11 New York City Businesses Honored

for Valuing Age in the Workplace

The winners of the 2015 Age Smart Employer Awards (agesmartemployer.org) were
announced today at a packed ceremony attended by experts in aging and
employment, elected officials and a diverse set of New York City businesses and
their employees.
The six winners plus five finalists were chosen from among 52 applicants for their
policies and practices which encourage different generations to work productively
and effectively side by side.
(WATCH or share our 3 minute video - "Valuing Age at Work: 2015 Age Smart
Employer Awards")
(CLICK HERE to read about the awards in the Wall Street Journal)

Winners, their best practices, and the representative who accepted the award, are:

Amys Bread, a bread and pastry bakery with 250+ daily wholesale customers, has
an explicit focus on retaining older workers who brought stability as the business
grew, restructures physically demanding jobs and uses older workers to train
younger onesAmy Scherber, Owner.
Brooks Brothers, LIC Factory & Alterations Center, which manufactures 1.5 million
ties a year for this world-renown clothing retailer, has an average employee age of
54. Management consults with older workers on equipment and process design,
restructures assignments, and offers unusual flexibility for a factory settingLuis
Nava, Director of Operations.
Eneslow Pedorthic Enterprises, a footwear company in Manhattan, focuses on
older workers in its hiring practices, emphasizes skills training and cross-training,
and allows workers to dial up or dial down hours as they near retirementRobert
Schwartz, Owner.
Metro Optics Eyewear, a Bronx ophthalmic services company, with a strong
commitment to hiring, training, promoting and retaining workers from the
neighborhood and a culture of flexible work arrangements, mentoring, and
reimbursing costs for optician certification and licensingJohn Bonizio, Owner.
NYU Langone Medical Center, a national premier medical center in Manhattan,
recruits mature candidates, offers extensive training opportunities, a retiree option
to be an in-house temp pool, and innovative benefitsNancy Sanchez, Sr. Vice
President and Vice Dean, Human Resources and Organizational Development and
Learning.
Sunnyside Community Services, a community-based organization in Queens
serving 14,000 people annually, identifies people with career advancement potential
and offers access to career ladders within the agencyJudy Zangwill, Executive
Director.
Additional award finalists were Ben's Best Kosher Delicatessen, CBRE, Indiana
Market & Catering, North Bronx Healthcare Network (Jacobi)
and VISIONS/Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

At the ceremony, aging experts spoke about the positive effect of working longer on
health and well being on individuals, business and society. Among them
were: Ursula Staudinger, PhD, Director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging
Center, Dr. Linda Fried, MD, MPH, Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health
and Dr. Jo Ivey Boufford, MD, President of The New York Academy of Medicine.
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer and Manhattan Borough President
Gale Brewer both connected the awards to changes needed in public and private
workplace policy. Stringer said that flexible [work] is the new way to grow [our] New
York economy.
The awards are led by Ruth Finkelstein, ScD. at the Robert N. Butler Columbia
Aging Center at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health in
partnership with the New York Academy of Medicine. The awards are funded by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.