Working longer has become a policy priority in recent years, but how can people be actively encouraged to retire later? What needs to change in the workplace in order to persuade people to extend their working life? UCL’s Ewan Carr, as part of the renEWL project, has been looking at survey information from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) to see what matters to older workers when it comes to deciding whether or not to retire.
Rates of employment among older workers (aged 50-64) may have increased in the last decade or so, but across Europe, significant numbers of people in this age group continue to retire before the statutory pension age. In fact, more people retire before statutory pension age than after it.
For policymakers seeking to change that position, and for businesses looking for how best to modify the workplace to help achieve it, a better understanding of the drivers behind early retirement is essential.
Job demands and conditions
We looked at the working lives of nearly 3500 members of the ELSA study to see whether the demands and conditions of their job influenced the preferred and actual timing of their retirement. We focused on the mental as well as the physical demands of their job.
We anticipated that those with physically and mentally demanding jobs would prefer and, where possible, opt for early retirement, whilst those with fulfilling jobs, with decision making powers, support and recognition, good career opportunities and financial reward would be happy to work longer.
Participants in the study were asked how physically demanding their job was, how much time pressure they were under at work, how much control they had and to what extent they felt supported and recognised.
After taking a range of factors into account, the mental demands of a job, control at work and low recognition were the most influential when it came to retirement timing preferences.
Retirement preferences
We found that employees who reported having to ‘work very fast’ or being under time pressure preferred to retire 3 months earlier than those who said this was not the case. Employees who reported having low levels of control at work and low recognition wanted to retire around 5 months sooner than their peers.
The likelihood of actually stopping work (as opposed to wanting to stop work) was also influenced by levels of decision control, support and recognition. Employees with high levels of control were less likely to stop working, compared to those with low levels of control. Employees who felt poorly supported or that their work wasn’t recognised were also more likely to give up work.
It seems that even though a mentally demanding job might lead someone to say they would like to retire early, this doesn’t always lead to them leaving work. Other factors, besides the workplace environment, may prevent older workers from retiring when they want to.
Those who want to keep working might end up retiring early due to poor health or caring responsibilities. On the other hand, employees who want to retire early (due to the demands of work) might lack the necessary pension or financial savings to make this possible.
Our findings indicate that increasing job control from low to high could postpone retirement preferences by as much as two years – a clear indication that modifying the workplace could and should be a focus for policymakers and businesses aiming to extend working life.
Working conditions as predictors of retirement intentions and exit from paid employment: a 10-year follow-up of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing is research by Ewan Carr, Gareth Hagger-Johnson, Jenny Head, Nicola Shelton, Mai Stafford, Stephen Stansfield and Paola Zaninotto. It is published in the European Journal of Ageing
Photo credit: Hiroyuki Takeda