management team
Age-friendly Workforce Management efforts are key to any high-performing team in a multi-generational workforce. Engage your Workforce Management practitioners to review your current practices and data through a lens of age. Then prepare them to bring research-backed best practices to their work.
Actions To Consider
Employers are adapting to multi-generational workforces by creating workforce management programs that support career longevity and flexibility. Use this worksheet to assess your strengths and opportunities to ensure your programs meet the needs of workers of all life stages and career stages.
Use this worksheet to assess your workforce management practices to ensure they meet the needs of employees of all ages.
Building age into diversity and inclusion takes understanding age from multiple angles. This tool provides a nuanced framework.
Host a conversation with your Workforce Management practitioners on 5 Tips to Follow to Upskill Midcareer Workers, and identify one follow up action the Workforce Management team can take to support upskilling midcareer workers. Discuss how these tips can be applied to other aspects of workforce management.
Employee engagement survey data is a valuable way to understand how employees experience the combined effects of all workforce management initiatives. Use this worksheet to help you analyze your employee engagement survey reports through the lens of age. It can help you identify pockets of both success and opportunities.
Use this worksheet to help you analyze your employee engagement survey reports through the lens of age.
Resources
1. Engage the Talent Acquisition team
Assess where you can integrate age-friendly principles in your talent acquisition policies, processes and tools.
From sourcing to onboarding, use this guide for an age-friendly hiring process with customizable templates and team activities.
Use this draft proposal to secure approval to offer the Age Aware Hiring workshop in your organization.
Facilitate the Age Awareness Hiring workshop for your talent acquisition team using this slide deck.
Once your talent acquisition team members are prepared to facilitate the workshop, use this to invite hiring managers to join.
At the conclusion of your workshop, please invite employees who joined the workshop to complete this brief participant survey.
After hosting the Age Aware Hiring workshop, be sure to follow up with participants after the workshop using this draft email
Update the leaders who approved the workshop using this draft email to highlight wins and learnings from the completed workshop.
After you have hosted a workshop, help AARP improve the workshop resources by completing this short survey.
Use this assessment to review recruiting by career stage and identify gaps in your internal and external sourcing strategies.
2. Engage the Benefits team
Use this worksheet to assess where you can integrate age-friendly benefits, HR policies, and communications.
For the 50th anniversary of the Age Discrimination Act, AARP surveyed workers 45+ on their experiences with age bias.
Creating benefits tip sheets for specific “life moments” can be a welcome way to integrate age-friendly practices into benefits.
Use this report template to digest benefits utilization and satisfaction data through the lens of age.
3. Engage the Learning & Development team
Use this worksheet to map opportunities to add age awareness as a topic in your Learning and Development programs and content.
Use this worksheet to ensure that your employees of all ages feel supported in their upskilling efforts.
4. Engage the Workforce Management team
Use this worksheet to assess your workforce management practices to ensure they meet the needs of employees of all ages.
Building age into diversity and inclusion takes understanding age from multiple angles. This tool provides a nuanced framework.
Use this worksheet to help you analyze your employee engagement survey reports through the lens of age.
