Following the beginning of the phasing-out of the default retirement age this week, The Age and Employment Network (TAEN) has called on employers and employees to consider how they will manage retirement and working past the old traditional retirement ages.
TAEN has joined forces with Saga to produce two pieces of research - one for employers, one for employees - Rethinking Retirement: An Employer's Guide to Managing the Workforce without a Fixed Retirement Age, and Rethinking Retirement: an employee's Guide to Working Life Without a Default Retirement Age.The research shows how beneficial positive approaches can be, helping employers to get the best value out of all their employees, prolonging their working lives and supporting them in career transitions.
TAEN believes retirement will gradually cease to be a sudden event occurring on a pre-ordained date for all individuals.
Instead, it will become more of a transition process, with individuals choosing the time and pace at which they move from working and earning to drawing on past savings and pensions accumulated over a lifetime.
TAEN chief executive, Chris Ball, said: "Many people do want or need to continue working and earning in some way, but they often find the option of working full time, in demanding roles or under great pressure, not to their liking. They begin to see the attractions of a more relaxed pace in which knowledge and skill is more important than 'hurry, hurry, worry, worry'.
"Part work and part retirement makes an awful lot of sense. The challenge is to make it possible by putting sensible retirement policies into place.
"There is no reason in principle why people should not continue to work and earn in some form much later in life - but to be able to do that, they must be supported, with employers adopting radically different employment policies that make working later an attractive and plausible option."
Article from HR Magazine