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Making employment an attractive and healthy option
for all employees
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Making employment an attractive and healthy option for all employees
regardless of age
By Catriona Watt, legal expert at www.thefutureperfectcompany.com
and a solicitor at Fox, a City law firm specialising in employment,
partnership and discrimination law.
Last month's 'We are Enabled by Design' event at the Design
Museum in London sought to reframe the ageing and disability
debate by looking at how universal design can help to support
independent living and working. The 'Future of the Workplace'
workshop focused on barriers in the workplace, particularly
in relation to disabled and older workers, and examined alternative
approaches to working.
It became clear during the workshop that changing business'
attitudes to and perceptions of older workers are the greatest
challenges to enabling older workers to remain in the workplace.
Even if flexible working and phased retirement policies are
in place, changing hearts and minds of staff as a whole can
be difficult. Participants at the conference considered that
employers were afraid to take the risk of employing or retaining
older workers. Changing perceptions and taking advantage of
valuable experience, conscientious mentoring and empathy with
clients offered by mature workers are at the core of employing
older workers past retirement age.
The continuous increase in life expectancy poses big challenges
for the workforce. Birth rates are not high enough to replace
the population so a declining number of people of working age
are available to support an increasing number of people in retirement.
Extending working lives by one and half years is estimated to
reduce government borrowing by almost �15 billion. And, apart
from this benefit to society as a whole, the fact is that many
employees actually want to continue working past normal retirement
age on a modified and flexible work schedule.
Although extending working life has always been high on any
government's agenda, little has been done so far to create conditions
to enable people to work beyond retirement age. Currently the
law allows employers to impose a default retirement age (DRA)
of at least 65. Implementing a DRA of less than 65 without an
objective legitimate justification for doing so is age discrimination
under the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006.
Our new coalition government is planning to phase out the DRA
from April 2011. Many believe this is the first step in abolishing
discriminatory attitudes to older workers by removing the safety
net for employers and perhaps encouraging employers to consider
alternative approaches to flexible working. It is also likely
to prevent businesses from using the DRA as a substitute for
performance management. Instead employers will have to ensure
they have an effective performance management system in place
with regular appraisals and clearly defined roles and objectives.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) recently published
findings from its survey of 1,500 workers aged 50 to 75. The
report concluded that abolishing the DRA on its own will have
little impact on extending working life. It must be combined
with a number of other concerted measures to tackle stereotyping
and to enable older workers to remain economically active. The
EHRC believes this should include better training and development
for the over 50s, health programmes to promote the well-being
of older workers, a media campaign to tackle ageism and an overhaul
of recruitment practices to encourage recruitment of people
of all ages.
The EHRC also considers that the right to request flexible working
should be extended to everyone. Its research showed that older
workers are more likely to remain in employment if they are
given the right to work flexibly. The EHRC wants the government
to consider providing incentives to employers who offer flexible
working practices to older workers and to fund the provision
of age management and flexibility training to managers. Appropriate
training in dealing with older workers working flexibly is essential
as flexible working functions best when workforces share the
responsibility and incentive to make the system work.
To change attitudes to older workers, we need a collaborative
effort across a spectrum of government bodies as well as industry.
Finland launched its successful National Program on Ageing Workers
in 1998. This involved a broad media campaign promoting a positive
image of older workers including TV and radio broadcasts blasting
age discrimination and linking better health to staying on the
job for longer. The program countered the myth that older workers
are less productive. The goal was to create a positive image
of older workers and develop a national consensus on working
longer. The Finnish pension scheme was also reformed providing
a carrot to those who stayed in their jobs for longer. As a
result of this initiative the proportion of Finns aged 55-64
in the workforce increased by almost 15 percent.
We can learn important lessons from Finland on how to make employment
an attractive and healthy option for all employees regardless
of age.
Quick job searching resources for the over 50s
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