WORKING IN
RETIREMENT
Some people want to sit back and enjoy. Others need the stimulus of work, or feel they have
skills to offer after retirement. They may want to
boost their income, dream of running a business or setting up as a consultant. Before you begin your job search, ask yourself some
questions. These will help you sharpen your focus.
WHY DO I WANT TO WORK?
Rank your answers in order of importance, starting with A for the most
important and ending with F, the least important.
| To supplement my income |
______ |
| Need the companionship |
______ |
| I don’t want to be bored |
______ |
My mind will
atrophy without
the mental stimulation |
______ |
| I need a sense of purpose |
______ |
| Without a job, at parties and dinners, no one will want to listen to me |
______ |
Your answers above will help you set priorities. There are other basic
considerations:
· How many hours a week can you commit to? A full Monday to Friday? Two or three half-days? Is working a long-term prospect or simply for the
next year or two?
· What about distance. Are you prepared to commute or do you prefer to be
local? (Wouldn’t it be nice to walk to work.)
· Are you planning to seek an opening in a
similar field to your previous job, where your contacts and experience would come in
useful or do you want to do something different?
· Would you do a training course?
· If a priority is to earn money, what are the effects of working on your
pension, national insurance, taxes? Happily,
the earnings rule has been abolished. Regardless
of age or how much you earn, there is no
longer any reduction in your state pension.
· What financial compensation do you need from your
work? Your answer will eliminate job options
that don’t meet your requirements.
YOUR SELF-ASSESSMENT
Most of us think we know
ourselves and what we want. The next step is
to get to know yourself better. List what you
discover.
Special interests
 A special interest is something you are naturally
drawn to – something that you are willing to devote time, energy and perhaps money to
learning and pursuing. Your special interests are probably reflected in
your hobbies or leisure activities. They may
have been acquired through school, clubs and organisations, sports, books, jobs, travel,
voluntary work, other people, contemplation. Some experts believe that your interests are
better indicators of the kind of work you should be doing than your experience, skills, or
education.
Work values
What do you value and what is important to you? One person may value power, wealth and creativity. Another may value security, inner peace and
service. To achieve maximum job satisfaction,
work should reflect deeply rooted values or at least not conflict with them. For some, work is essential to a sense of identity
('no one will want to listen at parties or dinners'), though it doesn't necessarily mean
that only full time work would fulfil this need.
Skills
 If asked, most of us can claim perhaps a half-dozen skills for ourselves. Yet some
experts say that each of us actually possesses hundreds of skills. While skills are often developed through formal
education and job training, many of our top
skills are learned over the course of a lifetime through personal interests and hobbies,
voluntary work, reading, sports, family responsibilities, self-study and social
activities.
There are three
kinds of skills:
1.
Action skills. What can you do? ( ie drive a bus)
2.
Personal skills. What are you? (ie
I am flexible)
3.
Work/leisure skills. What do you know? ( ie basic bookkeeping principles and
procedures)
Spend some time identifying and analysing your skills. Knowing their true extent will open up a greater number of job possibilities. Think, too, about updating your skills. Learn how to operate a new piece of equipment.
Learn about the new technology in your field. Take
some classes.
SELECTING JOB POSSIBILITIES
Insights from your self-assessment should help you identify a half-dozen or
more job possibilities that call for your unique combination of skills, values, interests,
and preferences. Consult career counselling,
talk to friends, family, co-workers, persons who are using the skills you want to use in
your next job.
Working part-time.
This suits the majority of people in retirement, though jobs may be less
interesting and involve less responsibility than full-time jobs. Job-sharing, whereby two
or more people share the hours, duties, pay and benefits of one full-time job may be more
satisfying, if you can get it.
Teleworking.
You can work at home for an employer, keeping in touch with employer and
customers through computers, telephones and faxes (many teleworkers are self-employed).
WHERE TO LOOK FOR A JOB
Jobcentres. Good for work in retail, catering and customer
service. A client adviser will discuss the kind of work you want and advise on benefits.
Employment agencies. Look in Yellow Pages. There
are a number that specialise in finding jobs for older people. These include Age Works and the Over 50s
Employment Bureau. For a fact sheet that includes names and addresses of
agencies for older people call Age Concern - 0800 00 99 66
 National and local press, radio. Some national newspapers advertise different
categories of job on different days. Look in
professional and trade journals: the Classified Index of Willings Press Guide lists those published in the
UK. Some local radio stations also advertise
job vacancies.
Networks. Use your contacts to obtain advice, information
and jobs. The ‘old boys system’,
clubs and professional associations, also family, neighbours and friends, people you meet in your place of worship, a trade
union or your local pub.
Self-advertising. Advertisements in the national or local press,
putting a notice in a shop window, and writing to prospective employers telling them what
you can offer are all forms of self-advertising.
WORKING FOR YOURSELF
Offering a service. You might
want to carry on the work you did pre-retirement, or develop a hobby or leisure interest
into a money-making activity - anything from doing some dressmaking to decorating for
friends and neighbours. Again network, tell
people of your service. Get business cards
printed plus a leaflet explaining your service.
Becoming a consultant. You can set yourself up as a consultant in
almost any field - fashion, computers, tax, even retirement if you have the skills and
expertise. Make sure you keep up to date
with developments in your field of activity.
Buying an existing business. To
find out about the availability of businesses that interest you check the appropriate
trade journals or a business transfer agency (look in your local Yellow Pages ).
Try to discover as much as you can about any business that interests you: what the
location is like, what reputation the business has in the area, why the present owners
want to sell. When you get to the stage of serious negotiation, seek professional help.
Starting from scratch. This may need less capital than buying a business because
you will not have to pay for intangible assets such as goodwill. You need to ask yourself whether you have the
necessary skills - research, marketing, selling, bookkeeping, planning, dealing with
people - the stamina and the capital. Can you
cope with the insecurity and the hard work? Talk to people in the field, read books, go on
a course.
 Buying a franchise. A
franchise is the grant of a licence by one person (the franchiser) to another (the
franchisee) which entitles the franchisee to trade under the franchiser's name. The franchisee also receives help with
establishing and running the business. Franchises
on offer in the UK include such household names as the Body Shop, Clark’s Shoes and
Burger King, as well as many smaller, recently established ones. Advantages: you
are likely to have fewer start-up problems. Disadvantage:
initial fee can be very large, on top of what you have to pay for premises, equipment,
stock, etc. And you pay royalties to the franchiser.
Where can you go for help?
Your bank manager, solicitor, accountant.
Other local sources include TECs (Training and Enterprise Councils) and Chambers of Commerce. TECs offer training, support
and advice. You should be allocated a
business counsellor for the first couple of years, who will help you draw up a business
plan.
Need more
details: see Good (non) Retirement Guide 2000, by Rosemary
Brown, Enterprise Dynamics Ltd. In-depth
information on starting your own business, looking for paid work, with extensive local
resources listed.
To view previous articles in this series - see the laterlife-interest index page |
