OPENING THE DOOR TO WORKING PAST RETIREMENT - A qualitative study of the drivers of an extended working life and the connection to HRM strategies and practices

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of the present thesis is to understand how different aspects, work and non-work related, drive engineers decision to either retire or extend working life. By identifying the drivers of an extended working life the aim is to understand how HR strategies and practices can be developed and designed to enable and facilitate an extended working life. Theory: The present thesis uses two analytical frameworks. First, the concepts push, pull, jump, stay and stuck were used to understand how different aspects affect the respondents intention to remain in work or to retire (Featherstone & Hepworth, 1990; Shultz, Morton, & Weckerle, 1998; Snartland & Øverbye, 2003). Second, work by Büsch, Dittrich, and Lieberum (2012) identifying four different dimensions of influencing factors; personal, family-related, work and organisational-related or socio-economic factors is used to understand which dimension the aspects identified belong to and how they influence the engineers’ retirement decisions. Method: A qualitative case study was adopted using semi-structured interviews. Nine engineers and one representative from the case company’s HR department was interviewed. The engineers were interviewed regarding their retirement decision and the HR representative was interviewed regarding individual and organisational conditions for an extended working life. Result: The study identified both drivers to a continued working life as well as drivers influencing the engineers’ to retire. Besides the identified drivers three main findings were found contributing to the broader knowledge of retirement as a decision making process. (1) Work and organisational-related factors stand for the majority of stay factors. (2) Unfulfilled stay factors become push factors. (3) Family-related aspects always pull the individual out of labour. The study’s results together with the analytical framework further aided the development and identification of five HR practices aimed at retaining older workers within the case company.