Recareering: It’s the Future

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This past weekend, troubled automaker DaimlerChrysler announced restructuring plans that offer incentives to its most experienced workers to leave. A couple of days later, the company made buyout offers to its union workers. The fate of the auto giant isn’t exactly clear, but what is crystal is the human side: a large number of ex-autoworkers who are way too young to retire. Despite everything we know about labor shortages, certain businesses believe they have no choice but to cut jobs in order to remain profitable and people 50 or better usually take the hit. It’s a prime example of short-term thinking.

The truth is, downsizing isn’t the only change agent operating in the workplace. Burn out and discontent with corporate life is fueling the trend to recareer to something more personally fulfilling. Downsized workers with generous buyout packages will swell these numbers. If you happen to be a career counselor, coach or other professional trained in helping people assess their skills and untapped talents (or want to be), that could be good for your career.

It’s only a matter of time before older workers become sought after — according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2012, workers 55 and older will grow to 19.1 percent of the total workforce — and that will make your job a lot easier. In the meantime, how can you best position yourself to serve this potentially large market? How will you connect with these folks and attract them to the services you offer? Here are a few thoughts:

1. The stigma once attached to job-jumping is long gone. Serial careers are the norm, in fact, people who have developed skill-sets across a number of industries will be seen as flexible and adaptable, two traits in demand in a fast-changing work environment.

2. Many people who want to start a new career will head right back to school. Your community college could be the ideal place to offer a course or workshop.

3. Centers that cater to the needs of people 50 and older are offering outplacement services, e.g. Scottsdale Boomerz, a program of Next Chapters. Check out their courses and workshops for ideas.

4. Add certification as a 2young2retire facilitator to your credentials as a coach, social worker or career professional. Learn a process that helps people in the age group get clear about the work they want and how to take steps in making it a reality.

5. Educate yourself on this broad trend. What are the thought leaders in your community saying about recareering? Read the local papers. Check out the chamber of commerce.

Say What?

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Hearing impairment is going to be a huge problem/opportunity, depending on who you talk to. We shouldn’t be so surprised if we’ve been blasting our ear drums with loud music for a few decades. The good news is, these days you can get yourself fitted out with some really cool hearing aids that are programmed for your particular range of impairment. And then, get this, reprogrammed when you need it.

This doesn’t come cheap — starting at about $1500 each for CIC (completely in the canal) aids that are molded to the contours of your ear and nearly invisible when inserted — and to date, insurance doesn’t cover the cost. But they are well worth it. I speak from experience.

Here are a few things I noticed that alerted me to the problem, and might help you decide to get your hearing tested:

1. I was having difficulty discriminating between certain sounds in a crowd, e.g. at a party, restaurant, or large meeting. I heard ambient sounds — music, traffic and so on — but would confuse words and be struggling to get the sense of what was being communicated from the context.

2. People would have to repeat things.

3. I “heard” better when people were facing me, so unconsciously I’d already begun to read lips. Isn’t the human body/mind amazing?

4. Noise started to bother me less — a good thing!

5. But I had the most difficulty discriminating the higher frequency sounds, like the speech of women and my grandchildren. In fact, I noticed that my grandchildren would stand right in front of me, picking up on my disability long before adults did (those smart kids!)

If any of these symptoms seem familiar, make an appointment with an ENT specialist and audiologist, pronto. Don’t let embarrassment over a hearing impairment lead to social isolation. These days, we’re all walking around wired in some fashion — IPods, headphones, cell phones, etc. — so what’s the big deal?

And don’t make the mistake I did, purchasing one aid on a wait-and-see basis. At my last check up, the loss in my ear that is fitted with a CIC was minimal. The other, uncorrected ear, was significantly higher. Now I wear one in each ear, and I’m getting much more than I’m missing. As all the experts tell you, no instrument will restore your normal hearing. Who knows what the future will bring in new medical technology? But in the meantime, don’t accept hearing impairment as something you just have to live with. You don’t.

Hearing better might make you feisty enough to start lobbying for getting hearing aids covered (along with dental and optical treatments) by insurance. Say what!

Stayin’ Alive

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A number of years ago, a study published in the British Medical Journal showed a 20 percent spike in heart attacks at the beginning of the work week, and that men were particularly susceptible. The Monday morning heart attack syndrome suggested it was a return to work after a weekend of leisure that could be a killer. The composition of that leisure, of course, could make an important difference. Vigorous exercise or a six-pack in front of the tube? Nonetheless, according to Harvard Men’s Health Watch, “Stress is the likely explanation for the Monday peak in cardiac risk. Retirees may retain the responses they learned in their working years, and they are certainly susceptible to the hustle and bustle of a Monday morning.”

It’s enough to make you hit the snooze button and pull the covers over your head. Or perhaps take that early retirement package and hit the beach.

But wait. An equally compelling argument has been surfacing that correlates work — that is, work you enjoy, at a pace that you set yourself — with staying healthy. We’ve all heard anecdotes about hard-charging people who retire then become ill and die within a short time. In an earlier post, we mentioned the Shell Oil study of 3,500 employees which showed that people who retired at 55 died earlier than those who stayed on the job until 65. The question that always comes up is, was ill-health a factor in the choice of early retirement?

A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research concludes that “complete retirement leads to a 23-29 percent increase in difficulties associated with mobility and daily activity, an eight-percent increase in illness conditions, and an 11-percent decline in mental health.” Could help explain the well-documented fact that white males over 65 also have the highest suicide rate.

No doubt more research that will clear up causal links between retirement and premature mortality is needed. But we’re persuaded that among all the other benefits it provides — identity, meaning, community, structure, a sense of self-worth, an income — good work is one way to stay alive.  TGIM — Thank God, It’s Monday.

Have What It Takes to Launch a Business?

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This is an interesting question and one probably not asked often enough by would-be entrepreneurs, which explains why so many businesses never make it to Year Five. Even the most well thought out new venture carries a certain amount of risk, which is part of the attraction. It’s one thing to risk money, time, and energy when we’re in our 30s or 40s, and quite another when we are 50 or older, for obvious reasons. So even if you have a great idea and the money to invest in it (or know how to raise it), it makes sense to put yourself through at least one assessment of your potential as an entrepreneur. Here’s a pretty good one from Monster.com, twenty-one questions that will help you get clearer about communications skills, self-confidence, how you deal with uncertainty, financial issues, partners or employees, to mention a few essentials. Fun to take. If it turns out that you don’t have the right stuff, take heart. All it has cost you is a few moments of soul-searching.

We also recommend Michael E. Gerber’s The E Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, especially Part II, The Turn-Key Revolution: A New View of Businesses. What we learned from this book is very simple: a successful business is one that can and must outgrow its founders. It can be franchised, scaled up, whatever buzz word fits. Two other gems: “Without a clear picture of the customer, no business can succeed.” “Ask yourself: Does the business I have in mind alleviate a frustration experienced by a large enough group of consumers to make it worth my while?” Read it before you take the plunge.

The Sabbatical: Not So Academic

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The sabbatical is one of those traditions of college teaching that grants a period of time away, usually with full salary, to an individual with the expectation that he or she will spend it doing research, possibly in a different but related field, and thus return refreshed and renewed to the classroom. At the very least, it permits the grantee a way of avoiding burnout. That the sabbatical has never made any serious inroad into the business world is self-evident. Midlife overwork and burnout are two crippling problems that dare not speak their name. Some 70 percent of workers long for time-out that is longer that the usual two-week vacation.

If you are among those who have been downsized or encouraged to take early retirement, or whatever euphemism you’d care to apply to an untimely exit, you might reframe this often traumatic life event in terms of being granted a sabbatical, time-out that you’ve earned.

While you let that sink in, here are some questions to ask yourself:

  • How much time do I want for myself?

  • What has stood in the way of my taking it, beyond the obvious answer that I’ve been working x hours?

  • How much time can I afford to take without an income?

  • What have I not done that I’ve always wanted to do?

  • If I were to die tomorrow, what would I have missed?

  • What would improve my life or the lives of others that I could take on?

  • Who is doing work that I am attracted to?

  • What issues in my town (country, state, country, the world) could benefit from my involvement?

  • What do I envision for myself at the end of a sabbatical?

Six Months Off: How to Plan, Negotiate, and Take the Break You Want Without Going Broke or Burning Bridges, by Hope Dlugozima, James Scott and David Sharp, offers some other good ideas.

In Business For Yourself

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A few things converged in the last two days that make this a timely topic.

First, AARP Bulletin’s cover story, You Be the Boss which reports that half of all entrepreneurs are baby boomers, 7.4 million of them. Whatever your age cohort, if you are considering joining the ranks of business owner, Questions for the Self-Starter are helpful, as are the notes on franchises. Business Week’s article about Second Acts is also worth your time.

Terri Lonier, founder of Working Solo, offers Top Ten Trends for Solo Businesses in 2007. One that caught our attention, green businesses. With global warming now unequivocal, the smart money is betting on all kinds of opportunities to address the growing need to reduce one’s carbon imprint. You don’t have to be a soloist to benefit from Lonier’s insights, both practical and visionary.

Many soloists and couples in business together, start out — and sometimes remain — in a home-based office. If the idea of working out your home appeals to you, here are a few thoughts on the subject based on our nine-year experience.

What to tell your kids…

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Everyone is encouraged to write a last will and testament. But lately, there has been a great deal of interest in the ethical will, a document that passes along something more important than property and tangible assets. An ethical will can be a summary of what you hold sacred. It can be a manual for living, a ‘moral compass’ for your children and theirs, an ultimate act of generativity. Here are a few things we plan to tell ours:

  • Never stop learning. It will bring you more than knowledge. Learning will keep you curious and engaged in life. It will open your heart as well as your mind. It will bring you friends. It will bring you joy.
  • Take nothing for granted, not your spouse or partner, your children, your parents, your job, your health, your political system, the planet. Whatever you value needs tending. Attention must be paid.
  • Give freely: acknowledgment, eye contact, forgiveness, kindness, laughter, thanks, touch, and yourself.
  • Everyday, put yourself in another’s shoes; listen better; keep the peace; move your body; enjoy food; work well; play much; sleep enough; ask nicely; save something; tell the truth; cultivate stillness.
  • Don’t look back in anger or regret. Everything is a lesson. Learn it and move on.

Best Places

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You’ve had it with shoveling snow, long commutes to work, paying too much in real estate taxes. The grandkids moved to another state. Your elderly parents need your help across the country. One or more of these can trigger questions about relocation as we cross the threshold into the second half of life. As we age, we become a nation in search of the ‘best place’ to live. Suppose you find, as we do, the usual list of location must have’s inadequate. You know, the lists that assume you’ve hung up your spurs as regards making a living: affordable housing; plentiful leisure activities; cultural options; sunny weather; good health care access.

All good, but suppose you want or need an income. Suppose you want to live near your grandchildren or elderly parents in an environment that is business-friendly. While it is true that technology has enabled many of us to work remotely, what if your dream is to become a minister, or open a dog grooming business or launch a practice as a professional organizer, to name three on our Top Ten? Through this lens, we took a look at information that is available for the asking on the web and here are our best picks. Who knows? When you start researching your personal best place, you may find that your own hometown has more going for it than you realized.

Rightsizing Your Life

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“We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us,” said Sir Winston Churchill. That is a good preface for a review of Ciji Ware’s new book, Rightsizing Your Life: Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most (Springboard Books 2007). This is a well-organized, lively manual on creating an environment that supports our choices in the second half of life. It includes relocation – whether to, where, when, and how – which, after money and health, is a major concern for many of us as we grow older. This is due, in part, to the size of the continent we inhabit, and our propensity for moving for work or family. Sometimes those moves take us far from our homes of origin, for better or worse, and sometimes on the periphery of what we value most.

The other factor the book tackles head on is our possessions. To stretch the Churchill quote just a little, we have become possessed by our possessions. How to maintain, preserve, protect and store our stuff have become industries in their own right. So Rightsizing Your Life is, among other things, an exhortation to simplify in the second half of life, to pare down to what we consider the essentials (a revealing exercise if there ever was one!), and thus create space for self-discovery, creativity, an exhilarating new freedom, to name a few benefits.

Following an excellent Foreword by Gail Sheehy, Part I covers just that. Part II is where the rubber meets the road: a seven-step how-to that makes rightsizing sound, if not easier, than doable and necessary. I was particularly taken with Chapter 6, “Identify Your Favorite Things,” a discussion that goes far beyond the thing itself. You will no doubt recognize yourself somewhere in the list “Ten Reasons We’re Prisoners of Our Possessions.”

If you feel yourself more than ready to rightsize and simplify but feel overwhelmed by the task, go directly to “Call in the Professionals” – yes, there is a small army of people who can help you declutter, sort, organize, move, retrofit, remodel. Great resources throughout, including websites and other readings.

Not So-New ‘Retirement’

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A study from the Vanguard Center for Retirement Research released recently is further evidence that retirement is more marketing concept than reality. “Worried You Don’t Have Enough for Retirement?” (from AARP The Magazine) is pretty typical of the advertising for financial advice and portfolio management that targets our age group.

The Vanguard survey of 2,474 individuals age 40 to 69 indicates that “The conventional view of retirement — working full-time until a set date then shifting to full-time leisure –- does not match the experience of many older Americans.” Ergo, the so-called “New Retirement” of baby boomers that blends work with leisure is not so new. Some other nuggets of interest from the study:

  • According to the Social Security Administration, 45% of people 65 to 69 are earning income from work, as are 25% of people 70-74.

  • Downshifting, as in changing one’s relationship to work, is more typical than an abrupt end to work.

  • 6 in 10 people define the word “retirement” as some combination of work and leisure.

  • Self-employment is the second most popular option among the “Never Retire” group.

  • Implications for financial advisers: more complex and customized help needed.
  • Implications for employers who want to hang on to their experienced talent: phased retirement in demand.

Our choice and recommendation is for a balanced portfolio of work, service and leisure in later life. For more on this, contact a 2young2retire Certified Facilitator in your area and ask about the 2young2retire course. For listing by state, scroll down on right.