Less than one month until age discrimination regulations hit UK businesses

With less than one month until the age discrimination regulations come into force, leading business and financial adviser Grant Thornton is urging mid-corporates to ensure they are ready for the biggest shake up in employment legislation seen this century.

The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, as with other anti-discrimination legislation, is based around the principle of fairness with specific reference to overcoming preconceptions about age and ensuring all employees are treated equally regardless of their age. The regulations will apply to all aspects of the employment relationship and it is easy to get caught out trying to do the right thing. For example, ignoring performance shortfalls in someone approaching retirement age may be viewed as discriminatory if those same shortfalls would be seen as disciplinary measures for younger employees.

Jim Rogers, Head of Growth and Strategic Services, at Grant Thornton says: No matter what size your organisation is, you will still be affected by the new regulations and be expected to follow them come 1 October. With less than a month to go, it is imperative that businesses act now to ensure they are ready.

While many larger organisations will be well prepared, many SMEs do not have a dedicated HR resource and it will be some time before they are ready to implement the regulations, continues Rogers. However, there are a number of measures that SMEs can undertake over the next 30 days in preparation for the 1 October deadline.

Grant Thorntonís top five tips for mid-corporates includes:

1) Identifying where the greatest level of HR activity occurs in the organisation. Non-compliance in these areas present the greatest risk. Review, and if necessary re-write, any policies to remedy any discriminatory practices. Key areas likely to be affected are:

- recruitment/selection
- performance management/appraisals
- training and development, and
- redundancies/retirement

2) Ensuring any rewards or benefits offered are fair and equitable across the organisation and are not biased towards any particular age group. For example, do you have an minimum age requirement to join any of your benefits? Can you justify it?

3) Educating employees. Employees often do not realise that they can be held personally responsible for their actions - telling them can be an effective deterrent. Equally, employers are often held ívicariously liableí for the actions of their employees. You can mitigate this risk by showing you have trained staff.

4) Consult employees. Having open dialogue with staff helps to ensure they feel as if their opinion is valued and important. It is important to have a communications strategy to launch any new policies being implemented and make sure that management have an open-door policy to be able to answer any questions employees may have.

5) Take a look at your Equal Opportunities Policy. It might already talk about gender, race and disability but does it reflect more recent changes to discrimination legislation including age, sexual orientation and religious belief.

Commenting further, Rogers says: These tips are just ways to get businesses thinking about the effect the age regulations will have, but also acting now to ensure they are prepared.

As with any new employment legislation there can be a lot of confusion amongst the business community in the lead up to the actual implementation, however, the cost of getting it right now will be far less than getting it wrong later, concludes Rogers.