Delays make you grouchy: report

A report on the effect slumping markets have had on pensions, and ultimately people's retirement plans, suggests companies face the prospect of an increasingly grumpy and less productive workforce since many of their employees won't want to be there anymore.

Business consulting group Watson Wyatt said yesterday that the average 60-year-old Canadian in a defined-contributions pension plan, as of last month, would have had to work four years longer than someone the same age with a similar savings history at the end of 2007 to get the same retirement income.

The good news is that rallying stock markets have improved the situation. In December last year, an aspiring retiree under the same circumstances would have had to put in another 51/2 years of work than just a year earlier to have the same standard of living in retirement, Watson Wyatt said.

Lori Satov, a Vancouver-based retirement consultant with Watson Wyatt, said this has forced many workers to choose between retiring with less income than planned or working longer than they wanted.

For those who choose to stay at work, this can have the consequence for organizations of creating an older overall staff, many of whom have become disengaged from their duties, creating lower productivity, Satov said.

"It's not because they're older, because there are some older employees who could be very productive," she said in an interview. "It's because they were wanting to retire and they couldn't, and they're stuck working in a job that they were actually trying to get out of."

Satov added that the morale of younger workers also can take a hit in such circumstances, as older workers hold on to jobs that represent opportunities for advancement.

Barbara Jaworski, CEO of the Workplace Institute, a Toronto-based consulting organization that promotes employment among older individuals, agreed it can be a bad situation for both employer and employee when the latter doesn't want to be there.

"I'd be pretty worried if I was an employer and I've got a group of workers that weren't being engaged," she said. "I'd be trying to find a way to re-engage them, that's for sure."

Providing a change in job duties or allowing phased-in retirements are a few examples of how companies can re-engage their older workers, Jaworski said.