Retiring to the Office

What are you doing after retirement? If you’re a manager, you will probably go back to work.

Managers are more likely than clerical or blue-collar workers to start their own business or find another job after retirement, according to Prof. Anil Verma of U of T’s Rotman School of Management and Centre for Industrial Relations, and Prof. Gangaram Singh of San Diego State University in California. The professors recently surveyed 1,805 Bell Canada managers, clerical workers, technicians and operators who took early retirement, and found that about 40 per cent obtained full- or part-time jobs. The return-to-work rate was 56 per cent for managers and slightly more than 20 per cent for blue-collar and clerical staff, according to the study, published in Industrial and Labor Relations Review.

“We found that people in managerial positions are more likely to continue working after retirement because they exhibit greater attachment to work,” says Verma. “For those of us who work for wages, employment gives us identity, dignity and a feeling of worth.”

Employers must shift their focus from age to skills, he says. “If employers say these people are old and we don’t want to hire them, they will be excluding themselves from a large pool of talent.”