Has age discrimination legislation grown up nicely?
Described as the biggest shake-up of workplace laws for 30 years, the banning of age discrimination came into force in October 2006. Now, just over six months on, has the initial panic about the implications for employers been resolved, and has anyone actually benefited?
The legislation, the latest introduced by the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) to protect people against discrimination in the workplace, covers every member of the workforce, young and old.
While the basic foundation of the legislation – that it was illegal to treat someone differently because of their age – was simple enough, the broad reach and the complexity of the new law had businesses predicting a litigious frenzy, where claims were unlimited and every other day and every last pound would be spent in an employment tribunal.
While all respectable employers support the rights of their employees, the legislation turned the recruitment and retention of staff into a minefield – for example, it became illegal to specify candidates must have five year’s experience or a degree, because that could discount school-leavers or the over 50s; employers using the words ‘junior’, ‘senior’ or even ‘dynamic’ when describing a position could be taken to court for ‘indirect discrimination’.
To help employers step into line with the new regulations, the Age Partnership Group published a list of tips and advice, including avoiding age cut-offs for promotion, offering training to employees of all ages, and agreeing a fair and consistent retirement policy. Lawyers recommended keeping full records of all applicants, interviews and assessments for at least six months.
It is often smaller businesses that are vulnerable to changes in law, where a lack of experience or understanding can lead to expensive employment tribunals. In Ireland, which has had age discrimination legislation in place since 1998, 22 per cent of all discrimination cases are brought on age grounds, many involving small businesses.
However, it took until April for the first age discrimination case to get to court in the UK - a 67-year old clerical worker took her employer to court for making her redundant the day before the new legislation came in. She won her case and won her job back.
While the legislation covers workers of all ages, it is generally believed that the older worker is more vulnerable to discrimination. CAADE, the charity working against age discrimination, states that nearly a third of people in the UK aged over 45 years are unemployed (over 28 million people), and older workers are 25 per cent more likely to be unemployed than their younger competitors.
Historically, the most vulnerable people within this group have been older middle and senior managers. Everyone knows stories of experienced managers failing to get work or being passed over for training or promotion and older workers have faced being stereotyped as inflexible and unresponsive to new training.
At times like this, the recruitment industry can be a useful marker of whether changes in legislation are actually translating into changes within the industry, and six months on the new legislation seems to have succeeded in overcoming old prejudices. Employers who have begun recruiting rather than retiring older workers have reported success in terms of trainability, reliability, flexibility and loyalty, resulting in benefits to customer relations, labour turnover and the ‘working atmosphere’.
Those predicting an outbreak of malicious and frivolous court cases have gone quiet and employers have amended and improved their recruitment processes. it seems that the Age Discrimination Legislation has shrugged off its growing pains and the industry is beginning to see how the experience and knowledge of older workers can give us the competitive edge again.
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