September 07, 2010
As the government prepares to bring an end to the highly controversial Default Retirement Age (DRA) employers are increasingly concerned about what the future will bring, new research has revealed.
While some employers worry that workers will refuse to retire even when ‘no longer up to the job’, others fear younger workers will have fewer opportunities for promotion, discovered a recent survey.
The main concerns are:
- employees refusing to retire when they are no longer up to the job (75%)
- uncertainty of not knowing whether someone will be retiring or not (61%)
- increased difficulty of workforce planning (48.5%)
- negative effect on younger workers – lack of opportunity to progress/loss of motivation (43%)
- lots of older employees wanting to go part-time (42%)
Employers were asked about retirement ages in their organisations, how they expected to deal with the abolition of the DRA, from October 2011, and concerns about the change.
Only 20% of the115 employers who took part in the survey worked in organisations that had already abolished retirement ages, while half of respondents thought their organisation would abolish retirement ages altogether.
In total, 20% thought that retirement ages would be kept for some but not for all roles, while 23% thought they would retain a retirement age for all roles.
Despite the imminent changes, respondents were evenly split when it came to predicting whether organisations would see a significant increase in those wanting to work beyond 65: 42% thought most employees would still want to retire at 65, with 41% believing more would want to stay on.
