If age discrimination is not on the lips of every director and human resources (HR) manager, it ought to be. Regulations introducing a general prohibition on age discrimination in employment and vocational training come into force on 1 October, 2006, leaving employers little time to prepare for their impact. In some circumstances, discrimination on the grounds of age will still be permitted, but it will need to be objectively justified – and this requires hard, documented evidence that the discrimination was the least onerous way of achieving a legitimate business aim.
The age discrimination legislation is one of the biggest things to hit employment law in years. As such, it is very important that employers are up to speed on those areas that are likely to prove most problematic.
