Early retirement schemes. Factors governing their success and how these differ across job categories
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483489510099541 |
| Pages | 6-16 |
| Date | 01 December 1995 |
| Published date | 01 December 1995 |
| Author | A. John Maule |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Personnel
Review
24,8
6
Early retirement schemes
Factors governing their success and how
these differ across job categories
A. John Maule
University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Introduction
The last 15 years have seen a relatively large decrease in the numbers of older
workers remaining in employment in Britain, Europe and the USA[1-5]. Much
of this reduction has been due to the use of early retirement. Successive British
governments have actively encouraged early retirement programmes as a way
of creating jobs for younger workers, although this has frequently been at odds
with the objectives of individual companies which have used early retirement to
reduce the overall size of the workforce[6]. Despite its cost, early retirement has
been an attractive element in manpower planning. It enables “headcount
reduction” to take place without undue opposition from workforces and trade
unions. As we move towards the twenty-first century it seems likely that early
retirement will become even more important in manpower planning. There
appear to be minimal grounds for assuming that the generally poor
performance of the post-war British economy will change, leaving us with the
prospect of organizations continuing to go through periods when they need to
reduce manpower. As demographic trends show an increasingly elderly
workforce, early retirement schemes are likely to become increasingly
important for achieving manpower targets.
Given the current and likely future importance of early retirement, it is
perhaps surprising that, with some exceptions (e.g.[2,7-12]), it has not been
widely discussed by either social or management researchers. The present
article draws on the findings presented in a recent study by Maule et al.[13]
investigating the factors which are important in the decision to accept early
retirement, the extent to which these factors are associated with a different
quality of life in retirement and whether these vary across different job
categories. The focus of the present article is, however, different and involves a
reinterpretation of the findings from Maule et al.[13] to achieve three primary
objectives. First it sets out to determine the implications of these findings for the
development of effective early retirement schemes which are attractive to
potential early retirees, suggesting how they should be constructed to
encourage targeted employees to sign up and leave. Second, it explores the
implications of these findings for ways in which the early retirement process
may be constructed and implemented so that it maximizes the likelihood that
later retirement will be a positive and rewarding experience for those leaving
the organization in this way. Third, the article considers the extent to which
Personnel Review, Vol. 24 No. 8,
1995, pp. 6-16. © MCB
University Press, 0048-3486
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