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Support Wise Owls Campaign for an Age Audit of all employees in the public sector.

Wise Owls believe now is a perfect time for all public sector organisations such as government departments, local authorities, NHS, fire, police, ambulance services and quangos, to carry out an employee and recruitment audit of their staff. The grouping should clearly divide those who are currently in the workforce and those who have been recruited in the last year.

The 3 age group categories should be the under 25s, 25 -49 and the over 50s. This base line figure can then be used to establish an understanding of what the current situation in relation to age diversity in the work place actually is. 

Once these figures are known, they should then be published with some indication from senior management as to how they will progress from that base line, ensuring an improvement of diversity within the work place. 

Wise Owls believes that, as after one year of ‘anti age discrimination’ legislation little appears to have changed, this audit needs to be carried out as soon as possible. The benefits of carrying out this work will be in showing how well or poorly different organisations are applying age diversity, especially in relation to the overall population breakdown by age. When employee audits for ethnicity and race were carried out over twenty years ago showing large disparities in the workforce, and between the make up of the workforce of local authorities and the break down of the ethnicity of their client population, it provided a catalyst for positive change.   

The reason we are starting this campaign by targeting public sector organisations is three fold:

Firstly we believe the government, which has introduced this legislation should ensure they have good practice in place and that public sector organisations act as an exemplar to other sectors. We would hope that once this process is under way we will be able to persuade larger employers and PLCs, starting with those signed up to the Age Positive campaign, to follow suit.   

Secondly all our research and feedback has indicated that over the last 17 years up to now the public sector - particularly local authorities and such central departments as the Foreign Office - operated in an ageist way and that the impact of staff cutbacks was predominantly aimed at the over 50s. However hard evidence of this practice is difficult to obtain, with many public sector organisations quoting only their policies and procedures  with no reference to their actual and current practice in who they are hiring and firing . This auditing would help government, public sector management and campaigning organisations such as ourselves to develop strategies to rectify this situation. In addition it will provide a boost to best practice and encourage those organisations like Job Centre Plus who have introduced age diversity with positive publicity and encourage others to follow.  

Finally it should be easier for public sector organisations to carry out such audits given the way in which they regularly collect and have on their databases the information needed for a fast, and low cost auditing operation. We would really appreciate your support in this in both adding your name to our campaign and practically encouraging public sector organisations to carry this out, kick starting the age diversity good practice across the UK, which can then encourage other sectors and organisations to get involved. 

Wise Owls were the first specialist website and employment / support agency for workers over 45 in London. We also participated greatly in the consultation process to bring in the legislation. Now Age discrimination is law and although this is a welcome beginning more needs to be done to ensure the new law has an immediate and fruitful impact.

We would like everyone who supports this campaign to send us an email to support1@wiseowls.co.uk  stating that you support the campaign and would like the government to act on this in the very near future. We will then send these on to the appropriate minsters.

We would also ask anyone who is in a position to be able to authorise an audit of their own public sector (or other employer) to do so and to let us know both that your organisation will be carrying out such an audit and then to send us the results as part of your dissemination of that information to the public. We will of course be happy to promote you as exemplars of good practice, hopefully then followed up by a strategy to overcome any age discrimination that comes to light. To inform us of your intention to carry out an audit or to let us know the results please email us at webmaster@wiseowls.co.uk 

To view our own audit - http://www.wiseowls.co.uk/news_04/news.php?news_id=425