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09.08
Three
Retirement Challenges the
Experts Never Told You About
New
research finds Boomers demanding a new set of
values as they near retirement
By Maria
K. Malayter, Ph.D.
When it comes to retirement,
it’s not just what you have that matters,
but how you re-invent yourself so that
you retire with a sense of meaningfulness and
significance. Continuous learning is one of
three key ways to do that, according to the
research findings tracking retiree and
retirement trends since 1993.
The Baby Boomers, who will live
another 20 or more years after retirement, are
demanding a full and rewarding second life that
will be very different from the one they’re
leaving behind. During my work as a health and
wellness instructor at Great Lakes Naval
Station, Great Lakes, Ill., I conducted
considerable research with men and women
transitioning out of the work force. The
prevailing notion is that retirees and older
individuals are primarily concerned about money
and health issues. While those issues are
certainly high on the retirees’ list of
concerns, the research I conducted shows that
they are not their only worries. The retirees
and Baby Boomers now exiting the work force are
also hoping to find fulfillment in this new
stage of life, and many will remain in the work
force, with new career focuses and pursuing new
and exciting endeavors.
The Three Challenges to
Finding Fulfillment
My research began informally at
the Great Lakes Naval Training Center and in my
classes at National-Louis University and Webster
University. For the exploratory study, I
collected oral histories from retired women and
men in the Chicago metropolitan area as they
transitioned into retirement. The interview
participants took part in in-depth,
semi-structured interviews. Several themes
emerged from these interviews about the real
retirement experience.
The study found that retirees
who find retirement richly rewarding had to
first re-invent themselves for this new life
cycle. By doing so, they find themselves seeking
out one or more of the following:
-
The deep desire and
continued need for relationships and
companionship: For many, retirement is a
period of soul-searching and transformation.
Companions can often provide guidance, and
help define a new personal identity outside
of work. This desire often extends beyond
what spouse or life partners can offer. Many
Boomer retirees find they need to forge new
relationships and develop new companions
through hobby-related activities, volunteer
work or social activities. Some return to
part-time jobs or second careers to fulfill
this need. Such social supports help
retirees keep track of each other’s lives,
which provides another reason to live and
stay healthy so they can continue to
contribute.
-
A continued yearning to
learn: To validate this finding, one need
only look at the number of older Americans
and retirees attending college or continuing
education programs. More than three hundred
U.S. colleges have established “learning in
retirement” programs to meet older adults’
need to be intellectually challenged. Many
community colleges are establishing courses
to support Marc Freedman’s Encore Careers
[www.encore.org].
-
Spiritual and holistic
well-being: To find meaning in retirement,
retirees often return to faith-based
endeavors or pursue personal spiritual
matters to address well-being issues. Many
find that such endeavors help to replace the
emptiness that can accompany retirement,
after the prestige, position and power of
career no longer provide that sense purpose.
Time spent in retirement can make up for
perceived missed opportunities due to work
commitments. Embracing spiritual matters
helps many experience transformation and
happiness as they enter retirement.
These three challenges are often
overlooked when people plan for their
retirement. Older workers are bombarded with
retirement advice about money, health and
relocation issues, yet somehow we have forgotten
that in retirement, the need for relationships,
the thirst for learning, and the desire for
meaning become major challenges that retirees
struggle to fulfill.
Boomers: Visions of the New
Retirement, published by iUniverse, includes
these and other research findings. Boomers
challenges retiring individuals, businesses,
universities and other organizations to
“rethink” the stereotypical retirement, and to
plan accordingly for the surge of Baby Boomers
heading into retirement. It allows for proactive
thinking in reprogramming to serve this new
revolution in retirement and to actively keep
retirees involved in society. Government and
private projects are being created to engage the
Baby Boomers in civic activities, such as
volunteerism, where they can continue to learn
and work in the second half of life.
Impact on the Workplace
The new vision of retirement is
going to force major changes to the services
that human resources professionals offer to
their retiring employees. For example, some
Boomers are already choosing to retire because
they want more time to pursue other passions.
Employers can respond to this demand by
re-evaluating flexible work schedules and
part-time employment to retain valuable
employees and their organizational knowledge. As
the Boomers exit the work force, organizations
will want to create a succession plan for how
they might retain Boomers’ institutional and
operational knowledge.
Some corporations are already
experiencing the loss of organizational
knowledge as retirements increase, so they are
creating opportunities to invite the retirees
back to mentor new leaders. In 2004, McDonald's
corporation invited a retired cook who worked
alongside of founder Ray Kroc to help McDonald's
improve its profitability. Retired Fred Turner
could taste in the products where the
corporation had cut costs and lost touch with
McDonald's original roots. First, he located the
original creator of the signature special sauce
of the Big Mac and then recovered old business
practices to entice long-term customers to
return to McDonald's. Inviting Turner back for
the consulting gig was costly to the
corporation, but the move has paid off through
increased revenue, and got the company back in
touch with its organizational legacy.
As more people head toward
retirement, new dimensions of planning are
encouraged to expand beyond the normal topics of
finances and health. When it comes to retirement
planning, you can never start too early. It is
wise to combine traditional life planning topics
and wellness topics to build an enriching,
stable and positive retirement.
Maria Malayter, PhD. is the
Director of the Center for Positive Aging and an
Assistant Professor of Applied Behavioral
Sciences at National-Louis University, Chicago.
She previously served as an Assistant Dean for
the College of Arts and Sciences before she
retired to build the Center for Positive Aging.
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
To find out more about the
Center for Positive Aging, please visit
www.nl.edu//positiveaging or Maria K.
Malayter, Ph.D. at
mmalayter@nl.edu.
Opinions expressed are the
author's.
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