Although women lead healthier and longer lives, the cruel perception that they reach their sell-by date and become “old” sooner than men is widespread in the workplace, research shows.

A survey of more than 2,600 professionals showed that age discrimination is not only rife in the workplace, but is shot through with inconsistencies. Six in ten managers said they were victims of age discrimination ? usually because they were turned down for a job for being too old (25 per cent) or too young (23 per cent).

Although the survey found widespread agreement that older workers were better than their younger colleagues when it came to reliability, commitment, loyalty and customer service, these qualities were not necessarily considered to be deserving of advancement. Sixty three per cent of the respondents believed that workers between 30 and 39 had the best promotion prospects.

Dianah Worman of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development which, with the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), commissioned the survey, said that there was anecdotal evidence that people were considered old at different ages in different sectors. “We heard of one man working in IT who said he was considered too old by the age of 28,” she said.

CMI’s Petra Cook said that individual perceptions also suggested that employees were not in touch with reality about their futures. “Eighty per cent reported that they expect to retire by the age of 65, despite believing that the age of retirement for the ‘average person’ in ten years’ time will be 66 or older,” she said. The findings also suggested that the government’s ideas on age in the workforce may also be out of step with reality. Proposed new rules designed to prevent age discrimination will ban forced retirement before the age of 65.

But the survey also found that a third of companies have no mandatory retirement age and a further 10 per cent intend to abolish forced retirement within two years. “The evidence suggests that the current proposal to set a default retirement age of 65 needs to be either finessed or scrapped,” Worman said.

?THE TIMES, LONDON