A Case of Phased Retirement in Sweden

Introduction

A traditional retirement scenario when individuals work full-time until a given age, and then stop working overnight (Kantarci & Van Soest, 2008), could not only be quite depressing for the individual; it could also result in an abrupt loss of knowledge for the organisation (Callanan & Greenhaus, 2008). This scenario fits the institutionalized life course with separate stages of labour force preparation, participation, and withdrawal (Kohli, 1986; 1986; Mayer & Shoepflin, 1989). During the last fifteen years, however, there has been a change in life courses towards more flexible and varying trajectories (Taylor, et al., 2015; Brückner & Meyer, 2005). It is not only a concern for the individual, but also for governments in many of the industrialized nations since the costs of the Post-war baby boomers retirement are increasing (van Solinge & Henkens, 2014; Loretto & Vickerstaff, 2015). Gradual retirement has become more common (Patrickson & Ranzijin, 2005), but it is still limited. The percentages of employers that offer gradual retirement differs between countries, but are around 1/3 in many western countries, e.g. Australia, Netherlands and the US (Taylor, et al., 2015; Bloemen, et al., 2016; Moen, et al., 2016).

Most of the studies on gradual retirement have been conducted from a macroeconomic perspective exploring if gradual retirement can help reduce some of the public costs of low labor force among elderly workers (e.g. Huber, et al., 2016). Research has also focused on the micro level about why people choose gradual retirement and the way in which individuals seem to handle it (e.g. Alcover, et al., 2014; Hermansen, 2015) or attitudes towards flexible retirement (Kaolkerinos, et al., 2015). Fewer studies focus on the business level, i.e. the meso-level, which is problematic since it is often managers and human resources that can change how work is organized (van Solinge & Henkens, 2014; Moen, et al., 2016). This chapter fill a research gap on how phased retirement form a meso-level perspective, it focuses on how gradual retirement systems are being managed in order to work efficiently from the perspective of knowledge retention, career possibilities and rationalisation effects.

The aim of this study was to explore the effects of and actions on a private agreement of phased retirement on a business and individual level. The Company entered into these agreements for several reasons:

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  To ensure knowledge transfer through a smooth transition into old-age retirement.

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  To achieve better health for its employees.

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  To enable career paths for younger employees.

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  To achieve rationalization effects.

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  To promote work incentives instead of costly early retirements.

This chapter is based on a single case interviewing human resource management (HRM), trade union representatives, employees (blue and white collar workers), and supervisors about the programme and their experiences with phased retirement. The interview findings discuss four of the five reasons it was started; knowledge transfer; better health for the employees; enabling career paths for younger employees; and rationalization effects.