Changes Your Company Can Make To Lessen Ageism
Ageism is a stereotype that we learn from a young age, and it follows us through our lives. That means that unfortunately our subconscious ageist thoughts follow us into our workplace. However, companies can make changes that can help lessen the negative ageist actions appearing in their office.
By taking action against ageism, you are ensuring your employees that you are an office prone to positivity. You are showing employees that you care about their happiness as well as their ability to get their work done without being held back.
Here are some options to try in-office to help lower ageism:
Group Multi-Generations Together in Seating Pods
It’s been found that when different generations interact, less ageism is present – both among the interacting group, and also following the members around in future interactions. If office spaces were grouped into pods, with each seat occupied by a different aged individual, more multi-generational conversations would take place in the office each day, and ageist interactions would go down.
Hold Multi-Generational Chats
Companies can gather together age information about their employees, and then randomly create groups with all ages (20, 30, 40, 50, 60+) and hold discussions. Each multi-generational group could meet weekly or monthly to talk through work-specific items, industry best-practices, or just about life. Groups could chat, have snacks, and get comfortable with multi-generational conversations.
Conferences and Bootcamps
By bringing thought-leaders into the office setting you are not only educating employees regularly, you are also creating an arena for breakout discussions among employees. These sessions should bring together different age groups in conversations. This way, different generations can digest the newly learned materials together, and learn how everyone may have pulled something different from the learning session.
Breaking silos is an important part of a company working as one, and that doesn’t just mean work creation silos, that also means silos among generations. Studies show that the more often different generations interact, the less age-bias each of the individuals involved has. That’s a great step towards eliminating ageism in the office.
