The kinds of assessments described may lead managers to encourage or discourage retirement. We will discuss those challenges, and possible approaches to each.
4.1. Improving the retirement ‘product’ to encourage retirement
Along with evaluating the future of specific job responsibilities, many organizations market retirement by helping employees to create a better retirement ‘product’ for themselves by enhancing its financial, status, and activity components. Bridge health insurance may still be viewed as a necessity—despite the Affordable Care Act—if pre-Medicare-age potential retirees do not understand the new act, do not trust its provisions to provide them with adequate care, or both.
Also, because financial considerations are typically the strongest factor in employee decisions to leave a job or to stay, one HR executive recommends early and strong motivation of employee participation in voluntary retirement plans. Such motivation can be educational, can involve financial services professionals, or may involve financial incentives only. According to one of our expert sources, the costs a company incurs in matching dollars employees invest in their pension plans may reduce costs 20 or 25 years down the road. He notes that as employees retire sooner than they otherwise might, they will be replaced by employees with lower salaries and lower healthcare claims.
Others suggested educating employees on the need to save additional funds beyond the retirement plan and stressing the avoidance of credit card debt—a reasonable thought, considering data indicating that 57% of workers report less than $25,000 in total household savings and investments excluding their homes (Greene & Monga, 2013). Presumably, awareness of financial issues contributes to the previously cited figure that nearly two-thirds of Americans between 45 and 60 say they plan to delay retirement. However, the contrast between those stated intentions and the current reality of less than one-third working past 65 offers a caution against assuming that plans turn into actions.
Nevertheless, savings will matter to some prospective retirees, and the same financial advisors who might be brought in to encourage maximizing contributions to retirement plans can likewise address avoiding debt. Websites, workshops, and ‘financial future fairs’ exemplify tactics to raise awareness among employees of all ages regarding the opportunity that financial security offers for flexibility in coming decades as they consider their options. Figure 1 shows a communication to all employees that offers a voluntary retirement plan but also offers assistance with the financial calculations that might help an employee decide whether to accept the offer.Along similar lines, one HR executive said organizations once informally favored the stay-at-home spouse to make frequent transfers less of a problem, but now some perceive that retirement is more easily marketed to two-income families, given their greater resources. The same reasoning leads to policies that reduce unnecessary transfers, he noted; if a company wants to encourage career-building spouses, they cannot thwart such career-building by the disruptions associated with a policy of frequent moves.
Savings are not the only means of financing retirement. One may also consider starting a business, and employers should provide information to help potential retirees do so. An index of entrepreneurial activity released in April 2013 by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (Fairlee, 2013) found that the share of businesses started by entrepreneurs between the ages of 55 and 64 was 23% in 2012. That proportion can be contrasted with 14% in 1996 and a higher proportion than the 20- to 34-year-old age group in 2012.
These data suggest that employees may welcome information on potential entrepreneurship. Telling them about opportunities for help in starting a business may simply be perceived as useful general information, but also provide the comfort of knowing that retirement need not mean the end of revenue-producing work.
Recognizing the realities of the post-retirement market for its services, the U.S. Small Business Administration has initiated a program for a demographic it calls encore entrepreneurs: individuals who plan to start a business after earlier career endeavors ( Atlas, 2013). The expectation is that as more Americans live into their 80s and 90s, more jobs for those in their 50s, 60s, and 70s will be created as health aides, fitness trainers, and financial planners, to name but a few ( Hannon, 2013). Researchers who analyze successful retirements note that self-employment is one form of what they call bridge employment: labor force participation between one's career job and complete labor force withdrawal ( Wang, Zhan, & Liu, 2008).
Similarly, employers can publicize educational opportunities in the community that target individuals of all ages. Community colleges in particular can be affordable and may well enroll enough non-traditional students that a retiree will find cohorts among fellow students in his or her age bracket. Such education can offer a path to an encore career (Cole, 2013), and community colleges may even offer non-credit courses in enjoying retirement, profiting from retirement, et cetera.
An additional possibility is ‘phased retirement’ to allow discovery of outside activities that the organization hopes will prove more attractive to the employee than his/her job. At Shell-U.S., for example, current employees of any age can explore volunteering with organizations in which Shell ‘alumni’ already participate. An employee with unused vacation days might, for instance, be recruited by a Shell retiree to help with an informational technology challenge at a not-for-profit at which he or she volunteers. One such organization is The Executive Service Corps, a non-profit that matches retirees with organizations that will benefit from their skills and lets them make meaningful contributions. Many such groups exist.
Other approaches mentioned by HR executives include maintaining an office suite so that retirees quite literally keep a place in the organization, and at a minimum letting them keep their company email address. Sponsoring activities for retirees likewise counteracts the feeling that once retired, one loses social contact.
Clubs for Ford retirees are organized in 22 states; Alcoa, Hallmark, and Hewlett-Packard also have organized groups for sociability and community service. Here again, Shell, with 29,000 retirees in the U.S., provides a long-standing example: 33 chapters in 17 states of Shell alumni, a monthly publication, quarterly lunches in many cities, and literally pages of services on the alumni-focused website (www.shellalumni.com). These include recreation, volunteer opportunities, and the obvious healthcare and pension support/information resources. However, they also include such extras as moving services: a retiree buying or selling a home can benefit from the services of the company that administers Shell's domestic relocation program for employees.
One of the more creative ideas mentioned by an HR manager involved what she called “making sure someone who is retiring can leave a legacy.” At her firm, the well-known policy asks retirees to recommend a successor and to suggest what that person might do to be successful. Clearly, a retiree is not the decision maker in either realm, but has the satisfaction of knowing that his or her opinion is sought and that a successor at least has a blueprint for carrying on whatever accomplishments might seem important to someone stepping aside.
A final issue to consider in improving the retirement product is the effect on a spouse when an employee retires. A recent study notes the power of a spouse's influence on an individual's decision to retire (Feldman & Beehr, 2011). Clearly, organizations that can communicate the opportunities available to retirees to all those in a family who will be affected will have an easier time reinforcing pro-retirement decisions by its employees, although in this area—as all the others we have discussed—it is oversimplifying to look at all categories of employees as equally responsive to specific marketing efforts. A thorough review of the influences on retirement decision making considers the nature of an individual's work, education, and health as major factors beyond financial considerations (Wang & Shultz, 2010).
Admittedly, the whole idea of improving the retirement product to be more appealing to employees assumes the kind of calculated decision making traditionally associated with the perspective of economists. However, recent psychologically focused studies analyzing decision processes have called into question the likelihood of an objective weighing of alternatives.
Psychologist Dan Ariely (2008) finds decision processes to be “predictably irrational.” He points out that a number looks larger or smaller depending on its basis for comparison, a finding that means an employee views a pension as large compared to what his or her father received, or small compared to current salary. Thaler and Sunstein (2008) note that behavior may be freely chosen, yet influenced by a ‘nudge,’ such as knowledge of what others are doing. Thus, a letter telling employees that they may retire early with a lump-sum settlement, like the one shown in Figure 1, may elicit more volunteers if it is followed up by information on how many employees have accepted the offer. Alternatively, given that Kahneman (2011) finds buyers likelier to purchase when they believe quantities are limited, an offer like the one shown in the Figure may lead to greater acceptance if restricted to a well-publicized number or well-publicized time frame.
4.2. Shifting from ‘carrots’ to ‘sticks’
Our sources did recognize that a rosy scenario for retirement may be insufficient to move an inadequate employee to make that choice. How, then, is retirement marketed? We heard about ‘carrots’ in considerable detail, but were also interested in the use of ‘sticks,’ given the legal prohibition against saying, however worded, “You need to retire.”
One HR executive said that in his organization, retirement doesn’t come into the conversation for an inadequately performing employee, even if that employee is retirement eligible. Instead, the procedure is the same as for someone performing inadequately at age 25: a supervisor and HR staff member outline with the employee how his or her performance is inadequate and they draw up a plan for bringing it up to adequacy within a specific time frame. If the agreed-on standard is not met by the end of, say, 6 months, the employee is told that he or she is being terminated—in which case the choice is likely to be voluntary retirement. If the standard is met, the employee stays. The HR executive who outlined this procedure commented: “If they manage to measure up, the immediate supervisor at least is not as unhappy as they might have been if nothing had been done out of fear of legal action based on age.”
4.3. Marketing staying on the job
Interestingly, our sources saw encouraging retirement as often easier than discouraging it. Said one: “Money can buy the decision to retire, but if they want to leave, they aren’t worrying about money, so you’ve lost your best tool.” Commented another: “Once they decide to leave, they may stay on for another year as a favor if somebody asks them, but they won’t stay long.”
To motivate delaying retirement, two executives mentioned keeping valuable employees at work on a project by promising a generous completion bonus. An energy company offers geophysicists each a mentoring opportunity: stay a year and pass on your knowledge, for a bonus. Beyond money, organizations with multiple locations offer choices: Ski country? Beaches? One HR executive said: “We offered the summer off and a month at Christmas to spend with grandchildren.”
Retiring but then returning as a consultant is a compromise offered by many organizations, of course. Either the employer or employee might suggest that compromise, and its attractiveness may depend on the nuances of a pension plan.
However, one relevant issue is scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service, which takes responsibility for protecting employees from organizations that treat them as employees while categorizing them as contract workers. Internal Revenue Service (1987) language warns:
Generally the relationship of employer and employee exists when the person or persons for whom the services are performed have the right to control and direct the individual who performs the services, not only as to the result to be accomplished by the work but also as to the details and means by which that result is accomplished. That is, an employee is subject to the will and control of the employer not only as to what shall be done but as to how it shall be done. In this connection, it is not necessary that the employer actually direct or control the manner in which the services are performed; it is sufficient if the employer has the right to do so. . .and it is of no consequence that the employee is designated as a partner, coadventurer, agent, independent contractor, or the like.
