Motivating Employees Close to Retirement

It appears that as many employees are getting closer to retirement they really start to lose motivation, especially once they announce their retirement date.  This can be a very difficult situation for a manager to motivate the employee to continue their work at the same energy level as before.  They know that their performance will not lead to any desirable outcomes.  They will not get any bonuses, no promotions, or increases in pay for their efforts.  They are at the point where they are only there to be utilized as a resource and give some time for the company to find a replacement before they retire.  Perhaps, in this case, expectancy theory is not a good theory to utilize when trying to motivate this employee.  Since these employees close to retire seem to be unmotivated, the first thought may be to try to get them to retire earlier so there will be room for younger more energized and cheaper employees.  However, sometimes it would be better to try to keep them past retirement, as from study from P. Matthijs Bal, Simon B. De Jong, Paul G. W. Jansen and Arnold B. Bakker.  They argue that the baby boomer population, which is nearing retirement age is full of knowledge and expertise that cannot be matched in many companies.  Old research on individuals have concluded that people would work past retirement age when in good health, attached to work, and have a poor financial situation (Matthijs).  Also, if the organization has high support, it may influence the employee to stay. Their research was focused on the role of I-deals (the idiosyncratic deals made between employees and their organization).  There are two types of I-deals: development and flexibility to motivate employees to work past retirement.  With development being knowledge and skill development and flexibility being scheduling flexibility.  Their research indicated that flexibility I-deals contribute to higher motivation without regard to the work climate.  Also, for the development I-deals higher motivation is contributed to encouragement to develop themselves and use their knowledge and experience.  In a work environment where the close to retirement employees are not encouraged to use new skills or take up new and challenging tasks, they do not have the motivation to continue working (Matthijs).

There are a few instances that I have heard, that involve the two conclusions of flexible scheduling and/or developmental encouragement.   One person had high expertise in a few programs that no one within the company had and the programs were older programs that younger employees would not have any experience with, and he was about to retire.  However, management wanted him to stay, so they offered him a very flexible schedule.  He worked about 20 hours per week, basically anytime, mostly 2 10 hour days.  And he got just as much work done as before.  His energy levels and happiness were up very much when he started that 20 hour per week flexible schedule.  Another employee was a manager that was about to retire, but he had a lot of experience and knowledge working in various sections of the company.  So he was given a special assignment to increase the efficiency of the business practices that he had experience with.  He was no longer doing the day to day activities, and he was motivated and energized to continue working.  Another employee that was about to retire was given no encouragement to stay, and only given the simplest jobs, since everyone knew he was about to retire.  He had no energy and took naps during the workday.  He was not motivated.

Managers really need to be conscious of employees entering retirement, and it seems that given them more responsibilities or more flexibility will continue to motivate them.


P. Matthijs Bal, Simon B. De Jong, Paul G. W. Jansen and Arnold B. Bakker.  "Motivating Employees to Work Beyond Retirement: A Multi-Level Study of the Role of I-Deals and Unit Climatejoms" March 2012. Journal of Management Studies.