Hanging On to Retirees

If employers want to hold onto their employees, they have a narrow window of up to two years in which they may be able to change retiring workers’ decisions by offering them a “toolkit” of incentives to remain with the company, according to results of a recent survey of the aerospace and defense industries released by the Washington, D.C.-based Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

Making workers feel needed, offering them a full or partial pension while working part time and making seasonal or contract work available, were the most important incentives, the survey reported. But nearly two-thirds, or 63%, of the retirees surveyed also said that these incentives would have been even more effective if the retirees had known about them in the two years before they communicated their intention to retire.