Retaining senior female talent: a strategic decision

From the age of 50, many women begin to disappear from the radar in the professional and managerial field. Not because they yield less or because they lose ambition. The problem is very specific inertia: stop receiving promotions, strategic projects or training in new skills. Age affects everyone but combined with gender acts as a double filter that expels talent and hinders careers just when the accumulated experience can be more valuable to the company.

Bias does not appear suddenly or at an exact age, but many studies place 50 years as a common border. Many professionals are no longer considered a bet for the future. There is less investment in their training and career. In the case of women, these brakes are usually stepped before and with more force. Maternity or care for family members may have interrupted their careers and the company often interprets these breaks as a lack of commitment. The result is perverse: profiles with experience and criteria are given as amortized just when they could provide more value.

L’Oréal values the experience of older professionals and does not see in the experience the beginning of the end of a career. Instead of assuming that senior profiles “have already given the best”, the cosmetics company has implemented specific programs to continue growing within the organization. In Spain and Portugal, 22% of the workforce is over 50 years old and the group has created programmes so that this knowledge is not lost or wasted.

In practice, it has translated it as follows:

• Continuous training and reskilling to update knowledge throughout the entire history
• Internal mobility and change of position also for over 50 years
• Cruised mentoring programmes between juniors and seniors to exchange experience and new skills
• Internal promotions also for senior professionals (14% of the total promotions in Spain and Portugal were over 50)

AXA has addressed this challenge through mobility between the areas of the insurance group and training for the acquisition of new skills. It is a commitment formalized from the top management with the signature of the Landoy Charter (2023), an agreement to promote the employability of the senior talent subscribed together with other large companies such as, precisely, the aforementioned L’Oréal. La Landoy Charter includes follow-up measures – movement, retention, promotion and access to projects – and periodic reports to the management so that these policies are measurable and accountable.