It is the responsibility of the employer to rehabilitate a sick or injured employee back into the workplace.

• Don't go it alone
• Use an Insured Staff sickness scheme
• Tax efficient and cost effective
• Full support of a claims management team

A good Employee Benefit package will confer distinct business advantages.

Age Discrimination
or
The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 1st October 2006

Age Discrimination regulations are in force from with effect from 1st October 2006* making it unlawful for employers to discriminate against an individual on an age-related basis.

Age Discrimination legislation is likely to affect employers in a number of ways.

All employers, providers of vocational training, trade unions, professional associations, employer organisations and trustees, and managers of occupational pension schemes will have new obligations to consider

A national default retirement age of 65 now applies to most occupations making compulsory retirement below the age of 65 unlawful (unless objectively justified)

All employees now have the 'right to request' to work beyond the default retirement age of 65 or any other retirement age set by the company and all employers have a 'duty to consider' requests from employees to work beyond 65

Upper age limits for unfair dismissal and redundancy are removed

Regulations cover employment and vocational training

Goods, facilities and services are not currently included in these regulations

The regulations will not affect State pensions

The regulations cover direct and indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation.

Group Income Protection and Group Life Schemes

Consideration will need to be given to where the current scheme termination age is below the default retirement age of 65. Under the regulations the employer is required to provide the same benefit to those eligible workers above the current scheme termination age. For schemes with a normal retirement age of under 65, should now result in extending the length of cover to 65 to include eligible employees within this age bracket

Additionally, if an employer extends the normal retirement age beyond 65, the requirements of providing benefit to the higher retirement age remain the same as would have applied to a normal retirement age of 65.

Where changes are made to the retirement ages for Group Life schemes established using the Trust of an Occupational Pension Scheme, despite legislation, there remains the ability for the scheme to retain existing minimum or maximum ages for entry into the scheme. For Group Life schemes established under their own Trust, continuing to operate minimum or maximum ages for entry may be classed as discriminatory

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Benefits for Business Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Benefits for Business Ltd is entered on the FSA register (www.fsa.gov.uk/register/) under reference 304510.