Retirement
At one time if you employed staff, retirement was a relatively straightforward issue, men retired at 65 and women retired at 60. Flowers and clocks were bought, glasses of champagne drunk and, if applicable, the vacancy advertised -simple, right? Well, it’s never been as simple as this reality having to take into account contracts and custom and practice etc, however, recent significant changes have certainly seen the issue of retirement and in particular retirement planning come much more to the fore.
My Staff Manager can help you with the area of retirement and retirement planning and many other HR management tasks. You can download our free guide on retirement entitled “age is not just a number" (click here for guide retirement) and we can help you make the process even more straightforward if you “sign up free now” for My Staff Manager.
So, what has happened in the area of staff retirement? The biggest single change has been seen through the introduction of the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 – often referred to as the Age Discrimination laws. This came into force on October 1st 2006 and changes the whole approach to retirement and retirement planning.
In essence a number of significant changes have been made to the area of retirement and how businesses of any size must change their approach to it. The changes include:
• There is now default retirement age of 65 (for all and applying to companies of all sizes). A company can set a lower retirement age but this must be objectively justified ( always take advice in this area)
• There is now a specific requirement to undertake retirement planning through the introduction of a statutory retirement procedure. Failure to follow this statutory procedure could lead to a claim for unfair dismissal – there is now no upper limit for an individual to claim unfair dismissal.
Like many things when it comes to managing people dealing with retirement is a process and approaches can be straightforward if dealt with correctly and can become time-consuming if dealt with incorrectly.
Download your FREE GUIDE TO RETIREMENT AND RETIREMENT PLANNING:“Age is not just a number” now and find out you can follow simple steps to getting this right.