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The Insider Guide to Age Laws
The EFA's guide contains advice on the key aspects of policy and practice identified by members of the EFA. We also include as much relevant case law as possible with 'real-life' scenarios, so that employers can easily recognise areas of risk, and checklists. It remains unclear what will be considered an appropriate objective justification and what evidence an Employment Tribunal might expect from an employer defending an age discrimination claim. To assist employers who wish to explore justifying (possibly discriminatory) policies, we examine what might constitute a 'legitimate aim' and what type of evidence might be required. But this comes with a health warning; we do not encourage any employer to maintain policies or practices which discriminate on the basis of age. Summary of Age Regulations When people join you
back to top Compliance and Beyond Think you're ready for the age laws? As a taster, can you answer yes to these questions?
back to top Inside Track To help you minimise the risk of age claims, the EFA recommend you: Avoid using age wherever you can. Discrimination law enables an individual to bring a claim if they can demonstrate that their 'age' may have had an impact. It will be up to you to defend yourself. Avoid practices where someone may 'infer' age was an issue, e.g. asking for date of birth on an application form. Assess your risk before attempting an 'objective justification'. The costs associated with losing a case should influence your approach. Be careful in your treatment of existing employees, once a person is working for you they can easily see who is or isn't getting promoted, trained, or participating in a leadership development programme. Transparency is vital, you not only need to be fair, you need to be seen to be being fair. Record keeping is important. Failure to keep records has led to Irish employers being penalised - the assumption being they are hiding discrimination. Training, especially for managers is incredibly important, not only to avoid claims but to support you when defending claims. Age could be linked with both sex and disability discrimination. Make sure that you don't expose yourself to claims on other grounds, particularly when you retire people. back to top Impact Assessment Checklist Try to avoid using age wherever possible, if you think you can/need to justify a discriminatory policy, first: Ask yourself if age (or time-linked experience) really matters Explain why age (or time-linked experience) matters Check that you are not using age (or time-linked experience) as a proxy for something else (such as qualifications or fitness) Confirm that your reasoning is not based on assumptions, but on hard facts and figures (evidence) Be sure that you can't achieve the same business aim another way. back to top |
