At 65, I Still Want to Have It All...

Why work/life balance isn’t just for young people Anne-Marie Slaughter, whose July 2012 Atlantic magazine piece, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,  ricocheted around social media, just wrote a buzzy New York Times piece (A Toxic Work World) on how innovation around work and caregiving would be good for women, men and business. Taking a page from her new book, Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, she wrote: “The problem is with the workplace, or more precisely, with a workplace designed for the Mad Men  era, for Leave It to Beaver families in which one partner does all the work of earning an income and the other partner does all the work of turning that income into care — the care that is indispensable for our children, our sick and disabled, our elderly.” Work/Life Balance for All Ages That divide between working and caring Slaughter highlights is, I believe, plaguing the way employers approach the need for work/life balance for people at all life stages. According to our latest research at Encore.org, people at the tail end of the career path need work/life balance, too. Like younger families, they also need to balance caregiving with work or volunteering outside of the family. But in this case, the caregiving is about elder care and a commitment to grandchildren. When the places they want to work, however, are only keen to hire and keep people who can work full-time, year-round, they turn away an incredibly valuable resource. My Work/Life Needs at 65 What a difference a little more creativity in how we fashion work could make. Case in point: I’m a white 65-year-old man and a living example of the need to balance work and family. A few years ago,...

The New Boomerang Workers: Rehired Retirees...

How to go back to work in retirement where you had a full-time job   You’ve no doubt heard about boomerang kids who return to their parents’ homes in their 20s (maybe you have one). But there’s a growing group of boomerangers who are typically in their 60s: retirees who return to work part-time or on a contract basis at the same employers where they formerly had full-time jobs. If you’ll be looking for work during retirement, you might want to consider avoiding a job search and becoming one. Employers That Rehire Their Retirees A handful of employers have formal programs to rehire their retirees. The one at Aerospace Corp., which provides technical analysis and assessments for national security and commercial space programs, is called Retiree Casual. The company’s roughly 3,700 employees are mostly engineers, scientists and technicians, and Aerospace is glad to bring back some who’ve retired. “With all the knowledge these people have, we get to call on them for their expertise,” says Charlotte Lazar-Morrison, general manager of human resources at Aerospace, which is based in El Segundo, Calif. “The casuals are part of our culture.” The roughly 300 Aerospace casuals (love that term, don’t you?) can work up to 1,000 hours a year and don’t accrue any more benefits (the company’s retirees already get health insurance). Most earn the salary they did before, pro-rated to their part-time status, of course. Why Aerospace Corp. Brings Back ‘Casuals’ The “casuals” program lets Aerospace management have a kind of just-in-time staffing system. “It allows us to us to keep people at the ready when we need them,” says Lazar-Morrison. Ronald Thompson joined Aerospace’s casuals in 2002, after retiring at age 64. He’d worked for the company full-time since 1964,...

Federal Agency Jobs Just for People 55+...

These two programs specifically want older workers to fill their openings Gary Olson put in 32 years as an analytical chemist at Kodak in Rochester, N.Y., including stints in R&D and on digital innovations. “I had a great career there,” Olson says. “I was never bored.” But worn down by Kodak’s constant restructuring and layoffs, in January 2002, at 56, Olson took a generous buyout offer. He and his wife moved to Seattle, Wash. to be closer to their daughter and her family and Olson kicked back for a few years. In 2005, he spotted a Craigslist job posting by the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging for a “senior environmental employee” at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Senior Environmental Employment Program and position were reserved for workers 55 and older. Intrigued, he applied. “I wasn’t going to do what I did for more than 30 years,” says Olson. “I wanted to do something different.” He got the job. The 2 Programs for Workers 55+ Ever heard of the EPA’s Senior Environmental Employment Program, which has been around for 31 years? How about the comparable, seven-year-old Agriculture Conservation Experienced Services Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture? I hadn’t. These jobs are specifically designed to tap into the experience of boomers, yet not once in interviews for my Next Avenue column on job opportunities for people in their 50s and 60s did these programs or ones like them come up. (The idea for this column came from my editor who learned about them at the American Society on Aging’s recent Aging in America Conference. ) “Older workers are a largely untapped resource,” says Gregory Merrill, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Older Worker Career Center,...

How to Find a Legit Work-From-Home Job...

5 tips to help you earn money without leaving the house A 56-year-old woman I know (she prefers not to be named) works from home about 30 hours a week, handling editing, proofreading and administrative duties for a consulting firm. This flexible work arrangement has proven to be a gift during a very difficult time. “My husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness,” she says. “I have no idea how I could have been his full-time caregiver and still shown up at an office. Instead I work at any hour of the day, any day of the week, so I can fulfill my job obligations and still be available for my husband’s needs.” Work-from-home jobs can be a great way to earn money full-time or part-time (perhaps in retirement) on a flexible schedule. But, as Next Avenue has written, there are plenty of scammers luring people who want to work from home. Be wary of ads that tout “high income for little work,” “no experience necessary” or other suspicious claims of instant riches for little effort. To find legitimate, quality at-home assignments, follow these five tips: 1. Focus on telecommuting-friendly jobs.  Tasks that require minimal supervision and can be completed using a phone or computer are best suited for virtual assignments. Some examples of work you can easily do on a remote basis: Telephone-based jobs, such as customer service agents, financial product sales and telemarketing. Computer-based jobs, such as web designer, translator, medical transcriptionist, researcher, blogger and online instructor. 2. Sell yourself locally. The number of people looking for work-from-home jobs is far greater than the number of advertised positions. So to get work-from-home assignments, you may need to drum up opportunities on your own, rather than answering ads. The...