Wotking into Retirement

After the attacks of September 11, 2001 more than 40 percent of the FBI agents around the world had five or less years of experience on the job. The agency was partially to blame because of its policy of mandatory retirement at age 57. This caused what was described as a “brain drain” because so many of the more experience analysts were gone. The solution was to hire back the retirees as consultants and classify them as temporary employees so as not to affect their pensions. The problem is not unique to the FBI and seems stem from society’s obsession with youth.

The CVS pharmacy chain, on the other hand, was proactive in the matter of retaining older workers. In 1992 seven percent of their employees were over 55. A study of these older workers found that they were less likely to call in sick than the younger employees. They also held their own in terms of physical labor and demanding managerial positions (Mullich, 2003).

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) conducted a survey of 2001 persons between the ages of 50 and 70. When asked their opinions about retirement sixty-three percent said they planned to work at least part-time. Five percent said they had no plans to retire either because they liked to work or they needed the money.

The FBI could have turned to AARP’s Staying Ahead of the Curve 2003: The AARP Working in Retirement Study to answer the question of how to retain or entice older employees to stay with the company.

According to the executive summary of the AARP study information for the survey was gathered nationwide by telephone. The respondents were between the ages of 50 and 70 and employed either full- or part-time. The purpose of the survey was three-fold:

• It explored the respondents’ vision of retirement.

• It sought to shed light on the types of jobs that workers who plan to work in retirement imagine holding.

• Types of jobs currently held by today’s “working retirees” where working retirees are those who have reported retiring from one job and are now working part-time or full-time in another.

The telephone interviews were conducted by random digit dialing between April 9th and June 5th in 2003. A total of 2001 people were interviewed. The limitations of the research study are that there is no one definition of retirement that is applies to all workers.

“For example, many workers may equate retirement with eligibility to receive payments from private pension plans or retirement benefits from social security, many have no access to private pension plans, others may choose to retire before receiving such benefits, and still others may choose to receive certain retirement benefits before fully retiring.”

In addition, there are unforeseen circumstances that may change the actual outcomes of the respondents’ retirement. For instance, some may not be able to retire when planned because of financial reasons. Even in response to the survey some said they had no choice but to work beyond the traditional retirement age of 65. The chart below, Importance of Selected Benefits and Employer Attributes in Retirement Work, can aid employers like the FBI and CVS understand the balance the survey respondents were looking for. Of note is that they don’t want anything different than what other workers want to feel happy and fulfilled in their jobs.

Though 2,001 are a large number of people it may be necessary to gather information from an even large number in relation to the entire population. Other forms of outreach may help in this endeavor. Mailed surveys, face-to-face encounters at social clubs, houses of worship, etc. may increase the number of respondents and thus increase the validity and reliability of the findings.

Importance