Age discrimination at work: the policy folder isn’t enough
Most employers have an equality policy. Fewer can show it does anything. Here’s what the law requires, how age discrimination works in practice, and who actually holds employers to account.
Reviewed, edited and approved by Editor-in-chief Daniel Sköld · Updated 25 October 2026
Contents
Somewhere in your organisation there is a document called something like Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy v4.2. It was last updated after a reorganisation nobody remembers, it sits on a SharePoint site nobody visits, and once a year you click through a 20-minute e-learning module about it while eating a meal deal. Box ticked. Everyone protected. Allegedly.
For men in their late forties and fifties, the gap between that policy and real life matters more than you might think. The most common discrimination you’re likely to meet at work isn’t the obvious kind. It’s the quiet assumption that you’re expensive, set in your ways and coasting towards retirement. And the law says your employer’s policy folder, on its own, protects nobody.
AD
What does the law actually require employers to do?
In England, Scotland and Wales the main law is the Equality Act 2010. It protects nine characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. Employers must not discriminate directly or indirectly, harass or victimise anyone on those grounds. That covers recruitment, pay, promotion, training, redundancy and dismissal.
The interesting bit is who carries the can. Under the Act an employer is liable for discrimination and harassment carried out by its staff in the course of their work, whether or not senior management knew about it. Its only defence is to show it took all reasonable steps to prevent it. Tribunals have made clear this is a high bar. In Allay (UK) Ltd v Gehlen, decided in 2021, the Employment Appeal Tribunal found that equality training which had gone stale wasn’t enough. A policy that exists isn’t a policy that works.
Since 26 October 2024, employers have also had a positive duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. If a tribunal upholds a sexual harassment claim and finds the employer breached that duty, it can increase compensation by up to 25 per cent. The Equality and Human Rights Commission can also enforce the duty without waiting for anyone to sue. The government’s employment rights reforms go further still: employers will have to take all reasonable steps, and protection will extend to harassment by third parties such as clients and customers.
Can my employer treat me differently because of my age?
Mostly no, but age has a twist that no other protected characteristic has. Direct age discrimination can be lawful if the employer can show it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. That’s why some age-based rules survive, and why age cases are often fought over justification rather than facts.
The default retirement age was scrapped in 2011, so your employer can’t simply retire you at 65. Nor can it lawfully pass you over for promotion because the younger candidate has more runway, choose you for redundancy because you’re nearer your pension, or advertise for digital natives and energetic young teams. Those are the clumsy cases. The ones that actually happen are subtler. The training budget quietly goes elsewhere. You’re left off the new project because you’d be bored by it. There’s the performance review that suddenly finds problems after 20 good years, and the friendly chat over coffee about your plans for the next few years.
Harassment counts too. Banter about dinosaurs, Werther’s Originals and whether you need the font size increased is still banter, right up to the point where it creates an intimidating, hostile or humiliating environment. The law looks at how it affected you and whether it was reasonable for it to have that effect, not at whether the joker meant well.
A policy that exists isn’t a policy that works, and the law is beginning to notice the difference.
AD
Who actually holds employers to account?
The honest answer is that most of the time, it’s you. Britain enforces workplace equality mainly through individual claims, and the system is built to make settling more likely than suing.
Before you can bring most claims to an Employment Tribunal, you must notify Acas and go through early conciliation. It’s free, and a conciliator tries to broker a deal between you and your employer. Many disputes end there, often with a settlement agreement and a confidentiality clause, which is one reason so little discrimination becomes public. The time limit is tight. You generally have three months less one day from the act complained of to start the process, although the clock pauses during conciliation. Miss it and you’ll need a very good reason.
If conciliation fails, the Employment Tribunal hears the case. Tribunals cover England, Wales and Scotland, and there are no fees to bring a claim; they were abolished in 2017 after the Supreme Court ruled them unlawful. Compensation for discrimination isn’t capped, unlike ordinary unfair dismissal, and can include an award for injury to feelings. The catches are well known: waits for a full hearing can stretch for many months, legal costs are usually your own to bear, and suing the people who decide whether you’ll get a reference is not a small step at 55.
Then there’s the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It’s the regulator, not a complaints service. It doesn’t usually take up individual cases, but it can launch investigations, issue unlawful act notices and make employers sign legally binding agreements to clean up their act. Its new power over the sexual harassment duty is the closest Britain has to inspecting employers before anyone gets hurt. Even so, a regulator with finite resources is never going to audit every office in the country.
Northern Ireland is different. The Equality Act 2010 largely doesn’t apply there. Age discrimination falls under the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006, claims go to an Industrial Tribunal, early conciliation is run by the Labour Relations Agency rather than Acas, and the watchdog is the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, which can also help individuals with cases.
What should you do if you think it’s happening to you?
Write things down, starting now. Note dates, who said what, emails, who got the opportunity instead of you and why you were told it went that way. Discrimination cases are won on patterns, and memory is a poor witness. If a conversation about your future feels loaded, follow it up with a polite email summarising it. Nothing focuses a manager’s mind like their own words in writing.
Raise a formal grievance if informal routes fail. It creates a record and puts the employer’s reasonable steps to the test. Ask what training managers have actually had and when. Check whether your home insurance includes legal expenses cover, because many policies do and many people forget. A union, if you have one, is worth its subs at exactly this moment. And keep an eye on that three-month clock.
Remember too that you may be the manager. If you lead a team, the reasonable steps defence partly depends on you: whether you challenge the joke, whether opportunities are shared fairly, whether the policy turns into behaviour. The best evidence an employer can produce isn’t the document. It’s the line manager who stepped in.
In short
The Equality Act 2010 makes employers liable for discrimination and harassment by their staff unless they took all reasonable steps to prevent it, and an unread policy and old e-learning won’t meet that test. Age is a protected characteristic, but employers can sometimes justify age-based treatment, so age cases often turn on evidence and justification. In practice, enforcement depends mostly on individuals using Acas early conciliation and the Employment Tribunal within a tight three-month window, with the EHRC stepping in only for wider problems. The real question for every workplace is whether anyone would notice if the policy folder vanished tomorrow.
Andy Irwin writes about the way we live now for men 45 and over: work, relationships, mental health, getting older, and the trends and debates that land on men in the middle of life. With the facts, a dry sense of humour, and no lectures.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to andy@midcent.uk.
Turned down for a job because you’re the wrong side of 50? The Equality Act 2010 covers applicants too. Here’s how Acas conciliation, tribunals and compensation actually work.
One year you’re running the meeting, the next you’re left off the invite. Why power drains away from men over 50 at work, and what the law lets you do about it.
Passed over, plateaued or quietly put out to grass? Here’s how to deal with a stalled career in your fifties, from redundancy rights to free careers advice.
Millions of British couples share a home, a sofa and a Netflix password but not a marriage certificate. When things go wrong, the law treats them as strangers.
