Hardwin Jones, 28 September 2005
Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 will come into effect on 1 October 2006.
The DTI says “age discrimination prevents people of all ages from realising their full potential in the workplace. This in turn prevents employers from getting the best performance out of their business and delivering the best service to their customers.”
The DTI has outlined some draft regulations and is collecting feedback from employers and others, in a consultation process which is going on until 17th October 2005.
The Regulations will prohibit direct or indirect age discrimination in employment and vocational training – except where discrimination is “justified”.
You will notice that there is considerable leeway in this definition (what’s covered under direct and/or indirect? And when is discrimination justified?), and this leeway will be explored and tightened in the consultation process, and as employers begin to adopt and test out new policies.
What will the effects on graduate training schemes be?
Companies will no longer be allowed to specify that only those below a certain age can apply.
Graduate opportunities must be marketed to people of all ages, and the images and language used in advertising materials will have to reflect a broad age range.
Many schemes currently specify that a graduate must apply within a certain number of years of graduating, if not within their final year. At the moment it’s unclear whether this will be outlawed, because of the possibility that it discriminates indirectly against older candidates.
At the moment, companies hire a cohort of fresh university graduates, with a view to grooming them for management. It’s accepted that some will stay and go on to become the business’s leaders, and others will move on, taking the skills and experience they’ve acquired into different companies and sometimes different industries.
If the age of an entrant is as likely to be 51 as 21, the structure may have to change. Companies may even decide not to offer graduate training schemes as such, and instead offer entry-level positions for people of all ages. These employees would progress and receive training, but they might not all follow a structured path of promotion. Perhaps only those with enough time left in their careers to go all the way would be fast-tracked to senior management – although this introduces the spectre of age discrimination again. So discrimination in recruitment would be resolved at the expense of discrimination in promotion.
However, employees up to the age of 35 or 40, may still be considered worth investing in and promoting, right from joining the company at ground level; so the band of fast-track entry has at least been enlarged from 21-25, to 21-40, for example.
The draft proposals acknowledge that at some ages (they cite "a few months short of 65") some discrimination in recruitment is "justified", on the grounds of little remaining career time; but it's not clear at what age graduate employers could use this justification.
It remains to be seen how these issues will be solved in the final legislation, and in employers’ practises.
A further issue which is not specifically addressed in the legislation, is how to resolve differences in career motivation record between older and younger candidates for the same entry-level position. A primary consideration for many employers is evidence of a specific and longstanding commitment to their particular industry.
This is easier to demonstrate for a young finalist with no experience in any other industries, than for another candidate who has spent ten years in an alternative industry since graduation.
These companies may be inclined to prefer such a candidate to one who has spent time working in a different industry since graduating – on the grounds that the latter has shown less specific career motivation from the outset.
Is the legislation a tacit acknowledgement that people don’t always have all the answers from the beginning, and that a sincere commitment to an industry can arrive later in life as much as sooner?
It’s not clear how well this argument will wash with those employers who do concentrate on career commitment, and who are over-subscribed by young finalist applicants. Will career motivation constitute a grounds for “justified” direct age discrimination, thereby mitigating the power of the legislation somewhat?
Furthermore, anecdotally, many employers like to hire graduates fresh out of university - the perception is that at this stage, they're enthusiastic, have no preconceptions and are blank sheets to be filled with knowledge about the particular industry and company. But is this discrimination, under the new legislation?
Questions such as these have got employers and the recruitment industry thinking, wondering whether and how to adjust their practises; in order to make sure they turn this challenge into a business opportunity, and avoid the prospect of lawsuits coming their way!
On the whole, it seems likely that as a result of the Regulations, we can look forward to a pleasing introduction of a new kind of diversity in graduate recruitment – companies will still naturally look to recruit the best and the brightest, but they will not all be cut from the same cloth. Both the recruits and their employers stand to gain from drawing on a broader experience base, and from the richer exchanges that come from increased diversity and heterogeneity.
Click here for a complete summary of the proposals