The most recent recruitment regulation in the UK is the one to do with age discrimination. This new legislation is to apply to all to recruitment in both the public and private sectors of the economy. The regulation stipulates that firms are prohibited from discriminating against job applicants on the basis of their age. Furthermore, employers are also responsible for ensuring that their staff do not discriminate against their work colleagues on the grounds of their age. This means that firms will have invest time and money in order to train staff about the new recruitment regulations.



Employers who are not able to enforce all aspects of the regulation could potentially face fines and legal action. The new regulations has abolished things like upper age limits on unfair dismissal and redundancy. The regulation has also introduced a national default retirement age of 65. In this regards, it is unlawful for a company to retire a worker who is under that specified age. It should also be mentioned that an employee now has a right to request that their employer should extend the retirement age. The employer is also obligated to take this request into consideration.

This new recruitment regulation has some limited circumstances under which it would not be applicable. Many of these circumstances are mostly to do with the occupational pension schemes. More information on these exemptions are given the regulation's guide for employers. A training agency has also been set-up in order to educate both employers and employees about the new recruitment regulation. The agency (Acas) provides free, confidential and impartial advice on all issues to do with the new regulation.

The new recruitment regulation has made it necessary for employers to revise their employment guidelines and policies. Their equal opportunities policy must now be extended to include age. The new regulation could also mean that employers may have to introduce stricter hiring standards in order to limit the potential pool of applicants. Therefore, whilst the regulation helps protects the interest of certain workers, it might also make it more difficult for lower qualified applicants to get jobs. This could potentially lead to higher levels of unemployment and is perhaps the only downside of the new recruitment regulations. This new legislation has been mostly welcomed by all parties concerned and the only main topic of discussion is to do with it was not introduced earlier. Quanta endeavors to comply with all recruitment regulations.