If your business has employees, or is planning to take on staff in the near future then you need to be aware of what the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 mean to your business.
The rules came into force on the 1st October 2006, and ban age discrimination in the workplace. However, this does not just cover intentional discrimination; it also covers a range of areas that you may not be aware of.
Here is a guide to the most important parts of the legislation, and what they mean to your business:
Retirement
It is now illegal to have compulsory retirement for workers under 65, unless there are very good objective reasons.
All employees have the right to request to work beyond retirement age. You must properly consider all such requests, and make an objective decision based on the skills / ability of the employee to do the job.
If you intend to retire an employee, you now must give them at least six months notice of the planned retirement date.
Young Workers
Although much of the information on age discrimination issues refers to older workers and retirement ages; you must not forget that the regulations also ban discrimination against younger workers.
Recruitment
The age discrimination rules do not just apply to current employees, they also apply to job applicants throughout your recruitment process.
You must make sure that age is not a factor in your recruitment. This does not mean you must hire young or older workers, but simply that recruitment decisions must be based on skills and ability to do the job, with age not being part of the decision.
You may need to change the way you write recruitment advertising, avoiding phrases and descriptions that could imply an age bias. For example: Most people would see the words “Energetic and keen to learn” as asking for a younger person, and the words “Experienced and Accomplished” as asking for an older person.
The legislation does not prohibit refusal for candidates over 65, or those within 6 months of their 65th birthday; although to be on the safe side you should still have objective reasons for choosing someone else.
There are very few exceptions to these recruitment rules, although two good examples of where age is allowed to be a factor are:
Persons under 18 years old are not allowed to serve alcohol, so it would acceptable to refuse them a job where they would be required to do so.
An acting or performance role may require a person who looks within a certain age range. Whilst in this kind of situation you should look to extend the age range as much as is reasonably possible. E.g.: For a 30 year old character, you could open auditions to those between 20 and 40.
If you are called upon to give a reference on a past employee you should avoid making any statements that are related to age; otherwise you could face age discrimination charges even though the applicant is no longer working for you. Examples of age related references include: "Works hard despite his years", and "knowledgable despite her youth".
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