The Experience Advocacy Taskforce (EAT), led by volunteer advertising industry leaders, collaborates to reframe, reinforce, and redress workforce ageism in our industry.
We do this by fostering industry-wide collaboration for impactful initiatives that combat age discrimination of workers over 40+yrs and promote working environments that value experience as part of the diversity and inclusion mix.
Results of our industry leaver’s study “The Silent Exit” indicate more than half of exits occur between the ages of 45-54, signalling a significant talent drain of experienced professionals from the advertising industry.
In late 2022, our founder, Greg Graham, a.k.a. Sparrow, was the proud recipient of the Media Federation of Australia’s Hall of Fame award. In his powerful acceptance speech, amongst the highlights (and lowlights) he shared, one of the lowlights was and is ageism.
In a world of diversity and inclusion, it is a topic that has not had nearly enough attention. He shared to the audience, only 5% of employees in an agency are over 50.
When he was challenged on this figure, he found out the statistics were even worse in Australia as many of those over 50 were in support units such as Finance, HR, IT etc.
Actions speak louder than words and post the award night, he founded the Experience Advocacy Taskforce.
I’ve been doing this (job) for over 50 years and this industry has been my livelihood, my life, my friends, my family. I’m really privileged to have had some lifetime experiences doing this amazing job. However, I would like to leave you with this.
I think we’re ageist and we need to do better and look after older people. So, if you really believe in diversity, we need to fix ageism.
The Nest Consultancy and Experience Advocacy Taskforce Founder
MFA Hall of Fame speech
October 2022
