How to Prevent Age Discrimination
When it comes to certain "classes" such as age (ageism) there are laws that help protect people. Age discrimination can sometimes be a hard thing to identify and unfortunately also an even more difficult thing to actually prevent. But, like with most of the other classes, if this is something that is overlooked, it can create a hostile environment where work performance, lack of morale and advancement opportunities for the older generation can become a huge issue. One of the best ways to avoid age discrimination is by first realizing what it is, how to identify any issues that may be going on in the workplace, as well as actions to take in order to reduce or prevent this type of discrimination altogether. Below, we will be going over some of these things, as well as other tips to help keep age discrimination out of your workplace.
Training Sessions In the same way that some businesses and companies have sensitivity training or sexual harassment training, it might be a good idea to start thinking about training lessons or smaller sessions on raising employee’s awareness of what age discrimination is. This should be a mandatory session that everyone, no matter what departments they work in, their sex or their age should be going to - including you, any managers and supervisors. In reality, the reason you should be going as an owner, boss, CEO or higher up is to show your support for this type of discrimination. But, it also shows that you do care about what happens in the workplace so that people will hopefully be more willing to open up about being harassed or seeing harassment going on in the place of business. If you aren't sure what to talk about in these sessions, consider hiring an HR person that can hold the sessions as well as a lawyer who is well-versed in employment Law Attorney. Employment lawyers in New Jersey are especially skilled at discussing age discrimination as well as with dealing with age discrimination legally if it occurs. If you are the victim of age discrimination you should consider contacting a NJ employment lawyer today.
Issues/Points to Think About When Hiring People - Most application forms these days have a date of birth or age section. Think about removing this from the application. Instead, start to focus on more important aspects of the job such as skills and abilities that the potential employee can use to do a good job at your company. - When you have people doing the interviews, make sure that the personal questions are to a minimum, especially when it comes to preconceived notions, profiling, prejudices or even stereotypes. Instead, your HR people and managers should be asking the potential employee about job-related questions. - When you consider hiring new people, come up with a foundation of criteria to apply to the candidates - all the candidates. The criteria should be the same for everyone no matter their sex, race, age, creed, etc. - Make sure that if you are not dealing with interviews and someone else in the workplace is, such as a manager, that they are well aware of and familiar with any and all age discrimination laws. Structure of Employees Once you hire a few new people, make sure that you also take these into consideration:
- Pair both young and older workers together. This will help create a sense of an even keel - which no one age is better than the next, plus who knows what these two different age groups will learn from one another. This might be especially important if your team needs to come up with new and innovative, but surefire techniques to help your business, come up with new product designs, advertisement and commercial designs and more. - Make sure that everyone at your place of work has on the job training. It doesn't matter if it’s for different people of different ages, different departments or different job titles -
everyone should have the same on the job training available to them.
- Be sure to include the importance of age discrimination freely and publicly on things like the guidebook, workplace bulletin boards, the employee website and more. The policy should note the different definitions of age discrimination, laws, how your place of business will deal with this kind of behavior, ways people can report the matter privately or anonymously, etc. If you have any specific needs regarding employment law or age discrimination, consider hiring on or consulting with an NJ employment lawyer who deals with these types of things on a daily basis. This is a person that can also help you figure out what to put in your policies, employee handbooks, guide books and more.