Alliance articles

Soapbox: Age Discrimination

Did you know.....

....that from October 1st 2006 you won't be allowed to advertise for a bright young thing to breathe a breath of fresh air into your team? Or a dynamic self-starter full of energy and youthful exuberance.

You also won't be able to promote Jenny because she's twenty-five on the grounds that her colleague Dennis is a bit long in the tooth.

This is down to new legislation, part of the European Employment Directive, designed to outlaw age discrimination in the workplace. The legislation is being shaped by the Age Advisory Group and is on its way through final stages of consultation now.

At present there is no legislation dealing with Age discrimination in the UK. This new piece of proposed legislation aims to close the loop that includes sexual, disability, ethnic and religious discrimination.

While I welcome workplace equality – legislation such as this can present a very real business risk. If you employ people, recruit people, train people then you are exposed. This legislation gives new rights to employees, contract workers, office holders, members of trade organisations, anyone in vocational training or holding a professional qualification.

Just as importantly the regulations will apply to job applicants as well. In essence it will be unlawful to treat people differently on the grounds of age – young or old or anywhere in between!

Your business will only be able to justify different treatment on the grounds of age if you can show objective justification, very much a grey area description and open to different opinion. Every area of your business management will come under scrutiny and leave you exposed to potential law suits.

This is a very difficult management issue, especially for small and medium sized businesses who tend to use a lot of emotional and gut feeling decision making. Why did you promote someone rather than someone else, why did you increase that persons pay/benefits rather than the older chap in claims, why did you recruit the 25 year old rather than the 55 year old, why the younger girl was made redundant and not the older woman... the onus of objective justification will fall on you.

And of course, to make things even harder the Government will be making sure that all consumers are fully aware of their rights under the new legislation. This will not be hidden in a dusty cabinet at the DTI!

Clearly, we will all have to re-assess our human resource management systems and employment practices. For larger businesses with professional HR departments this should be an easier process. For many firms who don't have this luxury it's going to get tricky.

This potential damage to brand reputation is huge. The last thing you will want to see is your company name in the local papers as one of the early culprits under the new act. And what about employee morale? This can open up a real can of worms over pay levels and promotion.

How can we protect ourselves?

It's about training, supervision and follow up. It's about trying to combine the emotional skills of management in making decisions with the structured, written down justifications and reasoning of good employment practice. If you are ever unlucky enough to end up in court it will be this written record that will show you have considered the terms of the Act and acted with structured and justifiable reasonableness.

There is just over a year to go and that will fly past. Its time to re-assess employment procedures, job application procedures, employment contracts and handbooks, staff salaries and benefits, retirement procedures, systems to prevent age related harassment and re-visit your knowledge of your staff – are your older workers receiving less training than the younger ones?

Oh, and whilst your busy doing all this can you make sure the rest of your business management duties are carried out including FSA Regulation, Income generation, finance, cost control, bank relationships, auditors......etc.etc.

While I am actively involved in the Age Advisory Group with a view to try and influence the government to minimise the implications to businesses of this and other regulation – to a certain extend changes are inevitable – it's a question of being aware of the risks and forming strategies to protect your business.

Reproduced with kind permission of The Venturer.