Have you heard the term "durable skills"? Employers have, and most say it is a priority when it comes to hiring. These are skills such as critical thinking and problem solving. And older workers have them. Still, employers are missing out because of hiring bias against older adults.
"It should be unacceptable to reject candidates based on age. I know that that sounds obvious, but you would be surprised how often that happens," says Heather Tinsley-Fix, AARP's senior advisor for financial resilience.
She says that preconceived notions that older workers are somehow not a good fit in today's tech-centric workplace are wrong. Tinsley-Fix argues what people tend to learn over time on the job are great skills that can help an organizations and really complement the skills that younger workers are bringing.
"Older workers are a fantastic asset to employers. They're a really important part of a multigenerational workforce, and we really believe all ages bring something to the table. And counting older workers out is only going to hurt you."
WorkingNation editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim interviewed Tinsley-Fix and 9 other leading voices on the subject of age today, particularly when it comes to older and midcareer adults in the workforce, as part of the Age in America WorkingNation collaboration with Scripps News which begins on-air on June 17.
Find Scripps News tune-in information here: www.scrippsnews.com/live
For this online and written interview series, Ramona and her guests talked about the impact of ageism on hiring and promotions, the benefits to employers of hiring midcareer and older workers, and how a multigenerational workplace can end up helping workers young and old. They also discussed why some adults over the age of 65 need to work or want to work and what it means for our economy and society if they are left out of the workforce.
We'll be adding more of these short interviews here on our WorkingNation KZfaq channel. So bookmark the page and check back each day.
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