Employability and discrimination, with particular

reference to age

Dr Pamela Clayton, University of Glasgow

July 2003

Presented to the SEQUAL Development Partnership

The philosophy of employability

'Employability' is NOT informed by

the marxist philosophy of 'to each according to his(/her) need, from

each according to his(/her) ability'

or by

the social democratic philosophy that everyone has a right to gainful

employment and that full employment is desirable.

Rather, it comes from the liberal idea, based on the ethos of self-help, self-
determination and responsibility, that, in general, there is a level playing field
and it is the responsibility of the individual to make him/herself fit for gainful
employment. There is a role for the state (as Adam Smith stated) in providing
a safety net for the minority who need it and basic education and health for all.
The latter are essential for economic development and employers need an
educated healthy workforce. The state is expected to provide people fit to
become workers but beyond that to intervene as little as possible.

The notion of the ‘employable’ worker

The concept of ‘employability’ is employer-led, specifically by private sector

employer organisations such as the CBI, but it has been taken up as a key

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concept and policy area, first by the British government and subsequently by
the European Commission. Since, in classical economic theory, the raison
d’être of profit-making organisations (and increasingly by public-sector
organisations under pressure from tax-cutting and expenditure-reducing
governments) is to minimise costs. Since the majority of these are staff costs
(including training budgets), they prefer new employees to be ‘job-ready’ - that
is, provided via the state and university education sectors with:

• basic skills, including literacy and numeracy;

• transferable skills, including communication, customer handling, teamwork,

problem-solving, learning to learn and, increasingly, ICT skills;

• and a reasonable level of occupation-specific skills, involving specialised

knowledge and abilities.

Also desirable are personal attributes including motivation and disciplined

attitudes towards work, learnt and demonstrated principally through prior
employment.

All employers then need to do is to give training in highly specialised skills and
in changing technologies and new skill needs. Furthermore, in areas of skills
shortage, ‘poaching’ workers from similar firms is a common way of finding
qualified recruits. The most employable workers, then, are those who already
have jobs and the required skills, particularly in areas of skills shortage, and
who can show evidence of having taken responsibility for their own learning1.

Since the truly ‘employable’ worker has, among many other talents, ‘learnt
how to learn’ in a self-directed way, a minimum need be spent on workforce
development. It is also important to remember that SMEs make up the great
majority of businesses in any European country, and without some form of
training subsidy or co-operative training arrangement it can be difficult for
firms to carry out adequate and good-quality training. There are, however,
small firms who do this, particular in high-technology industries2.

So who pays - in time and money - for employability? Since public spending
comes from direct and indirect taxation, workers and would-be workers

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contribute greatly to their own ‘employability’, particularly if they take up
courses on their own account and at their own expense.

Discrimination: the business case?

The classical idea that businesses invariably aim to maximise profit is, in fact,
compromised in a variety of ways. For example, some appear - to
shareholders in particular but also to governments - to seek profit for directors
at the expense of the company and its shareholders ; small business owners,
on the other hand, may seek autonomy rather than profit maximisation. Greed
and independence, then, may be greater values than profit. Nevertheless,
profitability, competitiveness and productivity are still the bottom line in many
cases and are, indeed, necessary for survival in the private sector.

Given the official line on ‘employability’ - that is, that anyone is employable
who has all the skills summarised in the previous section - one might not
expect it to co-exist with discrimination. Age, sex, disability, ethnicity, sexual
orientation, postcode, all should be irrelevant provided the person can do the
job … especially in a context of near ‘full employment’ (traditionally about two
per cent residual unemployment, consisting of people in transition between
jobs and the ‘unemployable’, that is, people who either do not wish to work or
have great difficulties which prevent them from working) where recruitment
poses difficulties for firms in some sectors. So it is necessary to discover why
negative discrimination nevertheless exists.

There are, arguably, three (at least) factors behind discrimination; prejudice;
stereotyped perceptions; and cost (real and perceived). These overlap but I
have tried to give examples for each:

1. Prejudice: this includes the ideas that people’s value is based on their
current employment status, class, sex [in certain sectors], age, religion [in
certain areas], ethnicity, nationality, colour, sexual preference and physical
and emotional ‘normality’. Such ideas give rise to, for example, sexism,
xenophobia, racism, ageism and homophobia. Hence some (valued) jobs
are fit only for men ; ‘white’ people are more intelligent than others ; ‘crazy’
people are best avoided ; young people (but not too young) are of more

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 value than old ones ; teenagers are feckless and probably criminal or
addicts ; people living in certain districts (obvious from the home postcode)
are shiftless and work-shy; unemployed people are probably not fit to be
employed, irrespective of how they became unemployed …

2. Stereotyped perceptions of risk: for example, that workers will not accept
gay co-workers ; that women’s periods make them unreliable for certain
kinds of work ; that mental health problems pose risks for others ; that
older workers can’t learn new things and aren’t worth training or hiring. In
other words, some groups pose more risks than others. We should note
that there is often some truth in stereotypes, but that these truths can be
the result of self-fulfilling prophecies and misinterpretation.

3. Cost: a CBI Director told me that Health and Safety legislation was already
costly - to employ people with disabilities would add to that cost. Maternity
leave is an obvious example of added cost, and since health declines with
age, older workers could be more expensive than younger ones in terms of
sick leave (though this is not proven). If customers will not tolerate black
shop assistants they will shop elsewhere, so keep the front line white. For
large firms, there is also the fact that recruitment costs can be very high
(as much as £20,000 per worker), so a mistake in recruitment can be
expensive - better go for the safe option than test new waters.

Hence, the liberal ideology of equal worth and value is rather like Athenian
democracy - limited to a small section of the population. Outside a particular
group (stereotypically, young -but not too young; male - though only in high-
status occupations; white; educated - except for the ‘over-qualified’; and
middle class), it is not enough that individuals are ‘employable’ - they (or
advocates on their behalf) have to prove it with much greater effort than is
equitable.

Discrimination: the cost

The above does not apply to all employers. Some make positive efforts
towards a ‘diverse’ workforce and/or spend considerable resources on training
and developing their employees. Others see that there is a good business

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case for hiring formerly ‘unwanted’ groups. One such group is that of older
people (who can be as young as 45 or even 35 in some industries); another is
very young people, especially if they have no previous employment.

According to the Employers’ Forum on Age, there is a good business case for
challenging age stereotypes and assumptions, excluding prejudice from
employment decisions, viewing people of different age groups and
backgrounds as potential employees and recruiting and promoting solely on
merit and potential. Age diversity brings commercial benefits by helping to
create a ‘skilled and motivated workforce’ which meets the needs of an age-
diverse customer base; by becoming ‘an employer of choice in an increasingly
competitive labour market’; and by building ‘its reputation as an ethical and
intelligent employer … (which) has been shown to impact favourably on stock-
market performance’ (http://www.efa-agediversity.org.uk/what-is.htm). Thus
‘the business case for age diversity is founded on plain common sense. It can
help companies adapt successfully to new markets, and keep them aligned
with evolving legislation and social trends. Age diversity also counters the
threat from a shrinking, ageing workforce, which combines with prejudice to
create the kind of skills vacuums seen in this photograph’ (http://www.efa-
agediversity.org.uk).

One example is B&Q, which staffed one entire store with older workers and
found it was the most profitable in the country. They now have a policy of
seeking to recruit older workers. Another is the Nationwide Building Society,
which abolished the compulsory retirement age and is very satisfied with the
results3.

Conclusion

Despite claims that individuals must be ‘employable’, some individuals are

‘more equal than others’ and many employers are averse to the risk of hiring
people from certain sections of the population, through prejudice, stereotyping
or fear of risk, especially to profit, competitiveness and productivity. The sub-
text to ‘employable’ is ‘normal’ in addition to the other attributes of
‘employability’ such as the possession of a range of skills. In the light of

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legislation, some already enacted and other forthcoming, intended to combat
discrimination in employment, employers will be legally obliged to eliminate
discriminatory practices. Whether they actually do so, and how effectively this
can be monitored, are open questions.

Endnotes
1
Anecdotal evidence from Open University students and from a survey,
Personal, Social and Vocational Outcomes of Learning in the West of
Scotland, carried out by the author and published in a series of articles,
suggests that at least some employers are impressed by adults who
undertake learning on their own account and either hire or promote such a
learner. See, for example, P. Clayton and M. Slowey, ‘Toward the ‘flexible’
workforce? Implications for gender and the education and training of adults’,
Scottish Journal of Adult and Continuing Education 1996 and ‘Was it worth it?
A comparison of the role of adult education and training in the labour market
insertion and progress of men and women in the West of Scotland: results of
qualitative research’, International Journal of Lifelong Learning 2000.
2
Much of this section is based on a research report by the author, Tremplin,
Skills Mismatches and the Role of VET: The United Kingdom National Report,
available at http://www.gla.ac.uk/tremplin/BritishReport_en.pdf

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For other examples, see http://www.efa.org.uk, the Employers’ Forum on
Age. Core members are Barclays Bank, BBC, BT, B&Q, Cabinet Office,
Centrica, CIPD, Dept. for Work & Pensions, DfES, GlaxoSmithKline, HSBC
Bank, Leeds Met. University, Manpower, Marks & Spencer, Nationwide
Building Society, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Royal Mail, Sainsburys and
Shell. It is supported by Age Concern England.