Retirement has traditionally been something of a cliff edge, with people going from full-time employment to never working again.  Research from Edith Cowan University highlights the value of easing into retirement gradually.

The researchers highlight how countries around the world are suffering from severe skills shortages that are often exacerbated by the retirement of baby boomers in greater numbers than the younger people entering the workforce.  This is especially so given restraints on migration caused by the Covid pandemic.

“When older workers are gone, they take with them their knowledge, skills and other knowhow which is hard to pass on,” the researchers explain.  “We always think of declining physical and mental capabilities as people age, but there’s very little in research that actually supports the view that these factors negatively influence work performance.”

Valuable assets

Indeed, the researchers argue that the reverse is often the case, with older people often better at managing their own health and wellbeing as well as their workload.  By making retirement a more gradual process, they believe less of the valuable knowledge older workers have would be lost.

“There are skills and knowledge you’ve picked up over many years that can be hard to write down and can only be passed on by working with colleagues,” they explain.

Older people can often struggle when they enter retirement as it represents a significant change to their lives.  For instance, as well as the obvious loss of income, people can lose a sense of identity and the social networks that work provides.

“But you can ease into it if you’re able to slow down, from working full-time to part-time, down to a day a week,” the researchers say.  “It allows you to ramp up your non-work life and gives you time to decide what you’d like to focus on as you leave work.”

The right leadership

To allow older workers to be retained requires the right leadership as often managers can fall into the trap of believing younger employees are automatically more desirable.  This matters as there is a strong need among older employees to feel valued and wanted, with their contributions to the workplace recognized.

For instance, older workers could be shown respect by giving them greater autonomy or by offering them mentoring opportunities over younger employees.  Alternatively, they may be afforded flexibility in their role or additional access to training.

“The number of hours, the timing of the work, where they work is often more important to older workers than what they get paid because a lot of the time their life is more than just work,” the researchers say.

“They can have other responsibilities, caring, things in the community and so on as they begin to transition into that older point in time.  Flexibility also gives them the chance to have more down time for recovery where work is strenuous mentally or physically.”