Illustration by Ingo Fast
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Hire Calling
By Mary Quigley and Loretta E. Kaufman, November & December 2004
Forget the golf clubs and cruises. For an increasing number of Americans, retirement means heading back to work—this time on their own terms
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Good old Southern hospitality is Cathy Whalen's specialty, and nowadays
she has plenty of opportunities to let her graciousness shine. Most weekends
she can be found at various locations around Atlanta—from four-star
hotels to the Georgia World Congress Center—meeting and greeting
visitors, registering attendees, and staffing trade-show booths for the Atlanta
Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The bureau plays host to scores of conventions, meetings, and trade shows
annually, and Cathy enjoys ensuring that events run smoothly. She also enjoys
getting the chance to learn about everything from pet products to
woodworking.
But what she appreciates most—aside from a paycheck—is her
flexible part-time schedule. She works as little or as much as she wants. Some
days she puts in 10 hours, others as little as two. "It's great to
feel in better control of your life," she says.
Until recently, Cathy wasn't so much in control as she was overwhelmed.
Sixty-hour weeks weren't unusual for her at Delta Air Lines, where
she'd worked for 25 years, most recently as the manager of corporate
identity in consumer marketing. When the airline, like many others, downsized
after 9/11, Cathy, then 52, took a retirement package. At first she used her
newfound free time to clean out closets, do house renovations, and generally
catch up on the things she had neglected while working long hours.
But Cathy never envisioned a permanent retirement. "I had no intention
of never working postretirement," she explains. "I wanted a short
time to be jobless." So, after several satisfying months spent far from
the punch clock, she began looking for work. She had two requirements: less
stress and more flexibility. She sounded out former associates and sent her
resumé to major Atlanta-area employers. She went on job interviews.
Then, through friends, she learned that the convention bureau was looking for
temp employees to help host out-of-town visitors. For a people person like
Cathy the job was perfect, as were the hours.
By the spring of 2002 Cathy had "unretired." And in doing so she
became part of a rapidly growing movement: retirees easing out of full-time
careers and into part-time and flexible jobs that suit both their wallets and
lifestyles. And with more and more workers postponing full retirement, an
unprecedented aging of the American work force is underway. According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 2002 and 2012 the number of people in the
labor force ages 55 and older will increase by 51 percent, and those ages 65
and older by 43 percent.
The reasons for this unfolding trend are fairly obvious. As the
77-million-strong baby boomer generation (currently ages 40 to 58) approaches
retirement age, old notions of endless days of golf, grandkids, and cruises are
being tossed overboard.
According to a recently released AARP survey, "Boomers Envision
Retirement II," this famously untraditional generation is now
rewriting the rules for retirement. The typical boomer expects to quit his or
her job at age 66—up from age 64 reported in a similar 1998 study.
What's more, the survey reports, fully 80 percent of boomers plan to work
in retirement.
Wait a minute. Work? In retirement? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?
Actually, what's occurring is nothing less than the reinvention of
retirement, suggests Joseph Quinn, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences
at Boston College and an expert on older workers and their issues.
Rejecting a century-long trend toward earlier and earlier retirements,
"many older Americans now retire gradually, using part-time or
short-duration jobs on the way out," he says, describing a process
commonly known as phased retirement. Retirees increasingly use what Quinn dubs
"bridge jobs" to span the period from full-time work to full-time
retirement. (Most likely to transition into retirement are people at opposite
ends of the economic spectrum: clerical workers and white-collar managers.
Those in the middle, such as blue-collar workers with union pensions, says
Quinn, are less likely to look for part-time work.)
One motivation for staying in the workplace is the need to stay involved.
According to the AARP survey, some 27
percent of workers ages 53 to 57 expect to work part-time for enjoyment after
retirement. (This is down from 34 percent in 1998.) Boomers in particular
"have a built-in sense of career as an important part of their lives, so
they may change a job or modify it, but they are not going to stop working
completely," says Fred Brock, author of
Retire on Less Than You Think. "They don't want to be on
vacation 365 days a year." Brock himself recently retired at age 60 from
his job as a business editor at The New York Times and moved to
Manhattan—as in Kansas—to join the journalism faculty at Kansas
State University.
But as much as some people might like the mental calisthenics of work, for
many it is their bank account that needs pumping up. The AARP report found that
30 percent of older boomers say financial need is the reason they expect to
continue to work. Retirement income used to be thought of as a three-legged
stool of pensions, Social Security, and savings, says Janemarie Mulvey, Ph.D,
assistant director of the Research Information Center at Watson Wyatt
Worldwide, a Washington, D.C., human-resources consulting firm specializing in
employee benefits. After the stock market downturn of recent years, not only is
that stool a little wobbly, but many workers find they are faced with costs
like health care, college tuitions, weddings, and mortgages later in life than
were their parents' generation. "Now you need a chair with the fourth
leg—income from part-time work," says Mulvey.
At the same time, other changes have spurred the increasing popularity of
phased retirement: Social Security no longer penalizes workers 65 and older,
mandatory retirement has been greatly reduced, many jobs are less physically
taxing, and people are healthier and living longer.
Perhaps most important, businesses are finally realizing that instead of
pushing skilled, older workers out the door, they need to be finding ways to
make it attractive for them to stay and contribute. "When someone retires,
you lose the experience and knowledge gained over 30 years in the same
field," says Tamara Erickson, coauthor of "It's Time to Retire
Retirement," a March 2004 Harvard Business Review article that was
based on a year-long study of the aging American work force conducted by the
Concours Consulting Group of Kingwood, Texas. "Many companies are going to
face a talent shortage unless they redefine their concept of retirement and
adopt a new strategy."
Phased retirement can be a win-win all around, especially if you've
planned ahead for it. But sometimes retirement can come as a surprise, forcing
you to forgo old expectations and reassess your personal needs.
Bob Bozek had envisioned running a charter boat off Long Island after
retiring from his job as advertising production manager at Newsday. But
five years short of that goal and after 43 years with the newspaper, he was
forced to take a less-than-generous buyout when new management cut costs and
staff. Sixty years old and facing college tuition for his two children, he
needed a steady income. His wife, a nurse, heard that Mercy Hospital in their
hometown of Rockville Centre, New York, was looking for a handyman to work in
their seven drug-and- alcohol outpatient homes.
Switching from newspaper executive to hospital handyman proved relatively
easy for Bob. "My father was a jack-of-all-trades and taught me how to be
a carpenter and electrician," he says. "I enjoy working with my
hands." The job also turned into more than repairs when the hospital gave
him additional projects, including training mentally challenged people as
porters, inventorying equipment, and performing fire-safety duty. After years
of wearing a jacket and tie, Bob enjoyed both the change of pace and the
clients in the group homes who welcomed his visits.
Like many others in bridge jobs, Bob arranged his hours to suit his
financial and personal needs, cutting back to three days a week and eventually
to per diem. Now 69, he alternates between working at the hospital and
restoring vintage cars, a lifelong hobby that turned into a side business, with
his son, in Cape Coral, Florida. "It suits my lifestyle," he says.
"When people tell me there's no work, I say, 'Open your eyes and
look around.' Maybe they're not $100,000-a-year jobs, but you can
adjust."
Bob Bozek was fortunate that his unexpected retirement played out so well.
For those of us who don't just happen to have a marketable skill like home
repair, advance planning can increase the odds that working into retirement
will be successful and satisfying. That means devising a strategy that succeeds
both economically and emotionally. "You need to spend as much time
thinking about the downward slope of your career as you did about the climb
up," says Erickson.
The first step in such advance planning is to establish your priorities: do
you need income, mental stimulation, health benefits, flexibility? Bob Bozek
was facing those college tuitions and retirement years earlier than planned, so
in his case income was the prime motivator. Cathy Whalen wanted less stress and
more flexibility. From her years with Delta she also knew that she enjoyed
customer service and the hospitality field. "I wanted to do something
different while building on my skills, be creative, make a difference, and have
fun."
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