Archive for the 'Retirement' Category

Happy Half-Birthday, Work and Family Blog

Judi Casey October 14th, 2008

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Today marks the six-month anniversary of our Work and Family Blog and our 90th post! The Sloan Network bloggers have covered the gamut of topics from our first post on Paid Sick Leave to our most recent post on Take your Baby to Work. We have appreciated the opportunity to share our work-family thoughts with you, and we hope that the information has been useful to you in your work and lives. It’s great to hear your comments on our posts, so please, please give us as much feedback as possible.

In case you’ve missed these the first time, we have posted about our latest work-family Topic Pages, including Parents Caring for Children with Disabilities and Military Families. We have also covered a number of our existing focus areas in Family-Friendly Employers, Family Studies, Afterschool Care, Breastfeeding, Family Medical Leave Act, Gen Y, and those geared towards work, Overwork, Part-Time Work, Telework, Flexible Work Schedules in Small Businesses and Retirement.

A number of new issues have surfaced including an examination of the Pros and the Cons of a four-day work week. We reported on new trends for mothers, fathers, parents, grandparents and professors. We introduced an interactive entry with the Work-Life Quiz on Slide Share and linked to the highly useful Caregiver Database.

Politics is, of course, hot this year and we didn’t disappoint with a number of posts on the candidates, including work-family and work-life balance. We have blogged about our travels to many conferences including the National Conference of State Legislators and the WorldatWork Conference. We are privileged to have a number of guest bloggers, including A Better Balance: The Work & Family Legal Center, The Lattice Group, and The National Partnership for Women & Families. Thanks to all of the contributors!

And finally, we had 22 posts on What’s New in Work and Family, which covered over 100 articles and updates.

What’s coming up in the next six months from the Sloan Network? More exciting and relevant posts including a behind the scenes look at our social media efforts, including our new Facebook page. Thank you for reading our blog and do please continue to comment– we love your feedback. If you have suggestions for topics or are interested in guest blogging, please contact us.

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On Your Mark, Get Set, Retire!

Featured Guest Blogger September 22nd, 2008

Most of us grew up in a day where mom and/or dad counted down until the day they retired. Just recently, my husband’s stepfather, Dan, completed his one-year countdown to “R-Day” when he retired from teaching after 30 years. In the year proceeding his retirement, at random times, he would cite the date over dessert, over a glass of wine, or just randomly in the kitchen with a big grin on his face.

However, as we know, times they are a-changin’. We are seeing retirement in a new light now. With the aging of the workforce and increasing life spans putting pressure on post-retirement savings, employees and employers are seeing the benefit of sticking around a bit longer…even if not full-time.

And that’s where phased retirement comes in.

On September 9th, Mercer retirement consultant Pearce Noble testified before the U.S. Department of Labor advisory panel on the importance of phased retirement programs for workers, employers, and the U.S. economy.  He stated that the potential for these programs is increased with the participation of the Department of Labor, the IRS, Congress, and the country’s employers. An informal Mercer survey of large and medium-sized employers found that the most common reason for employer interest in phased retirement is to encourage workers to continue working (95.8%), followed by a desire to provide an easier transition to retirement (45.8%).

For as much as Dan jumped with joy for his R-Day, rest assured he still coaches track, goes back to substitute teach whenever he can, and still gets great pleasure from being around his students.  It may not be considered a phased retirement, but maybe it should have been?
To find out more about phased retirement, visit our topic page.

What’s New

Karen Corday July 3rd, 2008

New from the Network:

New in Work and Family:

  • Jeanne Fagnani writes about her chapter with Antoine Math, “Family Packages in European Countries: Multiple Approaches,” from the book Childhood: Changing Contexts.

  • Nevenka Černigoj Sadar reports on Slovenia’s Young Mothers/Family Friendly Employment project, funded by the European Social Fund of the EU, aimed to “investigate the problems of young people and young parents looking for employment, learn about their workplace situations, sensitize the public about the problems young people, especially young mothers, have with balancing work and family life, inform employers and managers about work-family issues, and give suggestions for strategies to ease reconciliation of work and family demands.”

These as well as popular press articles from Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States may be found in What’s New in Work and Family on our main site.

To those celebrating, Happy 4th of July!