However, unlike the other legislation, the age provisions also have the concept of ‘lawful discrimination’ - a number of areas that allow employers some specific exemptions, or the opportunity to ‘objectively justify’ treating people differently. The EBS ‘Getting Age Right’ Programme will ensure you are clear about each of these definitions and that your procedures both deliver real benefits to your business, and protect it from unjustified claims.
- Being Legally Compliant: If you get a retirement dismissal wrong, you could leave yourself open to unfair dismissal and redundancy claims – and if you do not follow the new statutory procedure the ‘dismissal’ will automatically be considered unfair. Like other discrimination legislation, you need to be proactive in telling your employees what the rules are. An EBS HR professional will work with you to ensure that your current documentation meets the appropriate requirements and help implement communications so that your managers and employees fully understand your processes.
- Being Consistent and Fair: Fairness at work and good job performance go hand in hand. Tackling discrimination helps to attract, motivate and retain staff and enhances your reputation as an employer. Eliminating discrimination helps everyone to have an equal opportunity to work and to develop their skills – and that can bring significant bottom line benefits for your business, as it is cheaper to be fair and motivate, than to deal with discrimination cases and a demotivated workforce.
- Best Fit for Your Organisation: Whilst we are guided by best practice, any solution we recommend will be designed around the specific needs of your organisation. If you do not have suitable policies in place, we will never try to shoehorn a standard document or policy into your organisation; we will always customise such documentation to fit. We will use the training session to ensure that policies or procedures will work correctly in your environment.
What Is Included?
One of our EBS HR professionals will work with you to review your current policies and procedures for dealing with:
- Recruitment and Selection
- Provision of Benefits
- Performance Management
- Retirement
Where necessary, we will recommend changes to the documentation and process to ensure compliance with the regulations.
Next, we will work with you to prepare a suitable communication programme for you to use with all staff to ensure that, at an individual level, they know what the new legislation means for them and introduce them to any new policies and procedures.
You and your managers will then be taken through a half day training session that will cover:
- An overview of the Employment Equality (Age) legislation
- What constitutes Direct Discrimination
- What constitutes Indirect Discrimination
- What constitutes Harassment or Victimisation
- What are the lawful Discrimination Provisions
- Objective Justifications
- Possible Maximum Recruitment Age
- Exceptions and Exemptions, i.e. Minimum Wage
- Genuine Occupational Requirements
- A run through of your policies and procedures
- Recruitment and Selection
- Advertising
- Selection Criteria
- Provision of Benefits
- Extra Holiday on Length of Service
- Insurances
- Performance Management
- Careless Phrases
- Selection for Promotion
- Retirement
- Fair Dismissal
- Retirement before 65
- Options beyond 65
What Does It Cost?
The tried and tested EBS ‘Getting Age Right’ Programme is offered at a fixed price of £950 + VAT for companies with 100 employees or less, including the training session for up to 8 delegates.
Additional training sessions can be arranged at a cost of £350 + VAT each.
