One Step Ahead Policy Review Toolkit
To help employers prepare for the age legislation in 2006, the EFA created a practical Toolkit, designed to identify age bias within employment decisions and policies.
The Toolkit was developed with some of the UK's leading employers and is made up of 20 checklists which cover a range of essential employment issues, including recruitment, training, promotion, harassment, retirement and redundancy.
The subtlety of age discrimination is not always apparent to managers, even HR managers, and processes to identify discrimination are often focused on minority groups. Using policies and practices as the starting point the toolkit can help you to identify age bias in unexpected places and enable you develop a strategy to comply with age laws.
In order to give you a quick idea of where you might need to start ask yourself the following questions:
"The toolkit has helped us look hard at every single HR policy and practice and highlighted some issues we can work on and improve. This has been more than a tick-box exercise. At B&Q it was about looking at existing policy with a fresh pair of eyes, and finding the gaps. The great thing about the toolkit is that it has made us think carefully about broader HR issues which go beyond age diversity, even though that was our starting point"
B&Q
"The toolkit helped us reflect on the audits we currently do, to prioritise future action, research and investigation"
BT
"The EFA Policy Review Checklists are an invaluable way of really getting to the bottom of your policies and practices to truly make sure there is no age bias. They give the information and understanding to be able to tackle areas other people may not have even thought about. It also gives the additional benefit of joining up actions and communications throughout the HR community. At a time where company policy and practice are increasingly in the spot light, it's a smart move and makes sense to ensure your company is up there with the best."
Barclays
To find out how The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, sponsor of the toolkit, used it to prepare for 2006, click here.
For more information about the EFA toolkit and how you can use it to help your organisation comply with the age laws, please contact us.
Members of the EFA can download the Toolkit, please sign in to download this article.
To help employers prepare for the age legislation in 2006, the EFA created a practical Toolkit, designed to identify age bias within employment decisions and policies.
The Toolkit was developed with some of the UK's leading employers and is made up of 20 checklists which cover a range of essential employment issues, including recruitment, training, promotion, harassment, retirement and redundancy.
The subtlety of age discrimination is not always apparent to managers, even HR managers, and processes to identify discrimination are often focused on minority groups. Using policies and practices as the starting point the toolkit can help you to identify age bias in unexpected places and enable you develop a strategy to comply with age laws.
In order to give you a quick idea of where you might need to start ask yourself the following questions:
- Have you removed age and date of birth from your application form and put them on a separate equal opportunities monitoring form?
- Can you justify the use of 'experience' (e.g. '5 years office experience') in job adverts?
- Can you provide evidence that staff of different ages have equal access to training?
- Can you show that salaries and benefits are not linked to age?
- Do you have evidence that all age groups can access flexible working opportunities?
- Are you confident that age related bullying or harassment does not occur in your organisation?
- Can you cross reference problems, such as high levels of stress, by age?
- Are you confident that your performance scoring is not influenced by age?
- Can you demonstrate that age is not a criterion in redundancy selection?
"The toolkit has helped us look hard at every single HR policy and practice and highlighted some issues we can work on and improve. This has been more than a tick-box exercise. At B&Q it was about looking at existing policy with a fresh pair of eyes, and finding the gaps. The great thing about the toolkit is that it has made us think carefully about broader HR issues which go beyond age diversity, even though that was our starting point"
B&Q
"The toolkit helped us reflect on the audits we currently do, to prioritise future action, research and investigation"
BT
"The EFA Policy Review Checklists are an invaluable way of really getting to the bottom of your policies and practices to truly make sure there is no age bias. They give the information and understanding to be able to tackle areas other people may not have even thought about. It also gives the additional benefit of joining up actions and communications throughout the HR community. At a time where company policy and practice are increasingly in the spot light, it's a smart move and makes sense to ensure your company is up there with the best."
Barclays
To find out how The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, sponsor of the toolkit, used it to prepare for 2006, click here.
For more information about the EFA toolkit and how you can use it to help your organisation comply with the age laws, please contact us.
Members of the EFA can download the Toolkit, please sign in to download this article.
