Information sheet for Centre for Ageing Better

Study to explore Age Inclusive Recruitment

Background to the research

The current research looks to explore age-inclusive recruitment (AIR) practices and their effectiveness in supporting age-positive hiring. This research is being conducted by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), in partnership with IFF Research and the International Centre for Guidance Studies (iCeGS), on behalf of the Centre for Ageing Better. IES is a leading independent centre for research and evidence-based consultancy, which provides insights on employment and human resource management topics to help improve policy and practice. IFF Research is an independent social and market research agency, and iCeGS is a leading international research centre in the field of career and career guidance based at the University of Derby.

In this research, we seek to understand:

the inclusive recruitment practices that employers use and why,
how effective they are in achieving positive change for older workers, and
the conditions or factors that encourage employers to adopt age-inclusive recruitment across different contexts.

Fieldwork for this research will be undertaken between January 2026 – April 2026.

What does participating involve?

We want to speak with employees in a variety of roles within your organisation to understand their experiences and views of AIR practices at your organisation. This should include individuals involved in recruitment, for example, hiring managers, talent acquisition professionals and those involved in recruitment panels, as well as workers aged 50+. These could be in the form of one-to-one interviews or focus groups. We will work with you to identify which employees would be best placed to participate in the study and ensure they need to allocate no more than 2 hours in total of their time.

General themes discussed in the interviews and focus groups would include:

recruitment practices and interventions that have been adopted to promote age-inclusive recruitment,
the impact that these practices have on the recruitment of older workers,
the experiences of older workers in the recruitment process,
the factors that make a positive difference to the recruitment of older workers, and
awareness of ageism and strategies to address this in recruitment.

The specific questions asked will depend on the role, background and expertise of the participant. If you would like, we can share general themes that we would like to cover in interviews in advance.

Interviews and focus groups will be conducted virtually (either via Microsoft Teams or telephone) by a member of the research team. Interviews would last between 45 minutes to an hour, and focus groups for up to 90 minutes. We may wish to speak with certain people again to clarify our understanding, but only if necessary. With permission, we will record these interviews for note-taking purposes.

The findings from the research will be used to produce a report for the Centre for Ageing Better, highlighting good age-inclusive recruitment practices. The Centre for Ageing Better will use these findings to identify ways of supporting employers to enhance age-positive hiring and recruitment of older workers. This report is due to be published in March 2027.

What will happen to my data?

All data processing complies with GDPR. Personal data will be stored securely on IES servers, and only research team members from IES and partners IFF Research and iCeGs will have access. The personal data we use to contact you, as well as the interview recordings, will be deleted three months after the completion of the final report (scheduled for March 2027).

Participation is voluntary and interview participants have the right to withdraw their data up to two weeks after participating. We will ask participants to provide formal informed consent before taking part in the research. Data will be stored in line with UK data protection laws. For further information about data use and storage, please review the privacy notice for this research.

Please note that because the Centre for Ageing Better has a degree of familiarity with Pledge Employers, we cannot guarantee full employer anonymity in our reporting. Depending on the nature of your organisation’s involvement with the research, you will be offered the option of naming your organisation in our final report. Individual contributions would not be published without your explicit permission, and never in connection with your name.

What happens next?

If you are interested in participating in the current research, we would ask you to respond to our initial email, and we will contact you to arrange a meeting with the research team. At this meeting, we can discuss the research and establish who within your organisation would be most relevant to speak with. We would then be able to supply these individuals with information about the research and gain their voluntary agreement to participate.