I am fortunate enough to have a retirement position in Supply Chain with Signode. In my previous email I talked about the skills that are needed to be attractive to a potential hiring firm. This blog post I will write about what the company should think about in hiring such a person. I should note in many cases this position is a part time position with limited benefits. This post will be generic and is not really about my specific present employment.
What is the potential retiree position about and what is not about?
The job I am described here is not a CEO or other C level temporary fill position, which will have different characteristics. I going to talk about mid-level help for the firm. It is also not a position to do the repetitive paperwork or computer work though, undoubtedly, any position will have some of that. For the repetitive activities an inexperience worker may be the best choice in terms of cost and maybe a trial run for long term position. For building long term bench strength in your organization a more inexperienced worker may be the best choice.
What the retiree aged employee can bring in that person’s experience. So when there is a need for proactive action beyond just doing the grunt work, it can occur. An experienced worker will know when to bring management into it and when take action, so further the success of the firm. An example of this might be a recurring documentation problem. The inexperienced worker will correct the error, the more experienced worker will take the initiative to provide a solution so the mistakes do not continually reoccur and hurt productivity.
It is really important to understand what the hiring of the retiree can do to enhance the value of other employees in your organization. Those managers and administration people have talents to help the firm in its objectives but may be bogged down in detail work which those not allow them to really bring their full value to the firm. You might look as the retiree as basketball guard doing the grunt work to bring the ball down court, so the other players can prepare and start running their offense plays. To justify the costs of hiring a part time retiree employee, one should look at this position affects the success of other employees.
Much of my writing in this series of blogs is about utilizing employees as an asset and not as just a necessary cost. For retiree hire to be of value, the company culture truly needs to value its employees and any hire needs to have that philosophy also.