United Kingdom: Survey Finds Gen Y Employees with Negative Attitude Toward Older Workers, Flextime

According to research conducted for the United Kingdom law firm Doyle Clayton, Generation Y employees have the most negative attitudes towards older employees and part-time and flexible workers. In addition, "Age Before Beauty? The Challenges Facing Britain's Managers in Overcoming Age and Gender Discrimination in the Workplace" reports that, according to their employees, micro businesses are Britain’s least discriminatory workplaces, and mid-sized businesses are where you are most likely to experience discrimination at work.

Among the key findings from "Age Before Beauty?" are:

• in micro businesses (1-9 employees), 96% of employees feel that age discrimination has never been an issue;
• in medium sized (50 – 249) and larger businesses, over 20% of employees had witnessed discrimination on grounds of age, whereas in micro businesses virtually no employee interviewed had witnessed it;
• 20% of employees at medium sized and large businesses view colleagues who work flexibly as less committed, whereas employees at micro businesses were consistently more positive; and
• Generation Y have the most discriminatory attitude toward flexible working and older workers, with 27.4% of those aged 25 to 34 seeing fellow employee working part-time as less committed, 31.1% seeing those working from home two or more days a week as less committed, and 18.3% (more than twice any other age group) seeing workers over 60 as less valuable.

Source: Doyle Clayton News (September 2, 2014)