Key approaches that can be used to retain baby boomers on the verge of retiring
Companies operating in Africa and across the world know that it is extremely difficult to find a worthy replacement of a long serving employee who is on the verge of retirement; one who has accrued massive quantities of industry specific understanding, has a great industry name, holds an intimate accepting of your company and is an essential member of your leadership team.
The most ideal approach in dealing with this “problem” is to cultivate and uphold a succession plan and groom a successor to substitute the employee wanting to retire. However with this said, researchers disclose that merely 35% of businesses have a succession plan in place for senior executives. With so much willingness in the boomer generation to extend their working lives beyond traditional retirement limitations, employers should be thinking proactively about ways of alluring their highest performing boomers to remain on and continue contributing to the business.
THE techniques companies can employ in order to pull their boomers back from the edge of retirement:
Mentoring
Create a high profile, one that is a well-respected mentoring program that boomers can partake in and gain the gratification, self-affirmation and confidence of imparting their wisdom and knowledge to younger workers and helping them to achieve objectives. Request boomers to join and help to show the business the exceptional values of older workers.
Consulting
Many people retire in order to launch their own businesses or consultancies in a similar or associated business. So, why not continue to benefit from the retiring boomer’s competency and senior level knowledge by becoming his/her main client/user of their services.
Flexible short-term contracts
For boomers who want to remain working in a fairly engaged concentrated way for little times on a project basis but who are also concerned with traveling and enjoying retirement in quite an intensive way, this can be ideal in many ways. With this approach the retired-to-be gets the best of both worlds.
