Some Examples Of Age Discrimination In The Workplace

Some examples of age discrimination in the workplace cluster in restructures, because that is where a lot of decisions get made quickly against criteria nobody examines closely.

• Selecting on salary. Cutting the highest-paid roles often means cutting the longest-serving people, which correlates strongly with age.
• Weighting recent qualifications. Scoring people on training completed in the last five years disadvantages experienced staff who were trained differently.
• Potential over performance. Assessing who has runway ahead of them rather than who does the job well.
• Redeploying selectively. Offering redeployment to some and a package to others without a documented reason.

None of these mention age. All of them can produce an outcome that lands on one age band, and an employer has to be able to explain the criteria afterwards.

The Fair Work Ombudsman covers redundancy obligations. This is general information rather than legal advice, and obligations vary by state and territory.

See Sentrient’s EEO training course and workplace compliance system.