The Home Depot made a splash last week when it announced that it was forming a partnership with AARP to recruit and hire older workers at its 1,700 stores.
Not many companies have identified this talent pool as an important part of their future, but the Atlanta-based company plans to hire 35,000 people this year and expects that a goodly number will be recent retirees or people on the verge of retirement.
It says it values the strong work ethic, maturity and leadership those workers can provide, and is offering full-and part-time jobs that include crucial benefits such as medical insurance.
Home Depot, which for years has valued older workers for their experience and knowledge, is simply a step ahead of most businesses.
The Towers Perrin human resources consulting firm said that 78 percent of the 2,000 workers it polled in a nationwide survey want to continue working in some capacity into their retirement years.
That's a dramatic departure from a work force that for the past two decades has seemed more interested in early retirement than in an extended work life.
Sixty-four percent expect to work part time, 57 percent plan to change occupations and 43 percent just want to work to stay involved and active.
"That surprised us and really hit home," says Kathy Fitzpatrick, a senior consultant for Towers Perrin who headed the study. "It tells us that the reality of retirement is changing."
To most of us, retirement planning is usually relegated to the back of our consciousness until we approach the later stages of our careers and can actually see the day we will retire.
The Towers Perrin study found that most people think they have a good handle on their retirement planning, yet only 15 percent know how much income they will need during their retirement years.
"People think they are planning," Fitzpatrick says. "But in reality they are not quite sure what they are planning for."
Employers are well aware of the need for retirement planning, with the study showing that 76 percent of companies believe they have an obligation to help finance the retirements of their workers. Yet those same companies are wary of the rising costs of doing that.
Just as workers want to take more responsibility for retirement planning, the study shows that employers share that opinion. They are just not sure how to do it, Fitzpatrick says.
She believes employers need to invest more heavily in educating their employees on retirement needs if they are to rest easy.
"At the same time, I think they have to look at how the work force is changing and how that will affect them," Fitzpatrick says. "Maybe they need to figure out a system of phased retirement, how they handle medical coverage for full-or part-time workers."
The move to lengthen work lives probably has several contributing factors, among them a decline in company-funded retirement programs, stock market hiccups that have skewed retirement timetables and escalating costs of medical care that have created uncertainty to even the workers with the most calculated retirement plans.
There also is the threat of a worker shortage that many economists predict over the next four to six years that will encourage older workers to stay in the work force.
It's clear that the demographics of the American work force are getting older, and that means it will require tweaking who we hire and how we treat older workers.
Instead of sending older workers into retirement, there have to be avenues developed that keep them in the work force in some manner, whether it is in part-time jobs, seasonal work or some sort of other flexible schedule that fits in with their desires.
Home Depot has already taken a step like that, but we need many more employers to come forward and meet this growing issue.
Email This Page!