Dismissal, redundancy and retirement
If you are an employer, and you are making a decision, or taking action following a decision, to dismiss a worker, make a worker redundant, tell someone they must retire because they've reached a particular age, or what you do after someone has stopped working for you (for example, if you are asked for a reference), equality law applies to you.
Equality law applies:
- whatever the size of your organisation
- whatever sector you work in
- whether you have one worker or ten or hundreds or thousands
- whether or not you use any formal processes or forms to help you make decisions (although sometimes the law says you must follow a formal process and that some things have to be done in writing).
This guide tells you how you can avoid all the different types of unlawful discrimination. It recognises that smaller and larger employers may operate with different levels of formality, but makes it clear how equality law applies to everyone, and what this means for the way you (and anyone who already works for you) must do things.
Pages in this section include:
Core guidance: Dismissal, redundancy, retirement and after a worker has left
Situations where equality law is different
Avoiding unlawful discrimination when dismissing a worker
Avoiding unlawful discrimination when making redundancy decisions
This guide also contains the following sections, which are similar in each guide in the series, and contain information you are likely to need to understand what we tell you about making decisions about dismissal, redundancy, retirement and what happens after a worker's left:
Protected characteristic's definitions
Your responsibilities for staff behaviour
Last Updated: 09 Feb 2016