JCS HR advises firms over retirement age rule change

A SOLID management structure could help firms cope following the abolition of the default retirement age.

So says Julie Sykes, of Shepley-based human resources consultancy JCS HR.

She said: “With the abolition of the default retirement age in October, 2011, it will be automatically unfair and age discriminatory to retire someone simply because of their age – unless, of course, you can objectively defend your decision, although this will be extremely difficult to do in practice.

“In reality it may well be that some staff will still aspire to ‘retire’ at or about age 65 and they can simply resign as would any other employee.

“Where this isn’t the case, and employees continue to work beyond what would have been their normal retirement date, employers will be limited to the same small number of potentially fair reasons for dismissing them.

“The most commonly used of these are conduct, redundancy and capability. The first two of these are relatively well understood; it is the third, capability which is likely to be the most contentious.”

Julie said: “The fear among employers appears to be that, beyond a certain age, employee performance will deteriorate.

“This may or may not be the case in individual circumstances. Where it does happen, it will have to be managed as it would with any employee. There is no longer the option of tolerating decreasing performance because of the view that it isn’t worth the effort of sorting it out, if the person will be retiring in a few months.

“It will have to be managed so that the performance returns to the necessary standard or the individual is managed out of the organisation.

“In view of this, a company’s performance management and appraisal processes have never been as important.”

Julie said processes did not have to be overly complex in order to meet the recommendations of arbitration service ACAS.

Said Julie: “Once a performance management process is in place, you will be able to more easily identify performance issues and their causes and you will be in a much better position to address them”.