As from the beginning of this month we are seeing the phasing out of the default retirement age (DRA) of 65, so that by the beginning of October each organisation will have to demonstrate a valid reason for enforcing retirement from a role based upon age. The impact on Performance Management Processes is going to be extremely heavy unless organisations can come to a 'better arrangement'. Those with self employed status, for instance Partners in Law firms, will of course have whatever is agreed in their membership or partnership agreement, however it is unclear how the CIPD are responding to what is a very clear need for guidance. Clearly law firm Employment Teams are jumping into the breach to provide support; in fact if you are in a law firm and have an Employment Team plan to double the number of lawyers you have, to deal with the influx of queries and problems.
Just to add to the excitement, there is the new additional Paternity Leave Regulation which allows fathers of children born from 3rd April onwards to take a share of the mother’s paternity leave if she returns to work. Fathers can take a maximum of 6 months paternity leave. This along with DRA is to provide employers with a complete nightmare in juggling resources because these family working policies that have come in over the last decade are helping to drive up the cost of employment.
There is a creeping trend by businesses to encourage / make their staff to be self employed, which could have unthought-of of benefits on both sides. Traditionally we believe people working in our businesses should be fully focused on devoting their entire time, endeavours and efforts to our one organisation. But what if we encouraged a culture of plurality of interest and activities? What if we actively helped individuals to enhance their skills by working part-time elsewhere?
Maybe this sounds fanciful – and it sort of is, but now assume you are looking at those who would have been retiring in the next 5 years, and ask the question again. With demographic trends showing we have a growing aging population, who are health for a larger percentage of our lives, we need to be creative in our approach to working life.
By adopting the plurality approach individuals would be encouraged to look for and find multiple interests and purchasers of the skill sets that they have which could also bring into the organisation a wider commercial basis for all future business activities. It also means that resources can be flexed either up or down depending upon needs, but without any of the costs around sick pay, provision of pensions, national insurance contributions or redundancy, etc..
We should be leading the way to being innovative, self-supporting nations, with life insurance, health care, mortgages being mapped out till our 70s, to encourage that sustainability. One of the biggest benefits of the ultimately self-employed economy is that there would be no need for compliance with these regulations! The fact that the regulations do not, in the main, apply to organisations with less than 10 employees is of little solace, and reinforces the opinion of many business leaders which is that all our employment legislation should be repealed and alternatives which are more sane should be introduced instead.
Sadly, we have a long way to go to be mature enough to do that it would appear.