Introduction
The global workforce is aging, leading to greater age-heterogeneity in organizations and higher risks of age-based discrimination. High-quality contact among age-diverse coworkers has emerged as a promising solution to reduce age-related prejudice. When employees engage in meaningful relationships with age-diverse coworkers, they learn about their colleagues' age groups, which can change how they think and behave toward members of this group (i.e., primary transfer effect).
Purpose
High-quality contact among age-diverse coworkers may encourage employees to intervene when they observe age discrimination at work (i.e., direct bystanding), making such contact an asset in age-diverse workforces. Grounded in social exchange theory, we propose that trust serves as the mechanism through which high-quality contact promotes direct bystanding. Befriended individuals do not follow norms of reciprocity but trust that the other person will step in when needed.
Methods
To test our conceptual model, we collected data from 294 age-diverse coworker dyads at two timepoints and used Actor-Partner Interdependence Modeling (APIM).
Results
We found positive associations between age-diverse workplace friendship, trust, and direct bystanding. Trust fully mediated the positive association between friendship and bystanding for older individuals, and partially for younger individuals. These findings suggest that for younger employees, forming friendships with older coworkers is sufficient to motivate them to act as direct bystanders for other older coworkers, whereas trust is a central mechanism for older employees to intervene in age-discriminatory behavior against their younger coworkers.
Conclusions
Our findings show that having an age-diverse friend results in increased levels of trust toward the befriended coworkers' entire age group rather than just the individual friend.
In ongoing data analyses, we investigate the boundary conditions of these primary transfer effects and potential age differences therein (e.g., typicality). The findings underscore the potential of age-diverse workplace friendships to act as social glue at work and potentially beyond.