Workshop Guide: Level Set A Shared Understanding Of Ageism

It’s important to level set a shared understanding of Ageism at the start of any in-office workplace age-bias workshop training to help surface the “what” ageism is and the “why” ageism matters for team members involved. Here we share a 30 minute introduction workshop outline so teams can open the conversation about how ageism shows up at work and some ways they can make an impactful change.

Open The Workshop [5 minutes]
Start with a small group and a moderator, with the moderator asking a few opening questions like “How many of you have heard a comment like ‘you’re too old for this’ or ‘you haven’t had enough experience to comment on that yet’?” Get the group comfortable sharing their experience with each other with a simple show of hands for each question.

Visualize The Definition of Ageism [10 minutes]
If you have access to a whiteboard, ask the group to share words that they find ageist. Words that stereotype against age, words that discriminate against years of experience, words that are self-ageist. Make sure both ageism and reverse ageism are included in this activity.

Identify Ageism And Solutions [15 minutes]
Try a hands-on activity to identify ageism and impactful solutions. Have the group split into pairs and give each pair 2-3 scenarios they will work on together to identify (1) is the scenario an example of ageism and if it is (2) one way a change can be made. An example scenario is: An older employee is assigned to “maintain” legacy systems while younger colleagues get the new product work / or for reverse ageism: a job ad that reads “advanced years in the industry is required for this role”. Then, have each pair read one of their scenarios and how they would make a change to the rest of the group.

No matter how you begin a conversation about ageism, the important part is that it’s happening. Ask the HR team at your organization how they plan to address ageism yearly in their training plans, and reach out to us with any questions or to share how your ageism trainings go.