Examples Of Age Discrimination In The Workplace

The clearest examples of age discrimination in the workplace follow the employment lifecycle, because each stage has its own way of going wrong.

• Advertising. Wording that codes for age. Recent graduate, digital native, high energy, or a maximum years of experience.
• Shortlisting. Filtering by graduation year, or skipping a CV with a long career history to avoid an overqualified hire.
• Interview. Asking about retirement plans, or whether someone would mind reporting to a younger manager.
• Training. Offering a new system rollout to the team under 40 because the rest will find it hard.
• Promotion. Passing over a candidate as too near the end of their career, or too green regardless of assessed capability.
• Redundancy. Selection criteria that quietly track age, such as proximity to retirement or salary band.

Younger workers experience it too, usually as exclusion from decisions and slower access to responsibility. The Australian Human Rights Commission publishes guidance on age discrimination in employment. This is general information rather than legal advice.

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