Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER DECEMBER 2019 26 INSIGHT When exactly do you plan to retire? I t's always at this time of year when we see a steady sup- ply of new reports around retirement — and the news is rarely good. Too many employees lack a proper financial plan. Too many employees don't know how much to save. Too many employees are stressed about their finances. And too many employees don't know exactly when they're going to retire. It's this last point that can cause headaches for a lot of em- ployers. As I found out in doing the story "Employers need to be 'age-ready' for future of work" on pg. 2 of this issue, it's hard to do workforce planning when a big chunk of your staff looks to be teetering on the edge of retire- ment — but may have no plans to do so. Take my two older brothers, for example. Both in their mid-50s, one has no plans to retire as he's working hard as the sole-income earner with three kids; the other has declined generous retirement incentives from his company as he's not quite ready to make the leap to a life of leisure. "If you ask people, like a lot of surveys do, 'At what age do you expect to retire?' you're going to get lousy information. A lot of people will give you a 'don't know,' which is, I think, a great answer to that question. Because it's in the future, and there's so many things that might still impact that," says Susann Rohwedder, senior economist at RAND and associate director of the RAND Centre for the Study of Aging in Santa Monica. Health, finances, cognitive ability, a spouse's situation or the job itself are all factors when it comes to taking that big leap from employed to unemployed, voluntarily. Just this week, a new survey came out showing 44 per cent of working Canadians expect to be employed full-time at age 66. Among these, 65 per cent say it is because they have to work while 35 per cent say it is because they want to work, according to Sun Life. But that survey talked to 20 to 64 year olds, along with retirees — that's a wide range of people. If you're an employer trying to figure out how many employees will depart in five or 10 years, you just can't sit down with staff in their 60s and ask about their retirement plans. One alternative is to ask all your staff — from 20 year olds to 60 year olds — about their plans for the next five years, says Gilian Leithman of Concordia Univer- sity in Montreal. Really, employers need to stop making assumptions about po- tential retirees, in terms of timing and why they would cease work- ing, she says, adding phased re- tirement is a great option for both parties, but Canada is lagging in this regard. "Instead of making these as- sumptions of what we think they want, we need to have these con- versations about 'What would the next chapter look like for you? And would you want to stay on, if we could provide you with that opportunity?'" Another option is to follow the lead of Singapore when it realized it had both an aging workforce and a labour shortage, says Rohwedder. Back in 2017, the country passed a law stat- ing all employers must offer re- employment to eligible employ- ees who turn 62, up to the age of 67. ey're to sit down with the person six months before they turn 62 (the early retirement age in Singapore) to discuss the situ- ation and either offer a one-year contract, to be renewed each year, or a modified contract. "They have been incredibly successful at increasing labour force participation at older ages," says Rohwedder. "It's a very inter- esting kind of idea [and it] gets a little bit at this issue [of ] how do we reveal the information be- tween employer and employee on what the remaining time ho- rizon on the job is?" I don't know that Canada has any immediate plans to pursue this particular path, but it's an interesting concept. Or maybe it's best to follow the advice of Rick Guzzo, partner and co-lead- er of Mercer's Workforce Scienc- es Institute in Washington, D.C. It's about going with what you know, he says: Build the baseline of actual departures due to retire- ment at your company, and then roll that forward to forecast what is going to happen in the next couple of years. "Retirement is a great example of where there's often a gap be- tween what people say and what they do," says Guzzo. Mind you, with younger work- ers choosing to switch jobs more frequently than ever before, it's pretty hard to do workforce plan- ning at any level. Looking ahead to 2020… We're excited to unveil a whole new look for Canadian HR Re- porter in the January issue! New year, new look. We are totally re- vamping the publication to give it a fresh take, while continuing to offer the in-depth and insightful content our readers expect. We hope you like it… WRONG NUMBER SLAVE LAKE, Alta. — Recent- ly, the Lesser Slave Regional Fire Service treated first responders to dinner at its fire hall for a talk on post-traumatic stress disor- der (PTSD). But it was a different group of first responders far away who enjoyed the meal. Firefighter Jordan Lampertz Googled the phone number for local business Alimo's Pizzeria, but unwittingly got the number for Alamo Pizza and Wings in San Antonio, Tex., according to the Canadian Press. He then placed an order for 18 large pizzas — and only realized his mistake when his phone's call display showed a San Antonio number — but he still autho- rized payment and instructed Alamo to deliver the pizzas to first responders in San Antonio. Two fire stations and a police station in the Texas city received the bounty, leading the San An- tonio Fire Department to post a comment on the Lesser Slave fire service Facebook page saying the next time any of the Alberta fire- fighters are in their city, Alamo Pizza is "on them." DANGEROUS DISNEY ORLANDO, Florida — e "hap- piest place on Earth" isn't always so happy for those who work there. Over the past 10 years, there have been nearly 50 reports of harass- ment and abuse of "cast members" — what Disney calls its employees at its theme parks — by custom- ers. Most of the time, the incidents stem from tourists' frustration with waiting in line, confusion over the park's FastPasses, or issues with technology. In July 2019, a woman punched a Disney employee in the face while another customer grabbed an employee by the shoul- der and yelled at her. Both custom- ers were banned from the park. Other incidents include a man who repeatedly rammed a stroller into a worker when asked to leave a viewing area, a man who pushed a worker and swore at him while ex- iting Splash Mountain and a man who scratched a female worker, elbowed her in the stomach and pushed her after a children's ride broke down. In the park's Haunted Mansion attraction, workers have been sexually assaulted. Employ- ees say many problems go unre- ported to authorities. "I just want people to be civil. We're low-wage workers," Disney employee Tom- my Fontenot told the Orlando Sentinel. "Treat us with dignity.'' UMBRELLA 1, WORKERS 0 WASHINGTON, D.C. — Em- ployees of a company that rents space in a WeWork building in Washington, D.C. had a particu- larly frustrating Monday morn- ing when they were prevented from entering their office — by a single umbrella. Left behind over the weekend, the umbrella had fallen at the base of a sliding door, jamming it. Four workers spent more than two days trying various methods to gain access using suggestions given to them over social media. A friend of one of the workers tweeted a photo of the stuck umbrella and received more than 115,000 favourites and 20,000 retweets — but no solution. As a result, the workers were forced to cluster outside the door's glass windows and share one computer charger. Finally, WeWork recruited an engineer to drill a hole in the ceiling and lift the umbrella out of the way with a wire, according to e Guardian. WORKING POOR HARARE, Zimbabwe — Infla- tion in the African country of Zimbabwe has risen so high that government employees can't af- ford to go to work, according to a public sector union. Zimbabwe's currency was devalued earlier in 2019 and that combined with out-of-control inflation has re- duced public sector workers' earnings from the equivalent of C$600 per month to C$52 per month, the Apex Council told Bloomberg News. As a result, employees don't have enough to pay for transportation to work. e government offered a 76-per-cent cost-of-living pay in- crease, but the union wants the increase to reflect the inflation rate, which has been estimated to be between 230 per cent and 570 per cent. DIRTY POOL QUISPAMSIS, N.B. — e mayor of this New Brunswick town got into trouble recently when he told the town's chief administrative officer he would miss a committee meeting due to a family emergency at the hospi- tal. However, while he was gone, staff members at a local swimming pool recognized the mayor when he used a false name to gain access. e pool's records were audited and it turned out the mayor had purchased a pool membership for a family that doesn't live in the town. e town council suspended Gary Clark without pay for one month for violating its code of conduct, according to the Canadian Press. Credit: Diana Rich (Shutterstock) W EIRD ORKPLACE THE Vol. 32 No. 12 – December 2019 PUBLISHED BY HAB Press Limited, a subsidiary of Key Media 20 Duncan St. 3rd Floor, Toronto, ON M5H 3G8 ©Copyright 2019 by HAB Press Ltd. All rights reserved. KEY MEDIA and the KEY MEDIA logo are trademarks of Key Media IP Limited, and used under license by HAB Press Limited. CANADIAN HR REPORTER is a trademark of HAB Press Limited. CANADIAN HR REPORTER is published 12 times a year. 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