Is Age a Factor in Today’s Job Market? by Lily Z. Winsaft

Discrimination is the unjust or bias treatment of a person, especially on the grounds of race, ethnicity, gender, age, religious affiliation or sexual orientation. No one likes to be discriminated against and at some point in all of our lives we each experience some form of discrimination. Aside from the categories mentioned, you may have experienced unfair treatment because of being physically disadvantaged in some way, or for being overweight, or underweight, or because of not being particularly attractive or because you wear glasses, or you’re a “brain” or whatever, you get I’m saying. There are tons of scenarios under which a person might be discriminated against.

Brooklyn, N.Y. was the playground of my youth and it is where I experienced significant discrimination for the first time in my life. I was a young girl of 5 when my family immigrated to the United States from Colombia, South America. It was the mid-‘60’s and Martin Luther King’s “I Have Dream” speech was still fresh in the minds of anyone that could understand the impact of such a brilliant and inspirational address. Even though the Civil Rights movement was aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans, those of us who weren’t African American but who were also being discriminated against felt the movement deeply.

Back then people that spoke Spanish were called “Spicks.” It was definitely not fun being singled out and treated differently because you were from a foreign country and spoke another language. As I got a little older and could speak English perfectly, I learned to hide my ethnicity. It was easy for me to blend with the mainstream because I was blond and fair-skinned. I became what I call a “closet Latina” and, in a world where I didn’t “look” or sound different, I was no longer discriminated against. I learned how to play the “American Game” just like every other American. I even excelled at it.

Fast-forward to 2010 – Civil Rights may have come a long way, but life still isn’t fun for those unfortunate millions of immigrants that suffer discrimination today. And we are in the midst of one of the worst economic times the world has witnessed in a century and probably the worst job market our nation or any of us has ever gone through (unless you actually did live through the Great Depression). In many states we are experiencing unemployment to the tune of 8, 9 and even 10% or more (12% in California, 14% in Nevada). It is a time of huge competition among job seekers. It is an environment where you have to stand out and be different, in a very positive way. You must look a lot better than the competition, and in more ways than one. It’s extreme competition. You have to be armed with experience (and have done a great job of managing your career), education, a charming personality, raw intelligence, creativity, values galore, etc. And let’s face it, companies today are looking for go-getters, young bucks full of “piss and vinegar” ready to conquer the world. Or are they?

So, is age a factor in today’s job market? You bet it is! I know it exists because candidates try to hide their age by eliminating years of experience off their resumes, taking out dates from their education, and bluntly tell me that they feel they were denied a position because of their age, whether because they were “downsized” from their existing position or passed on for another candidate during an interview process. They usually were told they are “overqualified.” The economic climate has also lent itself to companies having tighter budgets, leaving less room for the high salaries most senior professionals are accustomed to receiving. If a company can get away with hiring younger, less expensive candidates, they’re doing it.

I also know it exists because sometimes I hear from clients that they want someone “at the right time and place in their career; someone not over-qualified,” which can sometimes mean they prefer someone young. Sometimes I even get a “How old are they?” Of course I cannot answer that question because I never know since it is illegal to ask someone their age when they are applying for a job. Even though I know that some companies do discriminate because of age, more often when my clients make these statements, what they really mean is that they want someone that will be challenged in the role and not leave within a year to pursue higher pay or a more ambitious role. What I have found is that most of my clients are looking for the right fit, no matter what age the person is. But the right fit is also more often about corporate culture. So if you have an “old person” way of thinking and the company has a “young person” way of thinking, chances are you won’t fit in.

A recent Newsweek article talked about the legalities of age discrimination. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, there’s been a 17% jump in the number of age-discrimination complaints filed in the last 3 years. But not enough people report discrimination because they are either unaware of the laws or they just give up any hope of winning such a case. It costs money and takes time to litigate. Most people would rather focus on finding a job. The Newsweek article goes on to say that most people that do file a complaint do so because they were terminated. It’s easy for them to prove someone younger replaced them. But discrimination in hiring is much harder to prove, almost impossible, since there are always a multitude of reasons for a candidate to not be selected.

Another interesting note this Newsweek article made is that to make matters worse, a Supreme Court ruling in June 2009 has put the burden of proof on age discrimination on the candidate. Now older workers have to prove that age was the sole reason for being denied a job, which is pretty much impossible to do.

There are many excellent articles online that can help guide you in dealing with age discrimination. Here’s one I recommend: http://www.quintcareers.com/older_worker_tips.html that gives great tips on tactics to use if you are an older job seeker.

We live in a society that idolizes youth, and this view is overtly expressed in the media and everywhere around us. In our culture being “old” is not something that is desirable. It’s called ageism. How sad that is. [There are a few cultures on our planet where the elderly are held in the highest esteem, respect and are revered. In these societies people live to be over 100 and do so in great health.] We have come to expect that with age, our bodies decline in health, our minds weaken and our capacities to perform become compromised. For many, this belief become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are over 40, chances are great that you believe you will be discriminated against during your career or job search because of your age. When someone asks me if their age is a factor in why they are having a hard time finding a job, I always respond, “Do you believe your age is a factor in why you are not finding a job?” If they say, “Yes” I answer, “Ok, then it is.”

A recently published book called “How Starbucks Saved my Life,” written by a displaced veteran of a well known Madison Avenue advertising agency illustrates the reality of corporate age discrimination. It’s a great story of how one man turned the misfortune of being let go after years and years of service (during which time he made all kinds of personal sacrifices) because of his age and replaced by someone younger, into the adventure and growth experience of his life. I loved this book because it validates my theory that life is all about perspective. Your life is about your perspective of it. It’s about how you see it and how you react to it. For most people, life ends up being about what happens to them. In other words, their life becomes about circumstances.

Maturity, life experience and wisdom helped me to “come out of the closet” and I eventually stopped hiding. Today I stand tall and proud of my heritage and ethnicity and talk about it publicly and often. I no longer experience discrimination for being from a foreign country or because I speak Spanish. In fact, speaking Spanish has helped me in my life and in my business exponentially. I have built a business that focuses on helping companies hire talent with multiple languages, a skill that is scarce among Americans.

Since I am part of the baby boom generation, which consists of 76 million individuals born between 1946 and 1964, I now have the opportunity to experience significant discrimination for the second time in my life…age discrimination. My choice, however, is to stand tall and be proud of my age. My choice is to be grateful for the knowledge, wisdom, experience and capacities that I bring to the table with everything I do. My choice is to teach others how to overcome their insecurities about their age and to teach them to leverage their age for the great opportunities that lay before them. I choose grace and appreciation for the gifts that time has bestowed upon me. How wonderful! A chance to show the world that I can be and do whatever I say I can, no matter how old I am. These are my choices. What are yours?

No matter what category or categories your persona falls into, you will experience some form of discrimination in your life. You have the choice to say, “That’s life,” and make the best of it, even use it as an advantage. Ways in which you can leverage or powerfully manage your “older age” in your job search are:

• Make sure you understand clearly what your strengths are and that you can talk about them powerfully. Focus on these throughout any and all interactions you have with the prospective employer.
• Identify the “specialist” in you. There is one thing we are all really, really good at. Leverage this strength in particular; it has evolved within you for many years; a company can greatly benefit from it they know you possess it.
• Don’t be afraid to talk about the mistakes you’ve made that have taught you the biggest lessons throughout your career. Companies want wise people among them. Also, keep in mind that today companies are lacking sufficient mentors to help guide a younger workforce.
• Do as much research on the company you are targeting as possible; try to identify a problem or weakness they have that you can bring immediate relief to (most likely that a younger, less experienced person wouldn’t be able to).
• Keep up with trends in technology and be a participant of these trends; demonstrate that age hasn’t slowed you down.
• Exercise regularly to keep in shape and to have a better energy level; companies always want to hire energetic people. If you look physically tired, you will not be selected for a second interview.
• Make sure you are being enthusiastic and passionate about life, your profession and what lies in front of you. Don’t allow your circumstances to let you feel and look like you’ve been beat up. They’ll see right through you. No one wants to hire a “beat up” person!

 

Of course you can always keep hiding and looking out for that next blow that gives you even more evidence that you are being discriminated against. And then, when it happens as expected, well then, you get to be right.

The Power of Well Being

By Lily Z. Winsaft

Disease. We all know what it is…the lack or absence of ease expressed as a physical condition. Lack of ease also expresses itself in our mental and emotional bodies. Disease has to do with imbalance; it usually starts off as either mental or emotional distress, which when left unmanaged can wreck havoc on the physical body. Well-being, on the other hand, is about balance. We all desire well-being – it implies a level of quality in our life that is pleasing, joyful even. Quality of Life (QOL) has become a major buzzword within the human resources arena. That’s because every employee wants it. Every human being deserves it.

Nature has bestowed upon us miraculous bodies capable of healing. When we understand that we are not merely a physical body, but rather that we inhabit our physical body and that we also possess a mental body, an emotional and a spiritual body, and that these bodies are intertwined, each affecting the other at all times, then we can begin to take more notice of our thoughts and emotions. Our thoughts and emotions are indicators of how we feel, what we believe, how we “vibrate” in the world and consequently impact how our bodies move within it.

Lack of physical, emotional and/or mental health impacts us negatively in our professional performance and in our life. We must seek balance because the personal always spills into the professional – it can’t not. That’s because all the aspects of our being intertwine and connect to form that one miraculous machine – the human body – along with its mind and emotions. It’s that intertwined body that goes to work every day, whether it is well or not.

Stress is a major precursor to illness; it’s a sure sign of lack of ease. Stress can start off with worry or anxiety and can lead to anger, fear, despair and resignation. It is demonstrated when we express impatience with our fellow workers or when we feel a loss of joy in doing a project. We exude stress when we use sarcasm or insults to communicate our disapproval of someone. Stress has many faces and many forms. Whatever it looks or feels like though, it means there is imbalance. When negative emotions are not properly managed, these electrical impulses (everything is energy) travel to our core as toxins causing our bodies to react in defense. Unfortunately, the defense mechanism itself can cause the levels of acidity in our system to climb. Repeated high levels of acidity create a perfect environment for disease.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost 10% of our population is in fair or poor health. Of persons 18-20 or older, more than 20% smoke, about 30% are obese and 32% have hypertension. These conditions precede the leading causes of death – cancer, heart disease and stroke. Almost 1.5 million people die annually of these diseases and each of them is preventable.

It’s no wonder that corporations are seeing the importance of health and wellness as it relates to performance on the job. Study after study has demonstrated that companies that implement wellness programs witness marked results such as increased productivity, lower healthcare costs, decreased workers comp claims, less absenteeism (60% is attributable to stress), fewer errors on the job, lower incidence of workplace injuries, employee retention, etc.

Companies that are successfully (quantifiably) implementing wellness programs include, IBM, General Motors, the Coca Cola Company, Dupont, Coors Brewing Co., Prudential, H.J. Heinz, Johnson & Johnson (where a 4-year wellness program involving 18,000 employees saved the company $8.5 million a year in reduced health care costs), Citibank and so many more. These companies are integrating wellness practices and reaping grand rewards ranging from a few dollars to several hundred dollars per employee annually.

One of my favorite examples is Del Monte Foods where in addition to providing state of the art physical fitness centers complete with showers and locker rooms for employees, they also do fun things like healthy cooking demonstrations hosted by a Del Monte nutritionist and their annual Del Monte Fitness Cup, which is all about taking walking to the next level.

Preventable illness represents about 90% of all healthcare costs. That’s why BeWell Atlanta, a new local organization whose philosophy, “…We believe, without a doubt, wellness encompasses seven key dimensions – physical, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental, and occupational.  With one dimension out of sync – your mind, body, and spirit suffer,” has it right. They provide corporations with access to a variety of wellness programs to offer their employees. Most provide incentives to employees taking positive steps toward preventative care, such as quitting smoking or getting regular check ups. One exciting program they offer is “Yoga Under the Sea,” yoga sessions conducted under the backdrop of Georgia Aquarium exhibits.

Knowledge is the key to unlocking the secrets of creating a health-oriented culture. Human resources professionals can help by keeping up to date with new technology and staying abreast of the latest and greatest ideas to motivate and reward employees that maintain preventative health practices. All you gotta do is “Google.” Professionals responsible for the human resources of a company can also help by genuinely caring about the very people that the organization relies on to prosper and by making sure that budgets include ongoing programs to educate and execute on wellness. In the new world economy, there is little room for mediocrity.

Bottom line, companies with fewer health-related incidences perform better both in terms of profits and sustainability. If you want to attract and retain top talent and provide employees with a place where they will thrive and reach their full potential, you must create an environment of well-being, a culture that walks the QOL talk. Organizational longevity relies on individual resilience and stability. Optimum performance and true potential can only be reached by individuals that achieve a state of being well in every aspect of their life.

References:

1. CHD Meridian Healthcare, White Paper, “Driving Employee Wellness and Productivity through Integrated Workplace Health, Wellness and Fitness Centers,” 2007
2. Diane Reynolds, “Put Wellness to Work,” Corporate Wellness Magazine, 2009
3. Joyce Gannon, “Companies offer wellness programs to cut insurance costs,” Pittsburg Post-Gazette, 2008
4. Natural Healthcare, Canada, “Benefits of a Workplace Wellness Program,” 2008
5. Ron Z. Goetzel, PH.D; Ronald J. Ozminkowski, PH.D; Jennifer Bruno; Kathleen Rutter; Fikray Isaac, M.D.; Shaohung Wang, PH.D; “The Long-Term Impact of Johnson & Johnson’s Health & Wellness Program for Employee Health Risks,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2002
6. Wellness Proposals.com, Workplace Wellness Programs, 2009
7. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FASTATS – “How Healthy Are We?” 2006 – 2008

Awareness in the Workplace

By David Latendresse

CEO Really Living Enterprises/Sojourners International

Partner, Vision, Strategy & Operations Aldebaran Associates

 

Whether personally or professionally awareness is about being the conscious “cause” in connection, response and relationship with your own life rather than becoming the unconscious “effect” of your reactions and being erroneously informed and manipulated by the environment and energies that surround you.

Do you choose to live a conscious life or do you choose to live an unconscious one? Are you a victim or do you face life straight up and take on what is coming your way? Do you choose to take responsibility for the circumstances and results of your life or do you project onto and give away that responsibility to others?

Putting yourself in context and spatial relationship to the world around you while remaining centered in the dimensions within you and developing clarity in the choices that relate to these places and spaces while you’re moving in them is at the heart of awareness. It’s all about choices and being the cause of your own life, knowing yourself and understanding the power of this tool available within yourself. Bringing choices to the forefront in the most engaging and clarity driven way possible protects your potential and stops you from succumbing to the endless distractions and fragmentations of who you are. The impact of the choices you make steer how you move in the world, which impacts your life. It’s a simple equation.

There is no escaping the fact that choices are at the heart of everyone’s life. Your choices make up your life and there never is a shortage of them. If one thing is consistent in life it is that there are always choices to be made. To know this and to not make a choice is to make a choice. To not know to what extent choices are available to you or how you can apply them is simply lack of awareness. Knowing that you always have the choice to make a choice is fundamental to your survival and thriving in the world. Not identifying the parameters, facets, angles and nuances around choices, actions and movements puts you at a distinct disadvantage within the frameworks, competitions and achievements we are all dancing, living in and painting the canvas of our life with.
 

The practicalities that surround these dynamics intertwine, craft and shape our lives personally and professionally in real world circumstances and are the representation of who you are. You are at the center of your life which means you are at the center of your choices. You have the choice to live the life you were given in relationship to the Truth of who you are and how that looks and applies to every facet of your life. Do you know that you always have a choice within everything that is happening and all circumstances in your life? The awareness that you always have a choice to make a choice is the first step in working with awareness.

From the professional standpoint ask yourself “How am I impacting others in my organization and how do I let others impact me?” This question is key to the path you are traversing and will persist throughout your career. Job roles and responsibilities vary greatly, as do employee environments, but the one thing we have in common with each other no matter where we are and who we work for is our capacity to be aware of the spaces, places and people around us.

Giving yourself a much clearer view and understanding of the landscape in which you are operating in and from, utilizing and managing your consciousness intelligently to maneuver through an organization will make the difference between holistic success or empty success, between the fulfillment and reaching of your potential on the bigger scale and order of things vs. being a habitual and chronic smaller version of who you are which limits your contribution to those and the world around you.

You can only start from where you are, so explore and identify any sticking points, resistances, or consistent patterns in your career by making a list, drawing an image or writing in a journal. Talk to trusted friends and associates, see what they might see that you don’t. Meditate on this and take notes on what your insights are. Identify and nail these areas down in whatever way you can and begin the process of bringing as much awareness around them from a fundamental standpoint and it will go a long way in giving you the opportunity to achieve your vision of your life in how you see yourself achieving in an organization.

Being in relationship and collaborating with co-workers from a heightened sense of your awareness will give you a competitive edge. To see everything from the standpoint of awareness is to know yourself, which will give you more insight into others, equating to more intelligent interactions, helping you to maneuver through the organization while keeping your goals and vision alive.

Cultivating a relationship with your awareness is a lifelong endeavor. Just like any relationship, interact with and nurture it daily giving it time to develop and grow. Direct and apply it to different parts of your life, learn from it and it will pay great dividends over time.    

Awareness Mapping™ is a process I developed, a tool that actively keeps a person in conscious relationship with all dimensions of oneself while moving through one’s life journey personally and professionally. Bringing elements of personal enlightenment to your professional empowerment will bridge the gap and create momentum for the blossoming of an already exceptional career, but also for the otherwise unfulfilling or stagnant career path while opening the doors to a great deal of possibility, choice and creativity.