Ageless Organisations? Company strategies and workplace diversity and equality policies for employing people of diverse age

Abstract

Abstract Age discrimination is one of the most frequent grounds of discrimination in employment, particularly for those aged 55 years and over, both in Hungary and the European Union. As a result, lower levels of employment rates compared to the active age population and a more vulnerable labour market positon has been a long-term trend for the younger and more mature age groups. Hence, it is extremely important to explore what strategies employers develop for the age composition of their workforce and to what extent they encourage age-friendly human resource practices and workplace diversity and equality systems that enable the employment of people belonging to different age groups and generations with higher probability. Employers’ age-related strategies and practices have not been considerably researched in Hungary to date. This paper analyses employers’ age-related human resource management practices and diversity and inclusion initiatives based on an online questionnaire completed by a sample of 121 companies. Using cluster analysis three different age-related company strategies have been identified as the inclusion and exclusion of younger and more mature age groups significantly differed in the organisations of each cluster. An important finding of the research was that agefriendly human resource management initiatives were less developed in companies that were characterised by an imbalanced age composition. Furthermore, it has been revealed that more developed age-friendly human resource management practices correlate with lower levels of exclusion based on age, but not with a balanced age composition requiring more in-depth structural changes on behalf of the company. Key words: age discrimination, workplace diversity and equality, age-related company strategies, diversity- and age-friendly HR policy