ELIMINATING AGE DISCRIMINATION

Introduction

Our client is a major Government Agency with an ongoing organisational commitment to achieving excellence in all aspects of equality and diversity practice. The organisation employs well over 30,000 people with locations throughout England, Scotland and Wales.

Astar was invited to undertake a review of existing HR policies and procedures, covering the whole employment cycle, against the Code of Practice for Age Diversity and recommendations from the Employers’ Forum on Age. The review included:

• Recruitment
• Retention
• Training and Development
• Promotion
• Release
• Monitoring and Evaluation

The objective of the review was to identify any potential for discrimination specifically on the grounds of age and to provide support and innovative ideas to improve the organisation’s track record in enabling older people to have equal access to job opportunities. The scope of the brief did not include any assessment of the effectiveness of policy implementation.

Methodology

Working closely with their Equality and Diversity team, we closely reviewed all existing HR policies and procedures, along with any supporting literature, against the Code of Practice and the Employers’ Forum on Age recommendations. An important element of this was the one to one discussion with each of the policy writers to gain an insight into the consistency of approach, the levels of interaction between the different policy areas and the impact of external influences.

Key Findings / Learning

A report, setting out details of all the findings, with recommendations, was presented to the client. Our findings reinforced the initial view that existing policies were basically robust, but we also identified specific areas for attention in support of the organisation’s commitment to excellence in equality and diversity practice. These included:

• Age, in comparison with other diversity agendas, had been somewhat neglected
• That checklists, in relation to applying equality and diversity to filling vacancies, did not currently ask panels to consider whether age discrimination had hampered a person’s opportunity to obtain the job based on their merit and skills
• That, whilst there were guidelines in place on the make up of recruitment panels, they were limited and our recommendations suggested expanding those guidelines to reflect wider representation including people from mixed age groups

Factors influencing progress included level of skill/knowledge, e.g. for impact assessment of policies and services, exposure to race equality issues, i.e.

Adding Value

We also recommended in our report that the client should consider:

• Publishing one formal definition of equality and diversity that clearly highlighted what employees can expect from the organisation
• That future interview and selection panels should reflect the age diversity of the candidate population whenever possible
• That comprehensive formal monitoring systems with regard to age should be put in place to provide better management information on issues including:
• Overall workforce age profile
• Promotions by age
• Take up of training courses by age
• Disciplinary/grievance/harassment by age
• Flexible working patterns by age
• Sickness absence by age
• Early and extended retirements and other leavers by age
• Supplementing statistical data with perceptional data obtained through fully representative employee focus groups and/or networks
• Establishing an overarching diversity steering group to address and encompass all issues relating to diversity