Salary Survey Human Resources Fact Sheet

NICVA recognises that not all organisations are aware or up to date with all statutory HR requirements and as a consequence have produced a fact sheet highlighting and addressing some of these issues with particular regards to recent changes in legislation such as, Age Regulations which came into effect in October 2006 and also new legislation around Flexible Working and Work/Life Balance due to come into effect in April 2007. NICVA would also like to draw attention to the section on Part-time and Fixed-term Workers, which is particularly relevant to the sector. Below is an example of the information contained within the fact sheet.

Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006

Age discrimination became unlawful in Northern Ireland on 1st October 2006.

What does your organisation need to do?

Update policies: Such as Equal Opportunities, Bullying and Harassment Policy to include age. Also review your retirement and redundancy policies. Redundancy selection criteria such as last in, first out (LIFO) or length of service is likely to be discriminatory.

Recruitment: Asking for a minimum/maximum length of experience could be seen as disadvantaging certain age groups. If asking for a minimum/maximum length of experience, consider whether this is an essential requirement to the post, if so, ensure it is objective and justifiable.

Person specifications and job descriptions should be objective, based solely on skills, relevant experience and capacity to do the job.

Avoid using stereotypical terms in advertisements which may imply you are looking for older or younger applicants, such as “Dynamic, go-getter” or “Experienced, mature person',

Application forms: Do not ask for personal details such as date of birth on the application form.

Monitoring: Change your monitoring form to include age. It is useful to monitor what is happening in the recruitment process. Knowing the age profile of applicants will help to show how successful you are in attracting applications from different age groups.

Stereotypes: Train staff and recruitment panels to avoid stereotypes. Common examples include, young workers being perceived as not having the gravitas or skills for management or that they have better IT skills. It may also be commonly perceived that older workers are less interested in career and personal development or that an older candidate will make a better supervisor.

Training: Training opportunities should be offered to all staff, do not assume only younger staff are interested in career development.

Redundancy and dismissal: It is proposed under the new law, that a default retirement age of 65 will be set, and employers wanting to retire employees at an earlier age will have to justify it. Employers are required notify employees in writing of the intended date of their retirement and their right to request to work beyond this time, at least six months before such date. Employers will be under a duty to consider requests for working past the default retirement age (similar to the right to request flexible working). The upper age limits on unfair dismissal and redundancy pay will be removed.

Good Practice: Consider flexible working requests for older workers.

National minimum wage increase

The adult rate will rise from £5.05 to £5.35 per hour. The youth rate for workers aged 18-21 will increase from £4.25 to £4.45 per hour. The rate for workers aged 16 to 17 years will increase from £3.00 to £3.30.

For further information on Human Resources contact Susan Lavery

susan.lavery@nicva.org

028 9087 7777

For information on the 2006 Salary Survey please contact Andrea Burke

andrea.burke@nicva.org

028 9087 7777