Age Discrimination - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages... As our nation is multicultural in its democratic set up, the policy has both legal and ethical significance in HRM. From a social perspective, in order to maintain the socio-economic stability, we should allow people to work as long as they wish.
It has been assumed that diverse workforce (ethnicity, culture, language, sex, and age) would avail potential individuals with a variety of talents who will also have experience and knowledge about wide rage of customers (Weightman, 2004, p.25). For example, we have hundreds of employees who are above the age of 65 still working zealously. Moreover, it helps us save time and money to test and train new recruits. In fact, the older workers are the proven asset which can help employers in the long run. Moreover, retaining older staff would be a reasonable solution to the growing labor shortage.
Obviously there are certain situations when age discrimination policy would lead to organizational crisis. However, the issue depends on the effectiveness of the HR strategy. For instance, the company should have well defined vision on individual goals and role assignment. There are certain exceptional tasks in which youngsters can outsmart elders. Therefore, elders should not be assigned to services that require high physical and mental skills.
In the UK, According to the Default Retirement Age Act of 2006, employers can force workers to retire exactly at their age of 65 without paying any redundancy (BBC News). Although 65 had been considered as the common age for retirement in the United States, mandatory retirement was completely abolished since 1986 (Kerley, 2001, p.208). As mentioned earlier, we therefore, neither discriminate nor force workers to retire at their old age; instead, workers are given the privilege to choose their retirement.
It would be a fallacy if we assume that young labors would perform better than the older workers. On the other hand, new candidates may not be always ...Download file to see next pagesRead More