‘Older staff often come with more life experience and a willingness to work’

At B&Q we’ve long realised the benefits of an age-diverse workforce. Faced with a reduced labour pool in the late 1980s we needed a fresh approach to recruitment. In 1989 we decided to test the true value of an older workforce by fully staffing a store in Macclesfield with staff over the age of 50 – the results were compelling. Productivity increased, sales rose and absenteeism fell. Since then we have continued to promote age diversity across the business and today a quarter of our employees are over 50, with ages ranging from 16 to 94.