Dispelling the myth of ageism

Case study: Merchants Consulting
Merchants Consulting runs contact centres in the UK, Europe and South Africa. Its clients include Unilever and Edexcel and has 200 staff in the UK. Adrian Garton, HR consultant, says that the company has always had an enlightened approach to age in the workplace, seeing it as irrelevant, provided the employee is capable of performing the role in question.

However, Garton is running training on the new age discrimination laws, not to educate managers on how not to discriminate based on age, but to dispel confusion that has arisen around what the new legislation means.

Garton explains: “Much of the reporting on thishas been wildly inaccurate. I recently heard a self-professed expert on the radio claiming that we can’t use the word dynamic in a job ad. This is simply wrong. The word dynamic is a description that is not intrinsically linked to age, so there should be no problem using it. Yet, our managers are now very confused about what they should do.”

So, Merchants will be running workshops for line managers, covering the legislation and what it actually means in practice. Garton says: “I’m actually very excited about the new laws. I think they will force all businesses to focus on capability rather than on age and this will have a very beneficial effect on productivity in the UK.”