AGE DISCRIMINATION AND FEAR OF BEING LEFT BEHIND AT WORK

It is widely known that ageism causes numerous negative effects.It leads to discrimination of employees expressed as unequal treatment, isolation, rejection and related forms of negative behavior at work, based on their age.Fear of missing out (FoMO) at work is defined as a persistent fear that an employee will miss out on important business opportunities compared to others.We wanted to explore whether age discrimination affects the FoMO at work and is there a role (moderator/mediator) of resiliency in that relationship.Results are based on an online survey of 211 employees from Montenegro, from private and public sectors.Survey included Workplace Age Discrimination Scale (WADS, 9 items, 5-point frequency scale, Cronbach's alpha 0.93), Workplace FoMO Scale (10 items, 5-point Likert scale, Cronbach's alpha 0,95), Employee Resilience Scale (9 items, 5-point frequency scale, Cronbach's 0.95) and set of questions about the employee and organization.It was found that younger employees (age group 18-25 years) felt being more discriminated against than their older colleagues did (F(3, 207) = 7.010, p < .001).In addition, less experienced employees were more discriminated against than those with more experience at work were (r = -.22,p < .001).There were no differences in discrimination based on gender and income.Employees' experience of being discriminated against at work was related to their fear of missing out (r = .198,p < .004).Resilience at work was unrelated both with discrimination and with fear of missing out at work.Main finding about the relationship of discrimination and fear of being left behind at work highlights a key negative effect of ageism and age discrimination.Finding that younger people feel more discriminated at work could be explained by the fact that Montenegro is a high-power distance country (based on Hofstede's research), where the social status and respect are gained by age.Research indicates cross-cultural validity of the workplace FoMO.