Sheldon Steinhauser | Minimizing Your Potential for Age Discrimination Lawsuits

Minimizing Your Potential for Age Discrimination Lawsuits

It is a cold, adversarial world when it comes to the possibility of being sued for age discrimination in the work- place. And as the baby boomers continue to age--all 76 million of them--the probability that your organization will be sued on these grounds just escalates. In fact, EEOC reports indicate that age follows only race, sex and disability as the most common complaint tiled with. the agency--about 20 percent of all charges. In addition, settlements and jury awards in age discrimination cases are substantially higher than those awarded for other types of discrimination cases. Between 1988 and 1995, people claiming age discrimination--many in class action lawsuits--were awarded an average of $219,000, according to Jury Verdict Research, a Horshman, Pa-based consulting company. Furthermore, older workers are increasingly asking courts to invalidate their agreements not to sue.

Corporations are reluctantly choosing to pay substantial sums to settle age- related lawsuits, rather than incur the expense of fighting the charges in court. The list of companies reads like a "Who's Who" of corporate America: Westinghouse Electric, Northrop Grumman, Continental Airlines, First Union Corp., KÄ Mart and Detroit Edison, just to cite a few.

It seems ironic that age discrimination lawsuits are expected to grow even as life expectancy and definitions of age change dramatically and as companies become increasingly dependent on older workers. Gordon F. Shea, author of Managing Older Employees (Jossey- Bass, 1991), predicts that the pool of 16- to 24-year-olds will shrink by 17 percent, so that by the year 2000, only 39 percent of the workforce will be younger than 35, compared with 45 percent at present.

The number of people between 50 and 65 will increase at more than twice the rate of the overall population. Meanwhile, the cost of underutilization of older workers is estimated to be $10 billion per year, not to mention hundreds of billions in support for older nonworkers.

Over the past several decades, organizations have often unwittingly fostered cultures of age bias, emanating from top management and proliferating through the ranks. Is your organization "guilty as charged'?"

On the surface, it might seem like your organization is a responsible corporate citizen and you might be surprised by what you find. Take a long look inward to assess what's happening at all levels of the hierarchy:

ASSESS YOUR CULTURE

Interview executives. Develop a thorough list of questions to find out what they really think of older workers. Discover whether or not they equate youth with success. Have they heard or initiated stereotypical jokes about age? How do they feel about aging and job performance? Have they ever been tempted to avoid hiring or promoting or to fire an employee because he or she was "just too old?"

Conduct internal research. Find out how other employees feel about older workers and how those feelings manifest themselves in the workplace. Talk to employees at all levels within the organization. Does the culture appear to be the same in the mailroom as it is in the customer service department? Allow employees to answer questionnaires anonymously without the risk of repercussion for telling the truth.

Initiate focus group interviews. Communicate with older employees. Find out if they feel they are treated differently than their more youthful counterparts. If so, in what way? How does it play itself out in the workplace'?

Do an informal audit of the human resources department. What happens to resumes of applicants who are over 45 years old? What does it take for an individual to progress in the organization? Are the rules virtually the same, regardless of age'?

CREATE AN ACTION PLAN

Initiate mentoring and intergenerational team-building strategies. By promoting mutual respect across age lines, you will foster stronger relationships that may even affect your organization's bottom line.

Create a diversity task force. Utilize trainers, either in-house or external, who are thoroughly knowledgeable about age bias to help managers and employees (including older adults) identify the roots of stereotypical attitudes and perceptions. Use training exercises and case studies to provide accurate information and create a new understanding about such issues as productivity, health and the ability of older workers to retrain.

Evaluate your recruiting methods and programs. Do they reflect potentially biased language, practices and implications? Do hiring practices exclude persons who have been out of school for many years even though they have the requisite requirements? If so, recreate the wheel and redesign policies that institute new training initiatives to rectify deficiencies.

The graying of America is one of the greatest transformations of this century. By confronting age bias in the workplace,companies might make a discovery that will increase their talent pool, their ability to attract and retain business, productivity and corporate profits.

Sheldon Steinhauser is associate professor of sociology at The Metropolitan State College of Denver and president of Sheldon Steinhauser & Associates, a diversity consulting firm specializing in age discrimination issues.
E-mail: SheldonS3@aol.com

ARTICLE #9637