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'Retirement'
a dirty word for many older workers By Years
ago, people reaching age 65 typically received a gold watch from employers
and then golfed their way into retirement. Not
anymore. A number of older workers are heading into their golden years
determined to find meaningful part-time work after leaving the corporate
or professional world. ''Retirement''
has become a dirty word for some members of this group, which includes the
oldest of the nation's baby boom generation born between 1946 and 1964. ''Retirement
no longer connotes going away and hiding under a rock,'' said Cecile J.
Klavens, a Attitudes
toward retirement are undergoing a sea change, shaped in part by the
economic cycles that mature workers have experienced during their careers,
say specialists. Some, for example, have found themselves working past age
65 to make up for savings depleted during the recent slowdown. Others -
many of them boomers - have opted to take early retirement packages
offered by employers seeking to streamline staff during hard times. All
want to remain vital in their senior years. These so-called ''third agers,''
a group encompassing people between 55 and 75, are interested in pursuing
worthwhile projects such as advising fledgling businesses as well as
donating hours to pursue personal passions or charity. They
are people like Fred Mandell, 61, of ''I'm
reluctant to say I'm retired, but, rather, that I am doing meaningful
projects that keep me learning and growing,'' he said. When
he takes a time out from working on two-dimensional sculptures, Mandell
coaches more than a half-dozen clients who are corporate executives,
salespeople, and entrepreneurs. He said he sees his role as helping
clients resolve issues they have, whether it be job performance or ''a
need to be rejuvenated'' for managerial tasks. His advice, he said, is
based on his experiences as a senior corporate executive. Of
the benefits he gets from his work, he said, ''I get a lot of satisfaction
from seeing clients experiment and take their business and personal lives
to the next level. I also learn from my clients: It's really a learning
partnership.'' According
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 4.4 million individuals age
65 or older working full or part time in the A
new breed of personal coaches is also emerging to take advantage of this
trend, helping clients chart part-time work courses based on their
interests and skills. There's
no doubt that for coaches, ''demographics support retiring baby boomers as
a growing niche,'' said Cheryl Dolan, co-president of the 300-member ''Coaches
can be highly effective in helping this population redefine their
identities, their core values, and their visions for the future,'' Dolan
said. Monthly coaching fees charged by members of her organization are,
for the most part, in the $300 to $1,500 range, she noted. Marc
Freedman, author of ''Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize
Retirement and Transform America,'' said: ''A lot of coaches are waking up
and realizing that there's a big market out there.'' Boomers who have
retired, or are about to, ''are looking for meaning and purpose in'' their
new lives, he said. Laurie
Geary, of ''I
want clients to realize that they can create, with planning, a whole new
life,'' Geary said. ''Too many people reach retirement age and say, 'Oops,
what am I going to do now?' '' These
individuals ''are in a different ballgame,'' said Margaret Newhouse of
Weston, a life coach since 2001 and a former assistant career services
director at Harvard. ''They
are living longer, on average, and will have many more years of making
worthwhile contributions to their own lives as well as to others'.'' And
many of those contributions, she added, will be made in a part-time work
setting. Jean
Proulx Dibner ended a 19-year high-tech career in 1999, accepting an early
retirement package from Avid Technology, where she had been a senior vice
president. Prior to that, she had been a vice president at IBM Corp. and
Digital Equipment Corp. and a manager at Apple Computer Inc. After
leaving Avid, the 61-year-old Dibner sought counseling from New
Directions, a The
portfolio program has ''made my life even more richer and varied,'' Dibner
said, adding that she has become involved with the Executive Service Corp.
in ''You
could say that I'm in the experimental stage of my life, and that
everything is going well,'' she said. The ''I'm
letting out the soft, creative side of me, which is very important and
very invigorating,'' said Dibner, a founder and owner of ''Sculpture
has always been an interest, but until fairly recently, I did it in a
corner of my life.'' In
''People
want to first validate what they've done, and then delve into interesting
things'' that they probably didn't have time for previously, said Carol A.
Greenfield, founder of the community collaborative. Segueing into another, very different stage of life is never easy. But it is a little easier when individuals are encouraged to follow through on their belief that ''they can make a difference in what they do, often through new work, rather than golfing all day,'' said George Zeller, a senior employment specialist with the Jewish Vocational Service. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |