Age Discrimination Legislation

Selection - increase your percentage

"Around 90% of older people believe that employers generally discriminate against older workers."

Source - " Evaluation of Age Diversity in Employment", Department for Work and Pensions, 2001

Selecting new employees can take time, and may include a number of different stages, for example, sifting, interviewing and testing. Allowing age discrimination to creep in at any stage can restrict your access to good candidates by as much as a quarter, if not more. You may overlook the best person for the job.

Don't make it harder for yourself - select fairly and consistently, based on individual ability.

When sifting through applications, do you focus on skills, abilities and potential and ignore age? Some "Age Positive" employers use application forms that allow them to remove details of age, sex, ethnic origin, and so on until after the selection process.

Do your interviewers:

• know that age should not affect who they select;
• only ask job-related questions;
• have a good knowledge of your equal opportunities policies;
• plan the interviews to make sure standards and techniques are fair and consistent;
• record assessments of candidates against agreed selection conditions; and
• where possible, represent a good mix of ages?

If you use work-related tests, do you make sure that they do not discriminate against people of certain ages?