It is now over a year since the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, which outlaw discrimination on grounds of age, came into effect. Such a fundamental change to employment law might have been expected to have far reaching effects on employers and their employment practices and no doubt many are still learning to adapt to the requirements. While a flood of age discrimination claims might have been anticipated, in fact in its annual statistics for 1 April 2006 to 31 March 2007 the employment tribunals service reported that only 972 claims were accepted, compared to 28,153 sex discrimination claims and 3,780 for race discrimination. Of course, as the new rules did not come into effect until 1 October 2006 it will take some time for claims to filter through to the tribunals.
In order to avoid being part of those statistics in the future, employers need to ensure that they continue to comply with the legislation. Important points to remember include:
- employees can claim direct and indirect discrimination, only in limited circumstances will the discrimination be justified
- avoid making any assumptions about age, for example that different age groups are more suited to certain jobs and have or don’t have certain skills
- adverts for jobs should be carefully worded to not suggest a preference for candidates from a particular age group
- employees are protected against harassment on grounds of age so jokes or comments about an employee's age could make the employer vulnerable to a claim
- equal opportunities and anti-harassment policies and procedures should cover age discrimination
- employers can no longer dismiss employees just because they have reached the normal retirement age, it is essential to go through a set procedure first, where the employee is notified of the right to request to continue working beyond the retirement age.
See FAQs on Age Discrimination on the XpertHR website for more information.
See also XpertHR’s employment law reference manual (subscription required) for further details.
Read ECJ hands down decision in Spanish age discrimination case (Blog post).
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