Bringing wellbeing and humanity back into recruitment

This is leading to a wellbeing crisis amongst the over 50s, with those still in work becoming anxious about the trajectory of their career, and those looking for work after company restructuring or redundancy feeling that they seem to fall at the first hurdle of finding a new job.

In a recent discussion at the CIPD, how to bring humanity back into recruitment was the main focus on a panel discussion entitled The inclusive workplace, where age is an asset. The panel discussion, chaired by Leah De Silva of the CIPD Trust, featured contributions from business leaders, recruiters, and workforce specialists to examine how demographic change, an ageing workforce, and candidate experience are reshaping the way employers need to think about hiring.

The panel concluded that the future of recruitment is not simply about faster technology or more efficient filtering, but about building processes that treat applicants as people rather than data. This will become particularly as people’s working lives lengthen and their career paths become less linear and more fluid.

The demographic shift that threatens wellbeing in older workers

Across economies in the West, the workforce is ageing. With the exception of China, countries in Asia face less of a problem, but in the UK and Europe longer life expectancy, later retirement, and changing financial pressures mean people are working into their 60s and beyond and there are many more older workers looking for jobs. For employers, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity because organisations now need to rethink how they recruit, develop, and retain talent at every life stage.

Opening the CIPD discussion, De Silva highlighted the growing importance of age inclusion within workplace policy, noting that age “deserves more time and more thought” as a protected characteristic. While diversity strategies have historically focused on gender and ethnicity, demographic trends mean age is becoming an increasingly important dimension of inclusion, but one that few companies hold any meaningful data on, she said.

Nevertheless, skills shortages in sectors such as technology, engineering, and finance are encouraging employers to reconsider their long-held assumptions about “ideal” candidates, whom they may think should be young people at the start of their career. The panel discussion urged a mindset change amongst employers to recognise the vast reserves of experience, knowledge, and adaptability that more experienced professionals can have, and the skills that those aged over 50 can bring to the workplace.

Experience as an organisational asset

For multinational employers such as Schneider Electric, the demographic shift is no longer theoretical. With 160,000 employees across more than 100 countries, the company operates with four to five generations working side by side. According to Christel Galbrun‑Noel, Vice President and Future Ready Program Lead, internal data had started to  reveal declining engagement among employees aged 51 and above, which in turn lead to a rethink on how older workers were treated.

Rather than focusing exclusively on early-career talent, the company introduced a global inclusion initiative targeting long-term career development for experienced professionals. The programme began with interviews designed to understand employees’ changing aspirations, especially as they reached their 50s, and came to identify four broad pathways:

Accelerate: “I want to continue grow. I want to become the CFO. I have talents. I want to get more responsibilities.”

Continue: “I’m confident with my current level of responsibility, I want to continue having the same kind of roles, maybe shifting approach.”

Pivot: “I want to pivot to a new role, transition my knowledge or support the younger members of staff to grow.”

Transition: “I want to prepare my retirement. I want to slowly transfer from my active role and look at the financial implications of a retirement plan.”

“Based on those four provides, we have developed offers that would suit either career growth or an environment of financing, caring, preparing for retirement or for knowledge transfer,” she explained. “We have pushed a lot for developing career conversations, particularly with the over 50s.”

This structured approach has enabled Schneider Electric to design flexible-working and mentoring programmes while encouraging more honest career conversations between employees and managers. The results have been measurable, with engagement scores rising and participation in development programmes increasing.

“Consider experience as a superpower,” she said. “Be aware that opportunities like flexible working are popular and benefit all generations.”

How can we make recruitment fairer and less ageist?

While many large organisations are designing internal talent programmes to focus on early career development, older workers are often neglected. According to David Fleming, Managing Director at Stanton House, a recruitment agency, structural issues persist across hiring systems and these can unintentionally disadvantage experienced applicants.

Since the advent of AI and algorithms being used to screen out candidates at the first stage, older workers may be disadvantaged and never make it to interview, he said. Screening tools, keyword-driven CV filtering, and even being unable to include older qualifications in a drop-down menu often help replicate existing biases.

Fleming noted that this unfairness stems from recruitment teams are looking for ways to streamline the hiring process, and responding individually to thousands of applications would require significant resources. Yet he acknowledged that the absence of communication and feedback during the hiring process creates widespread frustration among candidates, especially older ones, who vent their anger in LinkedIn discussion online.

For employers, he emphasised the importance of thinking carefully about the hiring criteria in an organisation. Employers frequently seek younger “future leaders” for permanent roles while hiring experienced professionals for interim assignments to stabilise operations or fill capability gaps, he said. This contrast highlights an inconsistency in talent strategy and means older workers are often overlooked for longer term and permanent roles. Instead, he argued for a skills-based recruitment process which would make hiring fairer and more equitable.

The heavy human cost of impersonal hiring

The emotional dimension of recruitment and career development is often overlooked in companies. For older jobseekers navigating automated systems, being repeatedly rejected without feedback can be discouraging, particularly if they are trying to pivot sectors or move to a career transition later in life.

As psychologist and career-development specialist Lucy Standing, co-founder of Brave Starts, explained uncertainty about career direction is itself a major barrier and a threat to wellbeing for many mid-career professionals. Changing sectors or returning to work after a break often requires individuals to re-evaluate not only their skills but also their professional identity.

She argues that CV-based filtering is a weak predictor of long-term job performance, particularly for candidates with non-linear career histories.

“Recruitment is broken,” she explained, highlighting how applicants frequently encounter silence after applying, little transparency or feedback, and scant opportunity for meaningful engagement with potential employers.

Finding purpose and wellbeing in careers over 50

The shift toward longer working lives also requires a reassessment of why you are working, what makes you feel happy and fulfilled, and what you are looking to gain from a career.

Standing notes that while early-career employees may prioritise salary growth, status, and advancement, later-career professionals often value purpose, learning, mentoring, and knowledge transfer. They have skills and talents that they want to use, but many organisations fail to reflect these changing priorities and so risk losing valuable talent or failing to attract it in the first place.

“In recruitment, use an evidence based approach,” she said. “Unconscious bias training doesn’t work. Focus on flexible working, because that works for literally everyone, young and old.”

How AI can reinforce existing bias towards the careers of older workers

The growing use of artificial intelligence in hiring offers both risks and opportunities, Fleming said.

“If you are looking at introducing AI, this is an opportunity to review things and make sure that you don’t compound bias with technology,” he said. “Take the opportunity to improve things. We are at an inflection point, and if you don’t get it right, it will perpetuate what is already a problem.”

Ultimately, the conversation about age inclusion and recruitment wellbeing is part of a wider discussion on how organisations define talent, where future leaders are coming from, and how to find and keep the skills that many companies urgently need.

Rather than viewing recruitment purely as a transactional activity, forward-thinking employers are beginning to see it part of EDI and of the company’s culture.

Galbrun‑Noel explains: “Even in Asian countries, where the pyramid of age is showing no issue in terms of retirement, our colleagues were reporting that they received very good feedback from the younger generations, because they view this programme as being inclusive and showing that the company is taking care of all generations.”

Fleming argued that managers and HR leaders need to challenge hiring expectations internally when requests for “high-potential” or “early-career” profiles, which might inadvertently exclude experienced candidates capable of delivering immediate value, rather than being part of a “talent pipeline”.

“Research from Deloitte found that the average tenure of someone in their 50s is probably 10 years at a company, while the average for a Gen A is two or three years,” he said. “Lots of organisations are hiring for future potential, but actually those younger individuals are moving on very quickly.”

As De Silva noted in summing up the discussion, age inclusion is not a niche workforce issue but a universal one, affecting every employee at some stage of their career. This is why companies need to think very carefully about how they manage the wellbeing and career potential of their employees, whatever their age.