Linking Age-Diversity Practices and Company Ratings Over Time: Evidence From Employer Reviews and a Longitudinal Experiment

As global populations age, organizations face increasing pressure to support an age-diverse workforce. Although age-diversity practices have been shown to yield individual benefits, their temporal impact on broader evaluations of the organization such as employees' company ratings remains underexplored. This study investigates how employee perceptions of age-diversity practices positively influence company ratings and whether these effects diminish over time as such practices become the “new norm.” Drawing on social exchange and adaptation-level theories, we conducted two studies. In Study 1, we analyzed 1245 employer reviews from 30 companies over 14 years, applying natural language processing and multilevel modeling. In Study 2, we experimentally replicated and extended the findings of Study 1 by manipulating age-diversity practices and capturing within-person changes in perceptions of organizational support and company ratings over time. Results indicate that while age-diversity practices enhance company ratings, these effects fade as employees adapt, and thus, practices elicit weaker reciprocal responses from employees. Theoretically, our findings underscore the importance of considering the time-related effects of diversity practices, highlighting the time-sensitive nature of employee reciprocity. Methodologically, we propose a novel multilevel framework, integrating publicly available qualitative and experimental data to assess the temporal impact of organizational adaptation to demographic shifts.