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Training a Mixed-Age Workforce
Practical Tips and Guidance

Newton B, Hurstfield J, Miller L, Bates P
APG5, Age Partnership Group, Department of Work and Pensions, May 2005

a study commissioned by the DWP

This research aims to address the myths and age-related barriers that currently deter employers from training workers of different ages. There is a focus on older workers, who are less likely to have access to, or participate in, training than younger workers. However, younger workers also experience discrimination in access to training, so we review the evidence relating to the different age groups. This summary provides the evidence and practical guidance on the variety of training support channels and on age diverse training practices. Throughout the study, references to ‘older workers’ mean people aged over fifty and for ‘young workers’, people aged up to 25. Both of these definitions align to UK government approaches.

Research approach

This study is the culmination of four strands of research activity:

• Qualitative interviews with a range of national experts to inform the context for the research and the key issues to be explored. The interviews also helped to identify the training channels available to employers and their workers.
• Review of the current policy and academic literatures.
• Secondary data analysis of the Labour Force Survey, 2004 and National Adult Learning Survey, 2002. We also include LSC data from the Employer Training Pilots and Modern Apprenticeships.
• Case studies of five organisations who demonstrate good practice in training a mixed-age workforce.

Context

By 2030, 19 million people in the UK will be aged over 60 (Urwin, 2004, based on Labour Force Survey 2002) however, the trend that indicated that there has been a decline in the proportion of older workers who are economically active (Taylor and Walker 1997) appears to be changing (DWP, 2004). The Labour Force Survey, 2004 reveals that older workers’ employment rates are 70.2 per cent compared with 63.3 per cent in both Spring 1992 and Spring 1999.

While the trend found by Taylor and Walker may be caused by the concentration of older workers in declining sectors, and their increased likelihood of redundancy and retirement, the issue of skills and training (to equip individuals to move to new jobs or sectors) is now a key factor, given their increasing retention in the workforce. It is worth noting that, while the employment rate for men aged 50 to State Pension Age has been declining since the early to mid 1970s, the current employment rate for men in this age group is the highest it has been since the early to mid 1980s.

Despite the changing context of employment amongst older workers, Urwin finds that they are at a disadvantage for four reasons:

So, why is training so important in a mixed-age workforce? The benefits lie in improved performance and in less tangible changes such as improved motivation. A recent piece of research that reports such outcomes is the 2004 CIPD Training and Development Survey which found benefits of training to include:

In contrast to the identification of the benefits of training are recent findings about UK skills shortages and the damage it is causing to productivity. The National Employers Skills Survey 2003, commissioned by the LSC in partnership with the Sector Skills Development Agency and the Department for Education and Skills, found that one-fifth of employers reported that the skills of their workforce are not currently sufficient, and that for 30 per cent this lead to higher operating costs. In addition, one-fifth of the total respondent base, also reported that vacancies remained unfilled due to skills shortage. These two findings combined demonstrate that developing the current workforce rather than recruiting in new skills may be the most viable approach for organisations. However, the skills shortages in the current workforce also indicate that continued development may not be a feature of every working life. So, what is the current situation for workers of different ages?

Who gets trained?

Evidence that older workers are less likely to receive training emerges from major national datasets such as the Labour Force Survey. Figure 1, based on our analysis of the Labour Force Survey, 2004, shows that between the ages of 20 and 49 there is a relatively constant likelihood of training. However there is a sharp decline in training participation for workers aged over 50. Alongside this, for older workers, there is a greater likelihood of their not being offered training in the first place.

Figure 1: Employees offered and/or receiving education or training in the last 13 weeks

Source: Labour Force Survey Spring 2004

Why is it that older workers are excluded from training? We next explore the barriers to participation, starting with the myths and commonly held stereotypes about workers of different ages.

The myths about older and younger workers

We found an array of myths surrounding workers of different ages in our review of the policy and academic literatures. These included views that older workers have lower career aspirations and expectations; that they are more resistant to change; they are less able to cope with change; more difficult to train and less able to learn new skills, particularly new technology (Itzin and Philipson, 1994; Whithnall et al, 2004).

Younger workers face negative assumptions about their maturity and reliability, their emphasis on their social life and a reduced likelihood to stay with a company, because they are at an early point in their careers. This is an under-developed area of the literature, however, recent evidence is pointing to age discrimination now being felt more acutely by this group (CIPD, 2003d; Eversheds, 2004).

The Employers Forum on Age (2004) warns against applying positive or negative stereotypes to any worker: ‘When you attach… stereotypes to one group it is inevitably implied that the converse is true of another group.’

Attributes and competencies are not tied fundamentally to age. However, evidence from the literature suggests that the current reality for older workers in particular is that they face a set of assumptions that act to disbar their access to training. What are these and how can they be overcome?

Performance and capacity

Meadows (2003) concluded that there is no discernible deterioration in performance in the majority of different types of work, at least up until the age of 70. Critically, she found that the factor that impacted on level of performance was training – precisely what older workers are likely to be excluded from.

‘Only where older workers do not receive the same level of training as younger workers doing the same work does their performance show differences. Older workers who receive job-related training reach the same skill standards as younger workers.’

This not only provides an evidence base for training older workers, it should stimulate training throughout the workforce to ensure that workers of all ages have the opportunity to perform at the highest level throughout their careers.

Employers’ attitudes to training older workers

Assumptions about older workers include that they are less adaptable and less able to grasp new ideas or technologies. Evidence demonstrates that these assumptions cannot be supported. Martin (1994), whose findings are reinforced by other researchers’ work, puts the case succinctly. He argues that: ‘There is a rumour circulating that “old dogs” … cannot learn “new tricks”. Nothing could be further from the truth’. His work focused on providing training for system development programmers. He found that by providing training, first to help employees understand the concepts involved, followed by training to understand how a shift to the new systems would affect work, and in the specific tools and technologies that would be used, all employees coped with the planned changes, regardless of age.

Return on investment

A key fear amongst employers is that they will not get a sufficient return on their investment in training an older worker, since the costs of training have to be recouped and offset against the likely gains to be had from new or improved skills over time. Similar concerns may surround offering training to younger workers, who may be perceived as being early on in their career and so more likely to change jobs in the near future.

Again, the evidence suggests that there is little to support this assumption. A recent National Audit Office Report (2004) notes that since most skills have a three to five year shelf-life, which Meadows (2003) identifies has decreased from seven to eight years, it is worth investing in training anyone who will stay with the organisation for at least that long. Given that a worker aged 50 may work for a further 15 years or more, and is less likely to change employer in that time (Meadows, 2003), the argument of lowered return on training investment must be discounted. Similarly if a younger worker can see progression pathways in their organisation they may wish to develop their career with the company rather than move on.

Policy and the gatekeepers to training access

Implementing a policy framework that includes training is a facilitator of good training practice, however it is important to engage managers throughout the organisation, not solely within the HR Department, with the policy. Hirsch (2003) notes that line managers are often the gatekeepers to training, and their negative assumptions about older workers must be addressed to ensure full and equal access to training.

Older workers’ self-perceptions

Older workers erect their own barriers to training, which can be broadly categorised as either fear or over-confidence. Their fears surround their own beliefs about their ability to learn new concepts and tasks; the over-confidence stems from their experience in their job and their identification of a lack of need of training. Given the importance of training to performance and thus organisational efficiency, it is important for employers to convince older workers of the benefits of training. Guthrie and Shroeder (1996) recommend ‘communicating the relevance of training and development to individual career progress and emphasising that growth is a lifetime process’. Over-confidence may also be a factor for younger workers and similar considerations of encouraging lifelong learning may help to keep this group engaged in training.

Impact of employment patterns

There is some evidence in the literature that employment patterns affect whether training is offered. Our own analysis clarified the extent of this influence for part-time workers, although not for those on temporary contracts, however other studies have suggested that those on part-time, temporary or fixed term contracts are less likely to receive training (Arulampalam and Booth, 1998; Chan and Auster, 2003). This is a problem that must be addressed since our analysis of the Labour Force Survey 2004 found a greater prevalence of part-time working amongst the youngest and oldest workers. Addressing access to training for workers on non-standard contracts is an important consideration for employers.

Much of the literature focuses on assumptions about older, rather than younger, workers that affect their access to training. However, many of the myths that act as barriers to older workers often contain implicit, rather than explicit, assumptions about the capabilities of younger workers. These commonly held perceptions about younger workers are also likely to be based on stereotypes rather than evidence. We now turn to the data on trends in training from a statistical analysis of two major data sets.

Trends in training

Our complex statistical analysis is based on the Labour Force Survey, 2004, and the National Adult Learner Survey, 2002. We demonstrated that there is a clear association between age and the amount of training offered to and received by workers. Employees aged over 55, were less likely than other workers, to participate in training, or to have been offered it. Older employees were also less likely than younger or mid-life workers to take up any opportunities for training that were made available.

Amongst the employees who had received training in the last 13 weeks, older workers were also less likely to have been recent recipients of training than their colleagues from young or mid-life age groups. Furthermore, older workers were more likely only to have received on-the-job training, and those who received off-the-job training were more likely than their colleagues to have received training of short duration (less than a week).

The analysis of the influence of factors affecting recent training by age revealed that:

• women are more likely than men to have recently participated in training, and this difference is more pronounced with age.
• more highly qualified workers are more likely to have recently trained.
• there is a decline in training with age within all occupational groups. Older workers in low-skilled occupations were the least likely to receive any training.
• part-time workers receive less training than their full-time counterparts which is of concern given older workers’ greater likelihood to work part-time.
• there is no clear relationship between length of job tenure and the reporting of participation in training. The only exception is that employees between the ages of 16 and 34 who have been with their employer for five years or more, were less likely to receive training than those within the same age cohort who joined more recently.
• industrial sector has a strong influence on training participation, with the highest likelihood of recent training found in public administration, education, and health, across age groups.
• there is some association between establishment size and training, with small employers offering the least training.

The above sections have provided an overview of the reality of training participation for workers of different ages – and the barriers that they face. However, there are organisations that already provide training to their workforce, in a way that is age neutral. As part of this project we identified five good practice organisations, and interviewed training/ personnel managers as well as supervisory and non-supervisory staff within those organisations. The next section of this summary looks at the common themes that emerged from the case studies.

Good practice in organisations

Our investigations into the practice and experience of training within the five case study organisations revealed some shared approaches that we discuss here. Some of the themes are strongly linked with the literature and data analysis.

Influence of training policy

The case study organisations all have a policy regarding training in which all of them linked training to job competencies and role matrices. This ensures that access to training is driven by job requirements rather than other factors such as age. Frameworks clarify the training that must be undertaken for each job within the company, and enable managers to monitor required certified training. Each company had a system of staff appraisal linked with performance management – with training programmes tied in. Three of the five businesses required that employees develop personal development plans to address the skills training they needed for their current job and their future career aspirations. The existence of the role matrices enabled employees to identify what training was required to progress through the grades.

Work pattern, and career progression, flexibility

As might be expected in employing organisations with positive attitudes towards age, these companies offered flexible working options – and flexible career paths, which were attractive to their mixed-age workforces. Aligned to the competency/ training matrix, the flexible career development options could be managed by workers in negotiation with line managers, so that the companies gained the benefits of having highly motivated workers because of the extent of their engagement with, and enjoyment of, their work roles.

It’s not the cost of training, it’s getting performance standards right

A feature of all the company case studies was how the costs and benefits of training were perceived. In three of the case studies, training could be considered ‘mission critical’ ie essential to meet regulatory, or health and safety standards. In the other two case studies, high performance standards related directly to customer satisfaction and repeat business. All of the companies considered that the costs of having untrained workers performing tasks, in terms of lost business or customer confidence, were untenable.

Developing staff to train others

Some organisations had a policy of drawing on staff from operational areas to deliver training. Benefits from the companies’ perspective included that training would relate directly to job function and that current workers were able to ensure the high performance and quality standards required in particular roles. It also offered mentoring and knowledge sharing between workers of different ages or from different sections of the company. From the workers’ perspective, the opportunity to train others was rewarding and added to their job satisfaction and engagement with the company.

Training preferences

The trainers, amongst the employees interviewed for the study, recognised that within any group a range of learning needs and preferences would be present. Several identified the benefits of a mixed-age and experience group as enabling the more experienced workers to help the less experienced workers in training exercises. Aligned to this perspective is the use of e-learning in each of the companies, which offers consistency as well as opportunities for learners to self-pace their study and re-visit topics that they have found difficult, which can suit the learning preferences of older workers.

Contacts and training programmes

Our final section identifies the agencies and programmes which can help employers to deliver training that is relevant to their sector and the needs of their workers, no matter what their age.

  Learning and Skills Council

  Sector Skills Councils

  Modern Apprenticeships (now Apprenticeships)

  Union Learning Fund

  learndirect

  Ufi

Legislation

The government has supported the European Employment Directive on Equal Treatment and made a commitment to introduce age legislation, covering employment and vocational training, before the end of 2006. The implementation period has given time to consult widely with employers, individuals and expert groups, towards the development of clear and workable legislation. It is intended that employers be given sufficient time to familiarise themselves, and adapt their practices, before legislation is implemented.

Views have already been sought on a number of issues including: retirement age, recruitment, selection and promotion, pay and non-pay benefits, unfair dismissal, employment-related insurance and statutory redundancy payments, and the latest consultation closed on 20 October 2003. There will be a further consultation on the draft age regulations when they are published in 2005.

Age Partnership Group

This research is part of a national guidance campaign being taken forward by the Age Partnership Group, which was formed in November 2002. It consists of 19 national organisations who represent all different aspects of employers’ needs, for example, small business representatives, trade unions, HR and personnel managers, local government, other government departments, accountancy, insurance and training organisations.

The national guidance campaign aims to raise employers’ awareness of, and ability to adopt, flexible employment and retirement opportunities in order to increase the recruitment, retention and training of older workers prior to the implementation of age legislation towards the end of 2006. The APG are working with DWP on the development of a range of information and guidance products, which will provide practical information and guidance on age diversity employment practices to meet the needs of a wide and varied employer audience.

Training a Mixed-Age Workforce: Practical Tips and Guidance, Newton B, Hurstfield J, Miller L, Bates P. APG5, Age Partnership Group, Department of Work and Pensions, 2005.
ISBN: 978-1-84388-438-5. £free

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