“Dinobabies who should be extinct”.
As plans to oust older employees from its workforce are laid bare in internal emails between IBM executives, it is clear as day just how little they care about workplace diversity. With such dated and discriminatory opinions, maybe we need to question who the real ‘dinosaurs’ in this story are.
What these executive ‘fossils’ seem to have forgotten is that age discrimination is not only morally abhorrent, but also bad for business. Mixed-aged teams are more productive and creative; Gen Z and Millennials might bring new ideas and tech savvy to the table, but Gen X and Baby Boomers bring something even more valuable… experience!
A successful and socially responsible business in 2022 will understand this. They will have age-diverse teams, strategies in place to ensure that everyone can upskill regardless of their age, and protections to shield their employees from unfair discrimination in the workplace.
Our more mature colleagues deserve our respect and admiration. So, the next time you think your workplace looks more like ‘Jurassic Park’ than ‘Ready Player One’, just remember that, sometimes, a notebook is better than a laptop, a face-to-face conversation is better than a text message chain, and working with ‘dinosaurs’ is much better than learning about them on Tiktok…
