Retirement: At What Cost?

Many times in today’s ever-changing professional and corporate landscape, employees are being “offered” early retirement. This option may solve some of the financial issues or staffing but is causing quite a stir for employees in various companies and industries over the age of 50. The trend is starting grow as companies are seeing ways to save money and cut out the “obsolete” employees that may be behind the forward progression of the company.

Employees in many companies are told that they won’t be in the cutbacks due to their seniority with the company however there have been countless cases indicating the opposite. Employees are even asking for early retirement as a way out of the survival type environment of their respective organization.

Effects:

Not only are employees the ones to think about as losing their jobs and not getting their full contract packages (if applicable) but there is a larger picture to be considered. The financial stress put on the economy by allowing large amounts of people to retire early and collect money from their pension system is a huge strain. The financial hit that could affect a country is rather large. Currently in Switzerland the retirement age is 65 for men and 64 for women, but the retirement age can be taken earlier by 1–2 years. A bigger scope of this situation encompasses the fact that if people stop earning and stop paying into the system, the funds available will be lower and lower in coming years.

Questions on Different Scenarios:

Could a strong commitment and promise to continue training an organization’s older workers contribute to solving the problem? In my humble opinion I believe this should be offered to employees and the training and expertise older employees have shouldn’t be so easily overlooked. Companies need to value their older workers experience and skills instead of churning out fresh batches of university graduates and cutting back on workers close to retirement.

Thank you for reading!

-Andrew Leighton Chamberlain