Retiring older, more competent workers won't help the workforce

In Kenya, a high level of unemployment, especially among the youth, has led to suggestions that the retirement age should be lowered so that older employees can be sent packing to create opportunities for them. On paper, this sounds like a good way to go around our youth unemployment crisis except that on serious scrutiny, it does not pass muster. In fact, it would do more harm than good to the country’s economy.

There’s a lot of talk about gender bias, ethnic bias and cultural bias at work and each is important for many reasons. But, perhaps, one of the biggest and most problematic types of bias we face is the bias of age: we often evaluate people based on their age and this is now becoming a major challenge in the workplace.