By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
Increasingly, I recommend leaders consider retirement glide paths for seasoned nurses to keep them in the workforce for longer periods of time. Bloomberg News recently reported that the largest group of new retirees during COVID were those between 55 and 64. When you look at the reality that 42.5% of the current actively licensed nursing workforce is now over 55, it seems that a glide path initiative could provide organizations with a strong return on investment.
We know that nursing is challenging physical work and full-time 12-hour tours become more complex as nurses age. For many nurses, retirement means stepping away from a full-time career and never working again. But it does not have to be this way. A phased retirement used in some academic settings can be a good choice, especially for nurses not yet eligible for Medicare but who want to work less.
A retirement glide path provides the following benefits for the nurse:
- More free time to pursue personal interests and travel.
- An opportunity to ease into retirement and keep their health benefits until they are eligible for Medicare.
- A chance to create a legacy by coaching and mentoring new nurses.
- An opportunity to shore up their retirement savings and avoid claiming Social Security until their full retirement age.
For organizations, glide path retirement options offer the following workforce benefits:
- Better continuity of organizational knowledge and values.
- Provide a pool of seasoned nurses with decades of nursing knowledge to coach and mentor new staff.
- Increased psychological safety for younger nurses with seasoned nurses there to monitor care.
- Provides the option to try different delivery systems and staffing plans using a pool of part-time nurses.
- When lucrative enough for the part-timers- it can help the organization cover weekend and on-call requirements.
- Can make functional assignments such as admission/discharge coverage and break coverage more feasible.
Nurse staffing continues to be very challenging across the United States. The Department of Labor estimates that by the end of 2022, the US could be short more than one million nurses with the number of pending retirements and younger nurses reducing their hours. We cannot backfill these losses with new graduates when you consider the US is currently graduating less than 200,000 nurses each year. There is a sense of urgency to try something different, and a retirement glide path could be one of many little bets you decide to take.
© emergingrnleader.com 2022
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