Although demographic trends are clearly indicating an increased presence of older workers in the US workforce as workers return to work from retirement or remain at their jobs past retirement age, ageist language is apparently still prevalent in many workplaces.

According to a recent analysis of age-discrimination conducted by Bob McCann of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Howard Giles of the University of California Santa Barbara, the use of ageist language has damaging effects for both companies and their employees.

In their analysis of age discrimination lawsuits, McCann and Giles found hundreds of incidences of ageist comments used by employees and management in defendant companies, including such comments as “that old woman,” “old goat,” “too long on the job,” or “he has bags under his eyes.” In some of the cases they analyzed, defendants had cloaked their overt ageist remarks with comments indicative of their preference for a younger workforce, such as “we need some young blood around here,” “let’s make some room for some MBAs,” and “let’s bring in the young guns.”

Even though most of these comments were brushed off by defendants as being “stray remarks” that proved little more than the fact that ageism is a societal problem, the researchers unearthed evidence that shows that ageist comments can have a staggering negative impact on employee health and productivity. McCann revealed that the “research has clearly shown links between ageist language and reported health outcomes as broad as reduced life satisfaction, lowered self esteem, and even depression,” all of which are damaging to an employee’s overall health and productivity.

Aside from damage to a worker’s health and productivity that ageist comments in the workplace can cause, ageist comments can lead to significant expenses for a corporation. In Fiscal Year 2006, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received almost 17,000 charges of workplace age discrimination, of which it resolved more than 14,000 of the charges and recovered $51.5 million in monetary benefits.

As if those costs directly resulting from age discrimination were not enough, the costs that result from adjudicating and settling age discrimination lawsuits can run well into the double and triple digit millions of dollars. The California Public Employees’ Retirement system, for example, recently paid $250 million under an age discrimination lawsuit settlement agreement. In that case, disabled public safety officers alleged (apparently meritoriously) that their disability retirement benefits were based upon their age when they were hired. A case of double discrimination, if you ask me.

Hopefully, the increasing number of older workers in the workplace will help bring down the amount of ageist comments and discriminatory acts in the workplace. As older employees stick around or return to the workforce, younger workers and management should be able to see and appreciate the value that these experienced individuals add to the workplace.

Companies need to understand the fact that they have an inherent responsibility to free their workplaces of any sort of discrimination and create diversity and age friendly workplaces. The mere fact that the study I mention here was conducted by gleaning information from age discrimination lawsuits is a clear indicator that overall, companies have fared poorly in their efforts to purge discrimination and created diversity and age friendly workplaces. Were it not so, McCann and Giles would have had to use a source other than discrimination lawsuits to conduct their study.

Ageist and discriminatory comments have no place in the workplace. Companies must develop enforceable diversity policies to ensure that their workplaces are truly ones that foment an atmosphere of welcome and support for employees of all ages, races, ethnicities, genders, religious beliefs, disability, sexual orientation, etc. Without accountability on some level for hurtful and discriminatory comments made in the workplace, ageist and discriminatory comments will continue to persist and workplace diversity efforts will be circular and fail to progress.