Fired or retired?
October 20 2006
Since 1 October 2006 anyone “retired” at any age will effectively be “fired”. Retirement becomes a dismissal and you will have to be prepared to show that the dismissal was fair. Procedures for planned retirement will need to be in place and followed if you are not to fall foul of the law.
Care will also be needed with other policies and procedures to ensure you do not discriminate, directly or indirectly, and do not allow harassment or victimisation on age grounds. This also means watching all decisions taken in recruitment and selection, promotion, training, and redundancy and dismissal.
So will you be allowed to justify direct age discrimination? Well, actually, yes! It may be lawful to target specific age groups to satisfy a “legitimate aim�?. Indeed initiatives to encourage open-ness about age groups are being encouraged by organisations such as the Age Partnership Group, but care needs to be taken to be proportionate.
B&Q, particularly, has attracted publicity for targeting older workers but there are others such as the directory enquiry service 118-118, who has no upper age limit in recruitment. It is worth pointing out that the average length of service of employees in the UK is
So you should review your policies, procedures and decision making processes in line with the new legislation. An external agent could undertake most of this for you.
A rain check of your views on age may also be valuable. In Lancashire, half those aged between 50 and 69 are out of work. That’s a whole new workforce of over 100,000 mature experienced people. This is not to suggest younger people should be disadvantaged, but for many appointments, when these are made on merit, older workers will be very competitive.
