Age Discrimination and how to prevent it

Payne, Marsh and Stilwell, solicitors in Southampton, have offered the Wessex LMCs and its constituents some generic Employment Law advice to be made available on this website.

“It’s Your Age!”

Prevent Discrimination: Action Checklist

• Set up a planned retirement system which complies with the 'duty to consider' procedure which will apply from 1 October 2006 for all employees who retire on or after 1 April 2007.
• Consider the transitional provisions for all retirements taking place between 1 October 2006 and 31 March 2007 and put in place procedures to comply with them.
• Check all stages of your recruitment process.  People from all age groups should be able to apply for jobs.   People who select new employees must be trained in equal opportunities.
• Check equal opportunities policies and remove any age discrimination.   For example an equal opportunities policy should ensure that age limits should only be retained if they can be justified in terms of the job to be done.
• Train managers to be pro-active in changing the culture of the workplace where ageist comments and assumptions are common.
• Review training and promotion policies: people of all ages should take up training and development opportunities. Ensure the practice's literature does not contain age bias.
• Check any employment benefits practices that are based on seniority, length of service or experience; for example, additional annual leave for longer serving workers. Such practices could be directly or indirectly discriminatory on grounds of age although there are exemptions.

Employers should check now to see if these exemptions apply to the procedures they have adopted.  In brief, any benefit based on a length of service requirement of 5 years or less is exempted from the new age regulations and will not be considered unlawful age discrimination. If there is a service requirements longer than 5 years the obligation to fulfill this to qualify for the benefit(s) will only be discriminatory if the employer cannot show that they have awarded the benefit to:

• reward loyalty, or
• encourage motivation, or
• recognise experience.

• Review long-term disability insurance or permanent health insurace schemes to remove any upper age limits which could be discriminatory on the ground of age.
• If the organisation has a normal retirement age below 65, consider whether this will be objectively justifiable, and if not, take steps to amend it.
• Retain the age-related bands for the calculation of statutory redundancy payments but remove the current upper age limit for unfair dismissal and redundancy rights.