Are You Planning for Retirement?

August 28, 2008 by Steve.

How many people on your current staff are eligible for retirement in the next five years?

This is a question I recently posed to the Human Resources director of a 100-person agency. I had been asked to come to the agency to discuss future trends and things the agency should do now to plan for the future. The director didn’t immediately know the answer to my questions—but it didn’t take her long to find out. After running a report on the participants in their retirement plan, she discovered that 30% of the existing staff would become eligible for retirement in the next five years.

Why plan today?
“In talking with agency CSR staff where there has been a loss of individuals who have not been replaced—or who have been replaced with less experienced individuals—the existing CSRs take on more of the workload,” says TAAR writer Pat Alexander. “I see growing backlogs in these cases, and that leads to loss in productivity, burnout, and frustration.”

To avoid this scenario, it’s important to start planning now. It’s also important to remember that just because employees become eligible to retire doesn’t necessarily mean they will retire. Many employees will continue to work because they want to or because they have to. Many Baby Boomers underestimated what they would need financially to retire comfortably, so they work full-time for longer than expected.

Still, it would be dangerous to assume this is the case for your entire organization. An employee’s ability to work can change at any time. A spouse, child, parent, or grandchild who becomes sick or disabled can affect how long an employee might be able to work or how many hours that person can work. Because people are living longer, an increasing number of Baby Boomers are facing the prospect of caring for their parents.

Ask the right questions
Who is likely to retire and when? Who is going to replace these workers? How will the organization attract, hire, and retain people to replace those who leave? How will you train these new staff members? The solution is not as simple as finding new bodies to replace the old ones. How will you capture the knowledge and experience of these valuable staff members?

These are all questions that need to be asked now. Plans need to be put in place that will provide answers. There are some steps you can take to address these questions and begin thinking about how you will solve the problem:

• Find out who in your organization will be eligible for retirement in the next 5 to 10 years.

• Build a “recruit or die” mindset. Recruiting new talent needs to be woven into your organizational culture. It should not be a project when you need to fill a position, but a mindset that involves always looking for new talent.

• Create a career path for new employees. No one wants to be stuck in a “job.” Creating an insurance career will help you retain people longer.

• Create a training program. The industry, especially agencies, do not do a very good job of providing the tools and training necessary to help an employee become successful.

This issue is not going to go away. Find out now how much of an impact retirement will be on your organization and begin the planning process.

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