Data and Research July 20, 2017

GAO Recommends Phased Retirement to Preserve Boomers' Knowledge Base

However, today, only 15% of companies offer phased retirement.
Reported by

In a report to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommends that employers adopt phased retirement programs, so that they will not suddenly lose the knowledge and experience of Baby Boomers. However, only 15% of workers between the ages of 61 and 66 are semi-retired, according to the GAO.

The GAO also reviewed a 2016 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey, that found only 5% of its membership base offered a formal phased retirement program. However, 11% offered an informal phased retirement program. Among large employers, those with 2,500 to 9,999 workers, 16% offered a formal phased retirement program.

“Nine of 16 experts GAO interviewed explained that industries with skilled workers or labor shortages are motivated to offer phased retirement because their workers are hard to replace,” GAO says. Consulting, education, government, utilities and high-tech are among the industries most likely to offer phased retirement, according to the GAO. “While not all researchers agree, it has been suggested by some that as the population ages and the number of Baby Boomers leaving the labor force increases, there could be a loss of economic productivity. The availability of phased retirement, by extending the labor force participation, has the potential to provide options that would be beneficial both to the older workers and the overall economy.”

For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANSPONSOR NEWSDash daily newsletter.

Reasons why employers do not offer phased retirement programs include the belief that older workers are less productive and create more expensive health care costs, according to the GAO. Other employers are concerned about regulatory complexities involving federal tax and age discrimination laws.

Those that do offer phased retirement said they did so to enable knowledge transfer and to manage their workforce more capably. 

The full GAO report may be downloaded from here.

Break from the Grind July 20, 2017

A Little Friday File Fun

Reported by

Near Birmingham, England, doctors readying a 67-year-old woman for cataract surgery discovered that a “blueish mass” in one of her eyes was actually 17 contact lenses mashed together, according to a report published this month in the British Medical Journal. The woman reported discomfort in her eye, but figured it was because of dry eye and old age, according to Optometry Today. A specialist trainee ophthalmologist told the website that doctors eventually found an additional 10 individual contact lenses in the same eye. All of the lenses were monthly disposable contacts that the woman had forgotten about. The cataract surgery was postponed after the discovery to avoid increased risk of eye infection due to the bacteria around the patient’s conjunctiva, but there was no obvious infection in the eye.

In Corpus Christi, Texas, customers went to a Bank of America ATM, and instead of a receipt, out popped a message saying, “Please Help I’m stuck here and I don’t have my phone please call my boss.” The trapped man was stuck for about two hours. Some people who saw the note initially thought it was a joke. Luckily for the man, someone took it seriously and called for help. “Apparently he left his cellphone and the swipe card he needed to get out of the room outside in his truck,” Corpus Christi police Lt. Chris Hooper told The Associated Press.

Never miss a story — sign up for PLANSPONSOR newsletters to keep up on the latest retirement plan benefits news.

In Manitowoc, Wisconsin, police officers found a 32-year-old nak.ed man standing in the street yelling that he wanted to harm people living nearby. Officers suspected he was impaired by drugs and placed him in handcuffs, but the man struggled and refused to enter a squad car. According to the Associated Press, that’s when one officer deployed a stun gun, striking a lighter in the man’s hand. The lighter fluid and electricity combined to spark a fire in his beard and chest hair. As officers extinguished the blaze, the man punched one of them in the face.

In Taiwan, a woman has been granted a divorce, using the “Read” indicators on the Line messages she had sent to her husband as proof that he had been ignoring her. Line is the leading messaging app in several Asian countries. The app showed he had opened the text messages, but didn’t reply to any of them. The family affairs court judge cited the ignored Line messages as key evidence of the woman’s marriage being beyond repair, ruling that she was therefore entitled to a divorce.

In Deerfield Beach, Florida, a man said he and his family were awakened one morning by a loud thud on the roof of their home. “We got up, found two packages of sausage on our side yard, and then we were like, ‘OK, well, we got to go on the roof and check and see if we find more of this stuff,'” he said, according to the local ABC News station. A total of 15 pounds of Italian sausage was found in bags marked William Land Service, a land-clearing company in Alabama. The homeowners were baffled about how the sausage ended up on their roof, so their son called the company, which said it had no idea what he was talking about.

A good reason to slow down for speed bumps.

If you can't view the below video, try https://youtu.be/k7AqBx0CtrY

This video just goes to show we all can get along.

If you can't view the below video, try https://youtu.be/C5Aw4rPZaDo

Whose idea was it to do a news story about helicopters coming in?

If you can't view the below video, try https://youtu.be/mmdu5T_cZ_s

«