Age Diversity Campaign launched in Herts police

Ageism is now as unacceptable as sexism or racism at Hertfordshire Constabulary following the launch of the Forceís Age Awareness campaign this week. The Force aims to be at the cutting edge of fighting ageism by preparing for new legislation that comes in this October which makes age discrimination in the workplace illegal.

Hertfordshire Constabulary has a fairly young workforce (see table), probably as a result of the current retirement age for police officers (55). To be seen as an ëemployer of choiceí, the Force will need to attract, employ and retain people of all ages to ensure it has a balanced workforce profile.

Total workforce ages by headcount

Age Bands Total %
16 - 21 140 3.24%
22 - 30 1178 27.28%
31 - 40 1359 31.47%
41 - 55 1391 32.21%
56 - 60 164 3.80%
Over 60 86 1.99%
Total 4318 100.00%

Julie Foster, Equality and Diversity Manager, explained: ìAgeism simply means making a decision about someone based on his or her age. This can be positive or negative - offering someone a job because he or she is young and ëvibrantí, or passing someone over for development because he or she is considered to be ëtoo oldí. It will become illegal to assume that someone is too old or too young to do a job, to make derogatory comments or exclude people because of their age.

ìIt is a fact that people are living longer than ever before and are having fewer children, leading to an ageing population. This is causing the labour pool to contract, so we need to make sure we are not limiting our pool of talent by ruling people out of roles simply because of age. If people possess the skills and abilities to do the job, age should not be a consideration.î

The Force has launched a poster campaign urging employees to become age aware and learn about how the legislation may affect them. Employees are being made aware of some simple facts, such as:

The use of age as a criterion, when recruiting, promoting or considering redundancy, will be unlawful from October.
The age limit for entry into the Police Force, as an officer, has been reduced to 18; applications will be permitted before this age.

Indirect ageism will also be unlawful. An example of this would be asking for five yearsí experience for a role - this would obviously exclude younger people in some instances.

The law will still allow employers to refuse to recruit people within six months of their retirement age, or 65 if you donít have one. But many will want to honour the spirit of the law and consider applications regardless of age.

It will also be unlawful to unjustifiably exclude someone from training, pay and benefits on the basis of age.
Employee benefits based on service up to five years (such as accruing extra leave each year you serve) will be exempt, while benefits over five years must be justified. For example, the Force will be justifying its policy on awarding an additional dayís pay after 10 years service.
A ënational default retirement ageí will be set at 65 for employees. This will allow employers to ëcompulsorilyí retire people at 65.

The compulsory retirement for police officers will rise to 60 for federated ranks and 65 for senior ranking officers.
Individuals have ëa right to request to stay oní and employers have a ëduty to consider that requestí.
Selection for redundancy on age or service grounds will be unlawful unless objectively justified.

Julie commented on what the Force has already done to prepare for the changes: ìThe HR Department has carried out an audit of all Constabulary employment policies and practices to ensure that they comply with the Age Equality Regulations or that they can be justified if retained. Training courses have been updated to include age legislation. Learning and recruitment practices have been reviewed and revised to eliminate ageism. Finally, employment monitoring arrangements are in place; this means that we will look at the workforce profile at all stages of employment and identify any disproportionate activities that could lead to indirect discrimination.î