Encore vs Ex-Retired Careers

"Ex-Retired" (or ex-retiree or ex-retirement) at its most neutral just means a person retired and then returned to work. "Encore" carries extra meaning: a person transitioned to a more fulfilling career (sometimes without actually retiring).

As baby boomers plan for the future, more and more of them are expecting to push off retirement or, if they have retired early, to now seek employment. The current financial crisis is a powerful motivator. Perhaps the nest egg has cracked. Or perhaps the housing crunch threatens a planned home sale. Or maybe a recession/depression of unknown length is too great a risk in light of retirement of unknown length.

Comments I've heard from boomers in the past few days reflecting on these issues:

• If I can back into industry, I could work for a couple of years and sock away the salary to replace what I've lost in the last 3 weeks. (Age 62)
  
• I don't have a retirement year in my mind and that's good. (Age 63)
• If I have to go job-hunting it's going to be for a job, not a career. (Age 62)

Maybe the mood of the country doesn't allow for optimistic planning for encore careers, or maybe the encore concept belongs to people with resources to support that choice. I wonder if we'll gravitate to a division of the vocabulary, where Ex-Retired will take on the connotation of being forced to return to employment in order to make ends meet.

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Examples of Unplanned Encore Employment

Over the past 3 weeks, I have been told (directly) about these jobs that "leading edge" boomers are taking:

1 - A colleague's 58-year-old husband was bored after one month of early retirement. He is now in year 2 of nursing school.
2 - A former business partner and her husband have applied for work as poll workers; they hope for early voting assignments but they will take Election Day posts, at the least.
3 - A cusp boomer (born late 1945) has begun training as an online instructor for a university.

The range of encore careers is great. For some, a whole new career beckons. For others, occasional or part-time work will suffice. For all of them, change is a feature. Serial careers may not be a new concept but it was not predicted for the leading boomers (born between 1946 and 1954). Trailing boomers and Gen Xers were expected to have multiple careers, as many as 5 to 6 across their working years. For those cohorts, education has had a plan: increase offerings for adult learners who will return to school or training every 5 to 10 years.

Cusp and leading boomers will not demand as much specialty training for their encore careers in large part because they are surprised that they are starting or even extending careers. But they may require some services such as employment matching. With the current economic downturn, more near-retirement boomers are likely to need those services.

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Employment in Retirement: YourEncore

YourEncore...accelerating innovation through proven experience...is an employment site focused on retired scientists and engineers.

The strength of this "matching service" between retirees (the Experts) and companies (the Clients) is the membership model of the Clients. The founding Client Companies were Proctor & Gamble and Eli Lilly. Since 2003, the group has grown to more than 30. So, when HR folks review the Experts' resumes, they come to the task with interest in finding a match from this defined pool. (The concept is similar to one I described in an earlier blog about IBM's partnership with the U.S. Treasury Department under auspices of the non-profit Partnership for Public Service. Their joint effort is to capture retiring IBM employees for a needed government workforce.)

Experts—the scientists and engineers interested in short-term or part-time employment—enter a profile online and can keep it updated. When a Client taps the Expert for employment, YourEncore facilitates the paperwork. The Client dictates whether the Expert will be an employee or an independent contractor.

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Flex Work for Boomers

It's little wonder we boomers want flexible work schedules in our encore and retirement jobs—we've gotten used to flex options. More than a quarter of over-50 workers enjoy a high level of flexibility in their employment right now. For men, the figure is 28%; for women, 26%.

A little more than half have a moderate level of flexibility and this circumstance is equal between women and men. There are some workers, of course, who have few or no flex options: 20% of men, 22% of women.

The graphic above is an unofficial representation of the data. For the real chart (and link to the 2005 research), visit the web site of Boston College's Center on Aging & Work.

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Will Baby Boomers Wreck American Society?

Really wreck society or just Social Security? Forecasting appears dire. If boomers insist on retiring early (or even on time), they will create a shortage of funds for Social Security benefits. Presumably, a nation can fund anything it chooses to, so the U.S. may continue to support retirees even if one fund runs short.

But there's another wreck coming. But it's not just the funding for retirement benefits that boomers will influence. The retirement years of note (2008 and 2011 being most discussed now but there will be more dire years ahead) are those that will deplete specific work forces. On campuses, that's called the graying professoriate. Look around a faculty meeting and count the gray hairs. A new dean may see opportunity to grow a new college; a more experienced dean may dread the upcoming upheaval.

A national treasure: I'm not one to call any generation a national treasure, but the Treasury Department has identified the baby boom generation as crucial to their work force. They hope that as current employees exit (with their federal retirement benefits), other retirees or near-retirees will enter. Through the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, the Treasury Department hopes to recruit retiring IBM workers for encore careers with the government.

Other graying areas: It's not only Treasury that faces a gap in their work force. (Treasury is just one of the smarter entities to develop a strategy to meet their need.) Across all levels of government, we now hear predictions that the most experienced workers will soon be leaving. What will happen then? I can imagine longer lines in government offices, delays in permits and applications for everything, and a general decline in services. Think DMV on its busiest day—every day.

Will government offices make good encore careers? Would you sign on? I can think of some inducements that would lure me for an extra 5 or 10 years of employment: health benefits, flex schedule, option to telecommute half the time, and a cap on total hours of, what, 20 or 25 a week? We'll see what develops.

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Last Day of Teaching

Stats Class. Yesterday was the last day of my online Stats class, which also marked my last day of teaching for a state institution. It was actually just a long day of a testing room open for the final exam. The day was more about filing grades than teaching.

Ending a teaching gig. There's no easy way to exit a teaching institution. I've known professors who told us "I'm interviewing" (meaning elsewhere) and hoped for a leave-taking and then stayed, after all. On the other extreme were the folks who left quickly and were "Just gone. He's just gone!"

Giving notice. There's a good reason for "two weeks' notice" being two weeks. Not too long, not too short. In higher ed, two weeks is a fraction of the planning year. So, I gave six months. It helped the institution with already announced classes, and it helped students as they adjusted to new research advisors. Good reasons for a long notice. But it does drag things out.

Will the encore career include teaching? Could be. I may go get trained in new systems and teach online. But right now? Some time off Blackboard is OK.

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Encore Career

Encore. Once more. Repeat performance. Except the encore career is not a repeat at all. It's the newly crafted career that replaces the one that came before. Bankers become adventure guides. And probably fewer adventure guides become bankers.

Boomers invented it. Boomers are responsible for the new concept of encore career. First, because they are the first generation living long enough to want/need a second career. Second, because they want the second career to be more fulfilling or more rewarding or just more fun.

Website guide: Googling "encore career" will produce about a zillion links. Here's the one I recommend as the first one: Encore Career. This link will take you to the home page, but I recommend you visit the "find" page, too. It is a great place to dive in. (If you see a pop-up box about google and APIs and maps, just persist. Or, check out the URL in that message and learn about embedded maps, which is pretty interesting, too.)

On a personal note: I'm composing. That's to say that I have my date in sight and I have preliminary plans accomplished. Just a couple of months more. ~ Lida

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.