Scott Rutherford
Hello and welcome to the AXIOM Insights Learning and Development Podcast. I'm Scott Rutherford. Today's topic affects pretty much everyone in every industry, but directly affects about one in five workers in the U.S. And I'm saying that based U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data that say 20% of workers in the U.S. as of 2023 were women aged 45 and above, and that percentage is only expected to grow as we move forward over the next five and 10 years.

So what we're here to discuss is ageism in the workplace with a particular focus on how ageism affects women in the workplace, that combination, and the opportunities organizations may miss if they fail to address those issues.

So with that preamble, I'm really happy to bring in today's experts. Laurie Johnson, or LJ, is a senior level learning consultant working with the Boulder Crest Foundation, a nonprofit that supports combat veterans and their families. Before this work, she was a senior leader at Accenture Federal with more than three decades experience in corporate learning.

And Pamela Johnson, is Of Counsel with Hallinan Law, where her legal practice specializes in handling ah sexual harassment, wrongful termination, whistleblower, and retaliation claims. She's also a mediator with Johnson Venrod Mediation and Consulting, and that builds on a 30-year career as an insurance professional and litigator. So LJ and Pamela, it's great to talk to you, and thanks for being on the podcast.

Pamela Johnson
Thank you, Scott.

LJ
Thank you for having us here.

Scott Rutherford
So let's start with, I guess, context setting. We're talking about two intersecting issues, ah ageism and sexism, really how ageism affects women in the workplace. And LJ, this conversation really came to being ah based on comments that you had prepared for an International Women's Day presentation. ah I think maybe a couple of years ago. Could you tell us the story about  how sort of you became connected to the topic as a as a presentation and sort of sort of we'll go look we a little bit into history here just to understand how we how we arrived at this podcast conversation today.

LJ
Sure, of course. And you're right. It was about two years ago where I was asked to speak on International Women's Day. And as I was thinking about what I wanted to share, because this was also it was also a live broadcast across several organizations. I thought about my time in the workforce and thought about how this whole concept of International Women's Day had changed so much from 1901 when it first started to where I was at that point in, you know, two years ago. And it took me down a journey of doing some research around, well, how did we get here and what have I experienced in terms of being an aging female in the workforce and especially a very competitive workforce doing, um you know, corporate and federal consulting. And so my interest was piqued. And as I did the research, I found that there were different kinds of perspectives on um how older adults, both male and female, could um could benefit the younger generations and that we could benefit from the younger generations in this multi-generational workforce.

Scott Rutherford
Right. And in your talk, and I appreciate you shared your notes with me in advance of the podcast. And so um you shared a number of statistics. I'm going to share a couple of those here and build on them a little bit. According to University of Michigan in 2020, it said 40% of women in the work workplace ah face age discrimination every day. And that made me stop and think because that's we're not saying face age discrimination, period. We're saying every day. So that that to me was a little bit startling. In 2023, AARP, of course, does a lot of research. They found 64% of all work workers ah are in agreement that older workers face discrimination. And of the people who said that there is discrimination, 94, so almost everyone said 94% said that it's commonplace. um And some further data, just in terms of the placement of older workers, especially women workers in the workplace, AARP says ah when they surveyed people who had lost out on promotions, they said 12% said, yes, I've lost out on a promotion because of my age. That study looked at people who had retired in 2019. So it's a couple years old, but I don't think that data have probably shifted too much. But in that study, 39% of people who retired said they were forced into it. So we're talking about, ah you know, whatever the soft pressure, hard pressure, early retirement, ah perhaps layoffs and that sort of thing. So the problem isn't hidden. That's perhaps one of the more startling things. Is this the biggest problem no one's talking about? How do you see this in organizations - if the data says it's this pervasive, why isn't this more of a headline?

LJ
It's a really good question. And Pamela, I'm not sure what you're seeing in your practice, but you know in 2022, so not that long ago again, um the was the first time where there were actually five different labeled workforces in the community, everything from the silent generation through Gen Z. And it is not something that typically comes up in business because I believe that those who are affected by ageism are reluctant to bring it up and to talk about it. We talk about it in smaller forums. We talk about it maybe on International Women's Day.

We might talk about it in different kinds of organizations that or um that are supportive of different sorts of groups within their larger company about things. But it's not something that takes a broad view.

But there are a lot of studies out there that talk about it. But the there seems to be a very strong reluctance to um going beyond speaking about it, maybe in small groups.

Pamela Johnson
I think one of the reasons why people have reluctance to speak about it is because it usually isn't overt. I mean, unless someone is coming up to you and calling you a boomer or saying, thanks, grandma, you know the ageism isn't overt.

And because it isn't overt, those are some of the hardest cases to prove are cases of age discrimination. And I think that that's one of the reasons why people are hesitant to speak out because they know that something is happening to them. They think they're being discriminated against. And generally speaking, if you think you're being discriminated against, you probably are.

But being able to go to your supervisor and say, i am being, I am being discriminated against based on my age. They're going to say, well, what makes you say that? And if all of the information that you have is basically, um is based on how other people treat you, that can be a very difficult thing to describe in a way that people believe you.

LJ
I would agree with that 100%.

Scott Rutherford
And Pamela, maybe this is a good moment to really lean into your expertise and to understand the foundations of what is disallowed ah by law. What are the differences between federal law and state law on this issue? And are there are there criteria or trigger points that but folks need to be aware of for their own, ah perhaps, claims or issues?

Pamela Johnson
Absolutely. So the federal law that governs this is the Age Discrimination and Employment Act. And basically that says you cannot discriminate against anyone who is 40 years old, you know, 40 or oh older. That's sort of the benchmark.

And the way that things like that are evaluated under the ADA is they say, well, you know, who replaced the person who was terminated? was it someone who was also um over 40? Or was it someone who was considerably younger than the other person ah who was terminated in the event that that was the situation? So that's the ADEA and that's the federal law.

And so that goes through federal courts. But almost every state has some kind of a human rights act as well. And I'd say almost because it is not universal. There are several states that do not have human rights laws that apply to all workers.

But many states do. And in many states, actually, the standard for being able to prove age discrimination is easier than the federal law. So if someone is being discriminated against, it's very important that they seek out someone who understands both the state and the federal laws who can evaluate which is the best way to look at this.

And then if you're a woman also, because frequently these things are both ageism and gender discrimination and they're mixed. And so it's really hard to like parse it out and say, well, this was age and this was gender because it mostly it's like I'm discriminating against you because you're an older woman.

It's the two things combined. So Title VII obviously governs ah gender discrimination on a federal level, and gender discrimination is recognized by most states more prevalently than age discrimination is.

LJ
And some of the things in general that that I have experienced is that there there's a tendency in the workforce, it seems, for men to be more respected as they age and that their experiences might be more valued than this woman who maybe had a very similar, if not the same role in an organization, but has aged faster.

And I find that very interesting because I believe that, I guess I shouldn't have said aged faster. That really didn't come out right. Who has aged?

Scott Rutherford
But the perception is that that based on gender, age ah is either an asset or a liability. I think that anyone who has a broader view of our culture can recognize that.

LJ
Yes.

Scott Rutherford
That affects not just the workplace - that's pervasive, right?

LJ
I think in the way that, um yeah, the way that our, I'm going to say our economy addresses it. If you think about if you are, if you are an older American, right. And you're going out there to make sure that your retirement is in place. I think women are treated differently than men when you're going into a place to plan your retirement, right? I think that women, I heard once that, you know, once a woman starts to have gray hair, we're the ones who are always trying to cover it. But in men, it's a sign of experience. But for a woman to have gray, it's not necessarily a sign of experience. It's a sign of age.

Scott Rutherford
Absolutely. And from my own experience, I remember this was a job I didn't accept, I will say, but I was being interviewed for a job. And one of the criteria that that was shared with me, and again, there was a hiring manager was ah was a man, and said, well, you know, we're looking for someone who is a little gray around the temples. I said, well, that's a very interesting way to put it, but it explicitly sort of supports your point, which is, you're right, age is perceived to be an asset for men and a liability for women.

LJ
Yes.

Scott Rutherford
Yeah, so it's a huge cultural force and... so I think, well, while it might be nice to think we can change culture in the U.S. with a podcast, I don't think we have that reach. But maybe what we can advise here is how do we manage the culture within an organization to sort of minimize that external impact? Maybe this is a way to get, yeah again, LJ, from the talk you gave, you had focused in with some comments about you know sort of the opportunity cost of the status quo, which is to say, if we as an organization, as a business, are not supporting our older women members of the workforce, um what are we missing out on?

LJ
We're missing out on a lot. We tend to to think of, again, I'll address this from a female perspective, right? We tend to think that we become more frail, that again, we have maybe gray hair faster that's not as ah respected as men's.

But what we bring really is we bring ah especially for those of us who are over 40 or 50, we bring experience from a generation that had had to work on things completely differently.

If you think about what we went through, we had to we had paper checks. like They were either dropped off at your desk or they were mailed to you. You had to stand on line at the bank until ATMs came. and Then you know it was you it made it a little bit easier. But it's those kinds of things that build patience. They forget that we have a wealth of knowledge in dealing with difficult clients and um in supporting and in coaching and mentoring.

you know, those who are now 40 in the workplace. And so they tend to forget about those things because I just, I believe it's just not so, you just don't think about it. I don't think it's necessarily always on purpose. Although Pamela, I'm sure maybe you have some examples of where it did seem quite on purpose, but it's almost like we're disposable. It's like when your mom gets older, your grandma gets old, it kind of like comes over into the workplace. I think you're like, oh, you should be home knitting. Maybe you can make soup for the potluck. I don't know. But it feels, yeah, it's incredibly irritating.

Pamela Johnson
Which is incredibly irritating.

LJ
There's this assumption that we lose our minds um when we really don't. And we have a lot to bring around that. We are also, we know how to be patient. um Again, we do know how to mentor and we show resilience. We've been through a whole lot in um and at this age in our life. And we have the ability to say, look, I have done this and this is what it's what has happened to me as a result of that, both positive and negative.

And that's a really beneficial thing. I think there's a big connection to um mentoring and where someone feels that a mentor has reached their limit of contribution. Right. And just because we have older experience doesn't mean that it's not every bit as relevant today as it might have been even 10 or 20 years ago when we were more junior in our workforces.

Pamela Johnson
Well, and I think that another thing that that employers fail to recognize is just the institutional knowledge that older workers have. If you've been working for the same company for a number of years, and i see this in my practice all the time, people who have worked for the same company for over 30 years are suddenly terminated for something that it had the had it happened 25 years ago, they would not have been terminated for.

One of the things that companies are missing out on when that happens is your company has evolved. It's become a different animal than it was 30 years ago. And there's only a few people who know how it got from point A to point B and only a few people who know where do I go in the organization if I need this?

Where do I go in the organization if I need that? And those people typically turn out to be women. Not that it can't be men, but part of it is because, you know, women look at the world horizontally rather than vertically.

So they know to reach out and they're willing to reach out and say, I don't know how to do this. Could you please explain this? So they've done that their whole career. And now they've reached this place in their career where they actually know how to do all of this stuff and they know who to ask if they don't know.

That frequently is not the case with older men because they have relied primarily on women to be their helpmate in the workplace. So they would look to their assistant to say, go and find the person who knows about this.

Whereas the older woman, as an executive, she's already been through that. She knows how to do all of that. The other thing we sometimes see ah with regards to what companies don't seem to be focusing on enough is, you know, women who have reached a point of being in the C-suite, you know, they have gotten there through a lot of hard work. They have certainly experienced discrimination almost without a doubt. And they tend to be pretty straightforward, direct human beings who want to get the job done.

And while that translates very well for an older man, ah It does not translate as well for a woman. They're called, you know, well, she was she was just bossy. She was assertive. She, you know, she was aggressive to me. I didn't like the way she the tone she took. All of those things would be completely discounted in an older man. And women get fired for it all the time.

And that's really the whole aggressive thing. We could say that if women could say the same thing as men, we could say it to the same person. And it is taken that advice or direction is taken so much better from the man than it is from the female.

LJ
And it it boggles the mind. And there's not a - I mean, it's ingrained. It's still ingrained, right? The difference between a male and a female in terms of the business world, it's still ingrained that the advice is more sound from the male, even though they may be newer to the organization and don't have the benefit of what the female has learned growing up in an organization or applying what they have learned over their years in their career.

Pamela Johnson
Yes, older men are definitely trusted more than older women. And we see that play out in the law.

LJ
And even women wearing suits, right? Because we all used to wear suits in the workforce as women. Even that doesn't help us. We can just be a man, but it still doesn't matter.

Pamela Johnson
It's gone by the wayside, but yes, you're absolutely right.

Scott Rutherford
So thinking about this in in in an organization, if someone's watching or listening to the conversation and saying, well, you know, okay, I think most folks would say, okay, I see what you're saying. I've seen it in my life. You know, this is not really hidden, frankly. But what are we going to do about it? How can we start to change things? for example, the culture of my company, our company, so that we're but we're not missing out on what I think is an opportunity, which is to say, how do we experience the benefit of the perspective, of the experience in the business, of this 20% of our workforce? Is there, I hesitate to reduce everything to training but I think [training has] a role here. But is it training, coaching, expectations setting? What do you think the combination is for a company to start to move, to shift the conversation on this?

LJ
I think it's a combination of things. Again, I know I'm throwing out a lot of facts and stats here, but only 8% of companies actually include the concept of age in an HR strategy.

And I am, again, I understand there are a lot of affinity groups that different organizations need to pay attention to in terms of hiring, but typically, yeah again, only 8% look at the wisdom that comes with somebody either internal or external to their workforce who might be a bit older.

I think that's part of it. But I also think it's just the, it's an attitude of the culture that already exists in organizations as well. You can't just assume that this is something that's going to change overnight.

But I do think there is a purpose, just like there was a purpose years ago, when there was a, I won't say a mandate, but I can't think of another word, but a mandate that certain percentages of boards should be female.

There should be certain percentages of um or a role that someone who is, you know, five years out from when they think they may retire, three years out, that should be an entirely different mentoring program, I believe, for someone in an organization.

If you know that you were like towards the end of your career and you're starting to think about, you know, a second home or where you want to be or what else you want to do in terms of volunteerism that you weren't able to do as an executive, it's an awesome audience to tap into for those people who are new coming into your organization for all of the reasons that Pamela said about the relationships that we have and what we know and who came before us and what they did.

We lose that um corporate generational story. And so I think a way to do that would be, it would be amazing to see organizations put a a program in place with a bit of a structure that says, hey, we've got these people.

We know you're going to retire in a couple of years. In some cases, we're going to force you out in a couple of years based on your age, if you're a partner in certain organizations. And let's milk everything we can from you all, because we know that you have this history, this story to tell, and the skills that probably, you know, 50% of the organization doesn't have anymore.

Pamela Johnson
I think that the main way that companies can start to change this dynamic is for the people in the C-suite to actively promote people. And I'm not saying promote in terms of higher jobs, but I'm saying promote the people who are older in the workforce, to actually hold them up as examples, to emphasize their accomplishments, to speak loudly about those things so that the people who are the generation below them hear this and recognize the value of that as well.

We're all very busy, very busy in the workplace always. And so I think what happens is, especially if there are managers moving around and you're inheriting a new team, for example, you know, if that team doesn't know anything about you and no one has come in to say, this is why you should value this person as a leader, here are all of the things that they have accomplished, they might not give the same respect and listen to the older woman as well as they might the older man. The older man is presumed to have these kinds of experiences And these kind, you know, this wisdom. And that is not presumed with women. And frankly, when sometimes when they start to show it, people do not like that. They feel like, you know, whereas a man would it would be say, oh, well, he's teaching me this, [but] if it's a woman, she's condescending to me.

LJ
It's like they also, at least my experience has been that typically you are, if you're female, you're matched with other females as a mentor or as someone who is, you know, new coming into a program to coach them through the newness of their onboarding or something. And it's rare that a male will seek out a female in terms of knowledge and support. It happens, but it's very rare. And that's something that's very hard, I think, to understand, to quantify. And I almost feel like there has to be some quantification of it for businesses to really stand up and take notice of the value that they are missing. um We all know organizations, right? It comes to the money.

And if we could figure out a way to have the stories, right, of all of the good things, both that males and females have done and figure out how to make that more respectable um from a female perspective, I think that would go a long way.

Scott Rutherford
Right. As we've been chatting, I was reminded of, it's kind of an old adage, you can't manage but what you don't measure, right? And I know that most organizations will have somewhere within HR,  some demographic table that that tracks, okay, how what are the ages of our workforce? what how is the, what's the gender breakdown? Correct me if you disagree, but my sense is typically that's done ah to ah as sort of a defensive measure to limit liability rather than something that's a proactive ah management tool. And I think what I'm hearing is, you know, there's an opportunity to take the data you probably already have ah and say, OK, well, how can we how can we connect this data table, understanding who we have and what they can contribute to maybe the, maybe the coaching program, maybe, maybe the training program, maybe the onboarding program.

But, to but to, but to proactively, you know, the culture isn't going to change itself. Cultures and organizations don't change themselves. There really needs to be an input. So, you know, maybe, maybe what we're talking about is, just simply paying attention to it. Is that, is that minimizing it too much?

Pamela Johnson
I don't think that that, I mean, i think paying attention to it is certainly the first step. But when you're talking about the statistics that companies have with regard to age and gender, um Because of the legal landscape, those companies tend not to share that information outside of ah HR at all. They don't share it to the C-suite.

They don't share it to you know the rank and file. And the reason for that is because they don't want to be accused of engaging in age discrimination. But I think it actually has exactly the opposite effect. When you pretend I'm color-blind, I'm gender-blind, I'm age-blind, that simply is not true. We look at people, we make assumptions about them every day. And if instead you turn that on your head and said, here are the people that we value in our organization.

Here are the women, here are the men, here are how old they are, and here's why that's important. Why their age and their experience is something that we value more than, you know, trying to escape some kind of, you know i don't know, elusive liability that could lie someplace in the future. you know When you do a layoff at a company at a reduction in force, you actually have to evaluate how many older workers you're getting rid of.

There has to be an accounting for that, specifically to make sure that you are not targeting older workers. you know The Older Worker Protection Act sees to that. There actually has to be a metric.

But if that isn't the role you're in, where you're looking at a reduction in force, those things should still come into play. And you should and, you know, higher ups should think, here's someone who has really done a lot for our company.

How do we take that that person and elevate them so that people know who they are, know that they are a resource to go to, know that they are powerful regardless of their position because of their experience.

LJ
Yeah. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say, I think that we should even go even before somebody gets into the professional workforce. I know there are on campuses, there are different kinds of programs for women and stuff, but there is an amazing amount of history of um ah female successes that are never talked about.

Sounds, again, kind of petty, but the dishwasher. It was a woman who designed a dishwasher and her husband took credit for it. I mean, that happens all the time. I listened to this podcast series called The History Chicks, and they go back and they talk about all the phenomenal things that women have done that they just gave off, right? The organization or the company gave off to a man because that's the way it was at time.

I think helping those and hitting this harder earlier, um probably at the college level, about the value and the differences that women bring and starting to blend, right? Males and females thinking differently at that point in time so that when they graduate and they do get into the workforce, whatever your career choice might be.

I almost think that some of the generations we have right now are lost to us. I'm not sure anything's going to change unless there are requirements and mandates on things. But boy, do we have an opportunity to um to bring up that that next generation of individuals to make it easier and easier and easier as it goes on.

Scott Rutherford
I think even within the current workplace, there's an opportunity to sort of ah combat the definition of reality based on perception. I've been in the workforce for 30 some odd years myself. And obviously, tick the age box, but not the gender box here, but what I've seen in my experience is that, we know statistically that the preponderance of senior management and C-suites are men. That number is shifting but it is in no way equitable yet. So senior management tends to be more male. And as male managers take credit for the accomplishments of their teams, LJ, it's kind of exactly what you're talking about. It's the man taking credit for the what the women have helped contribute to.

So one of the first things that think it seems like we need to do is bring the men aside in management training, in in their coaching sessions, and help them understand, and you know I don't want to get into servant leadership as ah as a discipline, but really moving a little bit more in that direction to say, share the credit. You know, Pamela, this almost gets to what you were saying too. Elevate the women in your teams. Demonstrate to the organization what they're what they're doing and the contributions they're making. But that that seems to be like that that needs to be, it can't just be a C-suite initiative. That's every single line manager, right?

Pamela Johnson
That's right. That's right. You know, um I saw something kind of interesting that occurred at ah one large company that I was aware of um shortly after the George Floyd killing when, you know, discussions about racism were very prevalent throughout the workforce in a way that they had never, ever been before.

And in this particular company that has more than 30,000 employees, they started to have monthly group calls You could join or not join as you wanted, but if you join the group call, you were going to be hearing from people of color sharing their experience in their everyday lives.

And I know that that had a profound effect on that particular company because I can tell you that there were a lot of people, a lot of people who were Caucasian who had never heard stories like that, who had no idea what that experience was like, and it opened their eyes and it changed how they thought.

If companies did more things like that, where they're actually saying, LJ, you know, you've been with our company for 25 years. Tell us about your experiences here, where it was not necessarily so planned or where people didn't think, oh, well, you know, they're just doing this to show off or whatever.

You know, if it was a little more organic, I think that, A, unfortunately, that would make it more palatable. And in these days, you have to do it. that way But it also would start to change the people who are a generation younger than the older worker. it would start to give them some appreciation of what that person has been through. And they would remember that the next time they were having a similar experience or the next time they needed someone who had the knowledge that that person had.

LJ
It's very systemic to build that. And you triggered a memory for me that Accenture during that time, also of George Floyd, we did have those kinds of conversations. And one of the things that I still vividly remember about it is it was related to going out as a group, like after work, happy hour, you know, all of that. And they were there was a particular woman who said, I don't go. And I don't go because I would miss the train that I usually take to get home. And the train that I have to ride on after five o'clock becomes dangerous. It's like, wow, OK, that's why you don't come. It's not that you're not a part of the team or want to be. You have an extenuating circumstance. And who is not going to make an accommodation for that? Like, seriously, let's do lunches instead. But you're afraid to say that.

Scott Rutherford
What we're talking about here is sort of the value of an inclusive ah workplace - I realize that's a little bit of a loaded term in our current environment - but for me, there's no escaping the data that have shown that companies that tend to be more inclusive also tend to perform better. So you get, you're sort of alluding to, where's the ROI of all of this? Well, you know, it's hard to prove perhaps in the micro, but the macro we've seen it. And there have been studies that have shown, you know, that that you when you get the best out of your employees, surprise, your company does better. Perhaps not a surprise.

But I do think yeah we're talking but about age discrimination, and I know we're focusing on older workers. One of the things i wanted to mention, though, is that, and Pamela, I'd be interested in your perspective here, too, but it does tend to be bimodal. Obviously, there there's, ah I think, a larger impact on older workers, but sometimes younger workers get the other side of this coin, too.

LJ
The reverse, absolutely.

Scott Rutherford
If you're a high performer at 23 years old and you're trying to pitch an idea to a someone my age, maybe you're not taken as seriously as you should be.

Pamela Johnson
It's true. And under federal law, younger workers are not protected from age discrimination. that that That's not a federal law. However, there are several states that recognize that age discrimination happens at both ends of the spectrum. In fact, I have two lawsuits right now that involve young women who were told that they couldn't get promotions because they were simply too young.

They had exactly the same experience as the people who were promoted. One of them was actually told, your voice is too high, honey. So we can't, you know, no one will take you seriously. Well, if that's the attitude that you are promoting within your organization, that you shouldn't take someone seriously simply because they are young and have a high voice, that's the culture that is going to pervade that organization.

So, I think that you were right, Scott, when you're talking about it has to be it has to be work done, not just in the C-suite, but the C-suite does have to guide the principles that they want other managers to follow, and they have to hold them accountable for that.

Like you said, you can't manage what you can't measure. Measuring things like this, though, is squishy. It's hard. it's you know you No one wants to have to fulfill a quota. um Because it seems like then if you're fulfilling a quota, you're not necessarily hiring the person who's the most qualified, although that is almost never the case. You almost are always hiring the person who's most qualified.

And that is the law that you hire the person who is most qualified. But they forget about the fact that you need to have lots of different people who are attributing you know who are contributing to your work. And you have to tell the managers, this is important to us. This is part of our value as a company, not because we're nice guys, but because it will make you and me more money.

LJ
Pamela, do you see that the um the number of cases that come your way is increasing or decreasing over the last five years?

Pamela Johnson
We get so many age discrimination cases, I would say at least 10 calls a day on age discrimination. um If it's a high volume day where we're getting over 100 calls, it would be more than that.

And the problem is, again, those cases are so hard to prove that. Those are the cases that, generally speaking, not everyone wants to take on because you know that this might not be a winning  proposition.

But unless people continue to bring these cases to the fore and really litigate them hard, this is not going to change.

You know, that's what makes change - people held accountable. People having to give up something. because they didn't recognize value in something else. That's what drives change in organizations. And so you have to be able to tie it to this is how it's going to make us more money. This is why you need to listen to this to this particular value and carry it through.

Scott Rutherford
So thinking again at that - the listener of this conversation who is an L&D manager - I'll ask you about sort of what an individual employee should short or can do and in a second - but from the L&D manager's perspective, if you're in charge of learning programs, What advice would you give to that person who says, okay, well, I see this may be a problem. Maybe we don't really have structures in place to address it. Is there a next step? Is it unreasonable to say, well, look, I'm going to go to my head of HR or my C-suite, depending on the structure of the company, and start advocating for (blank)? Where would you advise someone to start?

Pamela Johnson
That's a tough question. I think that, again, if you're going to bring that up, if you're going to say, this is why I think that we should be valuing these people, you're going to have to be able to tie it to some benefit to the company um and not necessarily a squishy benefit to the company.

You know, this person has all this experience. Yeah, we got a lot of people with experience. So why should we emphasize older women as opposed to men older men? So you have to be able to look at your organization and say, okay, here are the, you know, the 10 women that I see in this organization of 100 who have worked here for more than 10 years, who have, you know, done this while they were raising a family. So, you know, they certainly know how to manage their time, don't they?

Because they have this skill that many men do not because they haven't gone through exactly the same trial by fire in many cases. You know, so you have to be able to, to, to, to Plan it out and don't just say, we think that these people have value. Here are the values. Be able to enumerate exactly what you think you're getting from it and why that's important in terms of the bottom line. You know, so many times when yeah when I'm seeing that older folks are being forced out of the workplace, sometimes it's because companies don't want to give them their stock benefits, that, you know, the restricted stock that they would get if they stayed with the company for another 10 years. That's incredibly common.

But they also aren't thinking about, you know, okay, we have this this group of interns over here and we have this older worker over here. If we put those two together, we might have something really remarkable. That's not how it usually works. You know, you have the younger people in the organization who have been there, you know, let's say five years. So people in their late 20s, mostly, who are mentoring the interns rather than the people who have been there for 35 years mentoring the interns and really showing them how the company has grown, all of the different places there are to move within the company. And that's another thing that would be really helpful is if companies really focus more on, OK, you're an older worker. You've been doing this for so long. What else would you like to do in this company?

Where else would you like to land? Continue to mentor them the same way you do someone who is 25 years old and wants to build a career with the company.

LJ
And I have to say your last suggestion is kind of spot on from my own personal experience. The last five roles that I had at the company, out of those five, three of them didn't exist until someone looked at me and said, hey, wait, can't you do this? Don't you think we need something like this, someone with this experience? I think that might be you. And that's rare. That's very rare.

And it's more than, it's the post hiring. It's not like necessarily looking aggressively for it. It's internally making sure that you as an individual in an organization are connecting with people that know what you have done and that you can talk very clearly about what you have contributed and how what you have contributed to the skills and the attributes that you've been using can also be valuable somewhere else.

And I don't know that we um take advantage of making sure that we ourselves understand what we bring to the table all the time. And I think that's the same for both men and women, but women maybe ah a little bit more, but you have to be your own advocate as well, but regardless of what your age is. And you just have to be smart about what you have as your skillset and your attributes and how you think they can also apply somewhere else to continue to grow opportunities.

And as you as you continue to age and you grow these opportunities, it's amazing um how you can go back and pull something from three, four, five years ago forward and bring it to a team.

And to be able to do that really takes, I think, a corporate culture to be able to do that as well. And the internal relationships that would have confidence in you to be able to allow you to do that.

Pamela Johnson
And for the corporation to say that it's part of their value that people self promote because men have a really easy time self promoting and that's expected of them.

They're expected to argue about how much they get paid. They're expected to you know say, I want to go for this promotion or that promotion. And unfortunately, culturally, women are a not trained to do that at all um and be frowned on. It's frowned upon frequently. You know, that woman is seen as too ambitious or, you know, too greedy or, you know, when they are displaying exactly the same characteristics as the man is in the same positions.

LJ
Yeah, you could you could disguise the voices in the conversation. It would be the female and the male saying the same thing.

Pamela Johnson
Exactly. But that but that is again, that has to be something that is developed culturally by the company.

LJ
Culturally. Yeah, I think it's a cultural thing.

It is an absolute cultural thing, because even as I've moved through the organization, there were certain chunks of culture in the organization that were responsive to it and other ones that weren't um simply because wasn't, you can't, you know, and when you get over, you know, 600,000 people, it's hard to keep track of everything as an organization. It just is.

And that's where the building of relationships is so important, but you have to have that organization, the organization has to appreciate that and want you to be able to do that for yourself.

Scott Rutherford
Yeah, I really like that the suggestion of providing older workers with, you know, a next step. That's ah something organizations don't do that particularly well. If you reach your senior level role, maybe a Director-level role, and that's where you are kind of expected to sit. Whereas if you think a little bit more laterally in your organization, how do we get the best value out of this person's skills?

Internal consulting, which is, again, my term on what you're describing, but... Seems like a really powerful model to follow to say, how do we take how do we take this person who has been ah a senior level functional expert, perhaps, ah and move them over to a internal consulting role on the ah internal innovation or learning and development team or some other cross-functional team to grow the business.

Pamela Johnson
Or also, I think a good suggestion along those lines also, Scott, is, you know, if indeed you have some concern about, the number of older workers that you have or whatever, work out something where it is a graduated retirement.

So they are passing the knowledge along over a series of years. It's the same way as working out a succession plan.

And the succession plan should include older workers. You don't go from being the guy who's 65 retiring and turn all of your stuff over to the 35 year old. You look for the person who's 55, who's 10 years behind you, who can do this for the next 10 years. But companies all too often, and I literally hear these words all the time in my cases, we need someone with at least a 15 year runway.

Why? Why do you need that? If you're actually organized and doing succession planning correctly, you could have someone who is in a role for five years and really, really push the goals of the company far forward because they already know how the company works. They know where the weak spots are. They know where the strong spots are.

But there is this this thought that in succession planning, you always have to get someone who's about 15 years younger so that they can carry on the torch. And I just don't think, A, I don't think that's realistic and it certainly is not in the best interest of the company most of the time.

Scott Rutherford
It does seem to fly a little bit in the face of the data, which shows us people don't stay that long in those positions anyway.

Pamela Johnson
Exactly.

Scott Rutherford
So before we close, I've really enjoyed this so far, but I didn't want to forget to take this conversation from the perspective of the individual woman in an organization who is encountering these issues. I think there's a lot of a lot of advice that we've given so far, but I wanted to close on this thought just to say, okay, well, you know if you're in this spot, if this is your life and you, you, and you are experiencing a workplace discrimination or bias like we've been discussing, is there, is there a piece of advice i that you can, that you can share as sort of, okay, well, what, what, what should you do? Pamela, I'll start with you.

Pamela Johnson
Well, put it in writing. That's very important. Put it in writing and send it to your boss and send it to HR. ah That's very hard for a lot of people to do because they don't want to stir the pot or  there is a huge, huge fear of retaliation. And the reason that there's a fear of retaliation is though is even though many companies have a non-retaliation clause, you still see it.

But without people starting to do that, without people starting to actually document and say, here's what I see happening to me, there isn't a way to affect change.

Because if you're the first person who does it, they're like, well, no one has ever said that to us before. So we don't really think it's a problem. After 25 people have said it to you, then you start to recognize that's a problem.

Scott Rutherford
Thanks, Pamela. LJ, what do you think?

LJ
I like the documentation avenue, but of in a slightly different way. I think that a lot of organizations, their annual reviews don't really take into account what someone is actually contributing, right? They may look at it from a dollar value or something.

I always think that having your story from that year and the how you progress from that prior year, very well written out with tangible data, whether it's sales figures or whatever's important to your role at that point in time, having that documented in a very consistent way over the ah lifetime of your career is so important because you can easily go back to that and pull a fact or a stat from it.

So very similar so what you're suggesting, Pamela, but um make it a part of something that you're, the process that is already set up in your organization so that you can say, I um train these 100,000 people in this sales skills, and these people have contributed now X millions of dollars of sales versus what they did last year. Right. It's figuring out that ah ROI for what you're bringing to the table. And don't wait till two years later to document because then you forget.

So it's important to get that done, I think, on an annual basis. What have you contributed? And even if it doesn't fit into the plan that you have for an annual review, do it for yourself and keep it for yourself.

Scott Rutherford
Yeah, it's ah it's a framework to advocate from, to self-advocate from.

Pamela Johnson
I agree with that.

LJ
Self-advocate, a point of knowledge to self-advocate, where you're not scrambling around trying to be like oh, my God, how many people were there? I don't know. Yeah, takes work.

Pamela Johnson
And if there is ah an ability to get that information in front of your skip level, you know your boss's boss, even better. That is the way to really start affecting change.

LJ
Great point.

Scott Rutherford
Well, I think that's a perfect place to end it. ah Pamela, Laurie, LJ, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time, and your insights, and your thoughts.

Pamela Johnson
Thank you so much, Scott.

Scott Rutherford
This has been the AXIOM Insights Learning and Development podcast. This podcast is a production of AXIOM Learning Solutions. AXIOM is a learning and development services firm with a network of learning professionals in the US and worldwide, supporting learning and development (L and D) teams with learning staff augmentation and project support for instructional design, content management, content creation, and more, including training, delivery and facilitation, both in person and virtually. To learn more about how AXIOM can help you and your team achieve your learning goals, visit axiomlearningsolutions.com and thanks again for listening to the AXIOM Insights podcast.

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