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In the 1880s, Otto
von Bismarck crafted Europe’s first pension plan. He had to pick an age
at which people would be too feeble to work and therefore
eligible for state support and entitlement. Bismarck picked
65.
In that year, the
life expectancy in Europe and the United States was only
45. Life
expectancy at birth today is 79 for women and 73 for men.
If you were to use
Bismarck’s
formula to craft a retirement age today, the age we
would be retiring people would be 115.
Running concurrent
to our extended life span is a trend to retire earlier. It was not uncommon for
people to accept loaded early retirement packages as
organizations cut back in the 1990s and again during the past
two years. And
then you have the boomers who enjoyed the fruits of America’s
prosperity during much of their lives leaving corporate
America to enjoy life or begin second and even third
careers.
This is very
troubling because many of our early retirees are the best and
the brightest. The wave of 55+ boomers is only beginning to
touch our shores and when it leaves, it will carry with it
millions and millions of hard-working people and irreplaceable
stores of knowledge.
CriteriaOne is helping organizations
set the standard for human performance and linking
individual competencies from the drive for results
and integrity to business objectives.
For more information about CriteriaOne,
click here.
For more information about building your managerial
and sales bench strength, . Success Performance Solutions works with small businesses
as well as the Fortune 500 to provide convenient,
cost-effective solutions that quickly and effortlessly
sifts out unqualified candidates and matches,
manages and motivates employees.
Tracing the four
stages of retirement
John Glenn did it
at 77.Peter Drucker is doing it at 92.Joe Paterno is still
active at 76.
The first era of
retirement lasted about 100,000 years and ended in the early
20th century. During that era, you worked. Then you
died. The median age in 1900 was in the mid-40s.
The
second era began somewhere in the 1920s and led to the
creation of Social Security. This program had two
purposes. First it
created a thin safety net for older adults. But equally important
was the fact that 25 percent of the young people in America
were unemployed. Social Security encouraged the departure of
older workers to make for a new younger workforce. Life expectancy however
was only 63 and most people did not even live long enough to
retire, yet enjoy a life of leisure and rest after a lifetime
of work.
During this same
period, there were 40 workers supporting each retiree, too.
The economic strain on the workforce to support an aging
population was minimal.
The third era of
retirement emerged during the 1970s. Retirement was now seen
as a mark of success. If you could retire,
you had succeeded. And now with life
expectancies extending into the 70s, 80s and even 90s,
retirements could last twenty and thirty years. The number of new workers
entering the workforce during the 1950s was nine to one. By 2020, only two
workers will be available to replace (and support) every one
retiree.
The fourth era of
retirement is upon us. People don’t want to
stop work. They
just want to be able to work at what they want and when they
want. Consider the
snowbirds who migrate home to the North for summer and South
for the winter. They want to work but
on their schedule between golf, tennis and the
grandkids.
Finding and keeping
workers is no longer synonymous to recruiting and retaining
employees. The traditional 40 work-week and year-long
job is morphing. The sooner your organization realizes
that filling vacancies and keeping them filled is not a matter
of just hiring and keeping employees but a seamless workforce
solution, the sooner you can begin to acquire what we
consider your ultimate competitive edge - an unfair share of
talent in the market. | 
