Grants

Columbia University

To build on the momentum of the previous Age Smart Employer Awards to raise awareness of employers about the value of an age-diverse workforce and effective strategies to recruit, engage, and retain older workers

  • Amount $449,944
  • City New York, NY
  • Investigator Ruth Finkelstein
  • Year 2016
  • Program Research
  • Sub-program Working Longer

This grant supports a third year of the Age Smart Employer Awards, an annual awards program that honors innovative New York City employers who have adopted effective strategies to recruit, engage, and retain older workers. Emerging research shows that older workers offer distinct advantages to employers. As a group, they are viewed by managers and human resource professionals as motivated, reliable, loyal, and superior in interpersonal communication skills compared to younger workers. Additional research suggests that workforces that are heterogeneous in terms of age are more creative than homogeneous ones. Additionally, because older workers mirror aging consumers, they relate to customers in a growing “silver economy.”  Yet, these advantages are often discounted or offset by employers’ concerns about the costs of employing older workers. The Age Smart Employer Awards aim to combat these concerns by honoring those employers who are successfully facilitating age-diverse workforces. Grant funds will support the administration of a third year of the awards; outreach and publicity efforts; the development of a new tool to help employers understand, identify, and articulate Age Smart practices and policies; expansion of the awards to three new localities; and efforts to expand the Awards’ institutional partners.

Back to grants database
We use cookies to analyze our traffic. Please decide if you are willing to accept cookies from our website.