Fact – it is unlawful to disadvantage employees or job seekers in any way due to their disability, age, race, religion, gender, and other characteristics.

This is widely known, however are you inadvertently disadvantaging employees and job seekers due to these attributes?

It is always a good time to review and amend policies and procedures to ensure you are meeting your responsibilities.

One of the most important things to do and consider is to ensure that your selection criteria and/or position description are detailed to provide clarity on the role expectations.  Consideration must be given to areas where restrictions or adjustments could be accommodated for an older or disabled person to ensure you are disadvantaging someone.  Of course there will be circumstances where reasonable adjustments cannot be made to accommodate certain physical restraints and as such, it is very important the requirements of the role – both task and physical requirements are detailed.  It is also very important to discuss any concerns that may exist in relation to an individuals capacity to perform a role to ensure stereotyped assumptions are not made as to an individuals capacity.

There are many advantages with hiring mature-aged workers (45 and over) and disabled workers including:-

Mature-aged workers

• Years of knowledge and experience
• Reportedly older employers have lower rates of absenteeism and higher rates of productivity
• Experience working across different business and industries can bring great insight for solution finding within your business operations and processes
• With greater experience and knowledge you are recruiting mentors that can assist to train and educate other staff.
• There are some financial support options to help businesses when employing older workers via government grants.

Disabled workers

• Reportedly less absences
• Reportedly fewer compensation claims and work accidents
• Stay longer in a role which provides greater relationships internally and externally
• Financial support via subsidies, grants etc

For assistance with reviewing your policies please contact us at [email protected] or 1300 720 004.

Information in HR Advice Online guides and blog posts is meant purely for educational discussion of human resources issues. It contains only general information about human resources matters and due to factors such as government legislation changes, may not be up-to-date at the time of reading. It is not legal advice and should not be treated as such.