| There are is increasing band of evidence that retirement may not be all that good for you. After 20 years at drugmaker Eli Lilly, Ed Franson thought he was quietly retiring but that was nearly 10 years ago. For the first month or so, Ed said, he mostly slept. He wasn’t depressed, he just felt mentally and physically exhausted. Then, Ed found like many of us that he was just not really any good at sitting around. He quickly found himself back at work part-time after a friend at a small pharmaceutical company asked him for strategic advice. Today, young Ed, 66, consults and works about four days a week, he also serves on two company boards as well as two not for profit boards. In his own words Ed had completely and utterly failed at retirement. Welcome to the land of the un-retired — people who thought they were leaving their work only to return because they sorely missed something about it, besides the money. These people in their 50s through to their 80s retired on pensions or savings ultimately woke up to the fact there’s more to life than fishing and watching the sunset. The un-retirement trend continues to build, amongst us baby boomers. According to a recent study almost 40% of all Americans 65 and older who are currently working are people who had previously retired. The study also found that more than half of those 50 and older who are not working and not searching for work said they would work if the right opportunity came along. It appears that we may have got our whole image of the structure of life wrong. We all may have a mistaken image of it, that you go to school, work for 40 years, then take the gold watch wave your work mates goodbye and head away for a life of leisure. But we baby boomers are changing the way retirement works. This isn’t about us having to return to work because we are desperate for the work. This is about people returning to work because they miss the challenges, the accomplishments and, most important, the social intercourse. Ask anyone what they miss most about work and the answer is always the same. What they miss most about work is their mates, the human interaction. It is more satisfying to work for a bad boss than it is to sit in front of TV watching bad movies. Laurie Caraway retired in 2013 as director of clinical data management. It was summer, and she spent the next three to four months biking, swimming and treating retirement like one big, long holiday. Some days, she simply sat on the deck. Then, she realised she was bored witless. So, she started volunteering with a group that works to uplift academically gifted minority women from disadvantaged communities. Then she was presented with an opportunity to go back to work on a short-term contract. This encouraged her to send her cv to Your Encore, a retiree return-to-work program co-created by three American corporate giants Eli Lilly, Procter & Gamble and Boeing. Your Encore is a programme that matches retirees with employers who need their skills. These two examples are just a couple of hundreds of the old concept of retirement just not working for everyone. It does not matter is its driving a school bus for a few hours a day for some pocket money or doing a few hours on the tractor for your son. The important factor is that you are keeping yourself active and mentally and physically engaged with life. You are still a participant and not just a passenger watching it all go past your window. To quote the great kiwi doctor Dave Gerard “Mate we were meant to wear out not rust up” Get out there and make something happen. Here is your first golden opportunity. Perhaps the ‘Your Encore’ concept is an opportunity that someone needs to take up here. |
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