Supporting age inclusion in the workplace
In February 2020, Age Scotland, Business in the Community Scotland, University of Edinburgh Business School and CIPD Scotland came together to create the Age@Work Employers’ Network to support Scottish organisations to be as age inclusive as possible.
The Network brings together member organisations who are on the age inclusion journey and encourages them to collaborate, share good practice and benefit from learning from each other.
One of the member organisations leading the way in terms of age inclusion is Aegon who have established and developed an Age Community. Aegon provides retirement, workplace savings and protection solutions to over two million UK customers.
We caught up with Aegon’s Chief Technology Officer and Age Executive Advocate, Nick Rodway, to hear what he has to say about their age inclusion journey and the launch of their Age Community.
Can you tell us a little bit about what led you to set up an Age Community and how you hope it will benefit your organisation?
At Aegon we firmly believe that by creating an inclusive culture we’re more likely to be sustainable and successful as a company. We’re determined to embrace diversity in all its forms and to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can be their authentic selves, regardless of their gender, age, ethnicity, disability, social background, sexual orientation, gender identity etc.
We want to embrace an inclusive mind-set based on the principle that all employees have the opportunity to develop, contribute and succeed.
To demonstrate our commitment to inclusion and diversity Aegon established our Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) Programme back in 2018 and currently we have five I&D Communities: Women at Aegon, Wellbeing, Aegon Proud, Race and Cultural Diversity and Age Community.
We feel that the remit of the Age Community covers all employees, with various challenges depending on their life stages, from getting that first job, to changes in family circumstances like parenthood, caring responsibilities, mortgages, retirement etc.
There’s room to improve the support we give our colleagues during their time at Aegon at all these stages and hopefully in turn, our colleagues will continue to support us. I also believe that there is a lot we can learn from working in multigenerational teams and we need to make sure that everyone is aware of this and can fully benefit.
How did you go about setting up the Age Community?
We wanted to enhance the conversation about inclusion and help everyone to be more comfortable in talking about it so it was important for everyone to understand how we can all play our part in creating an inclusive workplace.
In 2020, we expanded our I&D Programme to ensure that all aspects of diversity and focus on intersectionality were represented. We agreed that since ‘age’ is one of the characteristics we all have, the creation of the Age Community should be a priority. We looked for colleagues of varying ages across the business that were passionate about the initiative and wanted to volunteer some time to drive change through inclusion and diversity on a larger level, as this is a national (and in time, potentially global) community.
I’m passionate about our Age Community because in my own life I can see the challenges every day.
On one hand, I’ve children who are in the early stages of their working life - finding a job, paying their bills, building a life away from home for themselves, which comes with lots of ups and downs so we need to be as supportive as we can be and help where we can.
For my children and other young people, it’s about finding the right opportunity that sets you on the path for the career that you want and rewards you for your contribution. That’s why the Aegon Age Community has a focus on people at the very start of their career.
On the other hand, as I’ve progressed through my career I’ve made a number of good friends who are adapting to different but important roles at work. They may no longer want to be in high pressured senior roles but they still have an enormous amount to contribute. They still very much enjoy the challenge and can often bring a different perspective to a discussion or a problem which is invaluable.
I also have friends who are nearing retirement and we want to be able to make sure they have all the information that they need to make a number of choices as they move into the next stage of their life. Others still relish their senior role and they are full of energy and passion.
It’s great to see that at Aegon age doesn’t matter. Being part of the Age Community and working with the team we’re going to keep raising awareness that no matter what point in your career you are at we really value everyone’s contribution.
How do you communicate Age Community initiatives to the wider organisation and how do you measure the success of those initiatives?
In Aegon we use a range of communications channels to promote our activities to colleagues across the UK and to keep the rest of the business up to date with our progress, admittedly all digitally due to the current restrictions. This has allowed us to ensure that we have a national reach. We include all our employees equally, regardless of their location. We also have our updates included in the regular company newsletter, our internal discussion boards and will be looking to launch a poster campaign to introduce our Community members to the rest of the business.
The team and I measure our success by collecting various data:
• Attendance/interaction with the various initiatives regarding different life events
• Accessibility and use of the flexible working options
• The level of senior leader engagement through role modelling the age inclusive behaviours and sharing their stories to help others to follow the path
• Changes in manager confidence levels and approaches when dealing with multigenerational teams
What are the biggest age-related challenges for your organisation and are there any lessons that you’ve learned that you could offer as advice for other organisations?
The biggest challenge is the same as in other areas of inclusion and diversity – prejudice and misconception and the ability to bring your true self to work.
Younger and older generations in the workplace can sometimes fall into the mindset of thinking that the other knows it all (or thinking they do). Transparency helps in breaking down misconceptions and opening people’s eyes to the different hurdles our colleagues may face both in work and at home. This then helps us identify how we, as an employer, can support them. The most important action is to create an environment which enables everyone to voice their opinions, to be respected, to be heard and to be fully themselves. We all need to learn from each other by having an open discussion and challenging perceptions.
Aegon is a member of the Age@Work Employers’ Network. Can you tell us a little bit about what you hope to gain from this network and the benefit of being a member?
I strongly believe in the power of cognitive diversity and therefore we are taking each opportunity to collaborate with our peers. The hope is that this will help us to better understand the challenges people are encountering at work and provide us with an inspiration on how to best approach them. We will all benefit from sharing our ‘lessons learned’ and that should allow us to avoid some mistakes or even pitfalls that others encountered. We hope to learn from the Age@Work Employers’ Network and share some of our own insight and experiences too. Collaborating like this will lead to greater and faster change for everyone.
