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Human Resources Retirement Policy: 3 New Program Ideas

March 06, 2017 by Raymond Lee

 A recent story published in the Grand Forks Herald describes how the University of North Dakota is handling retirements at their institution. As institutions and companies alike are impacted by the current business climate made up of lower budgets and slimmer resources, human resources teams will have to search for retirement solutions. With the number of baby boomers continuing to work past traditional retirement age increasing (this is especially the case in higher education), organizations will focus on making changes to their human resources retirement policy as a solution to budget and workforce planning issues.

 

There are several ways an organization can create a positive impact by making a change to their current human resources retirement policy. The most common and effective programs to create this positive impact are listed below.

3 New Program Ideas for Your Human Resources Retirement Policy

  1. Phased Retirement

As described in the Grand Forks Herald, this program can have an impact on your organization’s human resources retirement policy. Different from traditional retirement policies that focused on a specific exit date, this phases an employee out of a full time job over time. This phasing can consist of part-time work, reduced responsibility, telecommuting, or even volunteering.

  1. Retirement Lifestyle Planning

This type of human resources retirement policy program provides in-depth coaching to potential retirees to help them prepare for the transition. The coaching usually involves an assessment of your employees overall readiness to retire, as well as a list containing action items about what they can improve on in their overall retirement lifestyle. One-on-one coaching is done regularly to ensure that the potential retirees get all the support they need to prepare for this transition. As many potential retirees don’t have a clear understanding of what their retired life will look like, providing this service can decrease anxieties around the subject and help your employees make a plan to retire. Interested in more information surrounding retirement lifestyle planning? 

  1. Voluntary Retirements

Similar to voluntary layoffs, voluntary retirements are a great human resources retirement policy program. They allow your employees to self-identify as being interested in retirement, and give them a financial incentive to execute on that interest. It is usually more cost effective for an organization to provide a financial incentive to those who voluntarily retire than to keep reluctant retirees on for several years. As the choice is made by the employees themselves, it is also usually well received.

Raymond Lee

Raymond Lee

Raymond Lee is the President of Careerminds, a global outplacement company based in Wilmington, Delaware. He has over 20 years of human resource, outplacement, and career consulting experience. He has his bachelor’s in psychology and holds a Master’s Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Louisiana Tech University. He is active in SHRM and ATD. Raymond’s been featured on SiriusXM Business Radio, CareerTalk, and the Wall Street Journal and he’s published a book titled, Clocking Out: A Stress-Free Guide to Career Transitions.

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