Boomer Bailout

Baptist Health South Florida has received numerous awards and recognition as a great place to work. In part, it's because managers at all levels asked the question, "How can we keep our older workers a little while longer?" The creative solutions seem endless and include:

• Representatives are available to help boomers change jobs internally, such as to less physically demanding jobs.
• Advanced warning of job displacement, career counselors, scholarships, tuition assistance.
• Fitness rooms, wellness programs, disease management, healthy meals, ergonomics support, and life threatening illness policy.
• Phased retirement -- employees can draw from the defined-contribution retirement plans at 59. Some older workers use this policy to reduce their work hours while using their retirement savings to keep a steady salary.
• Employees can accrue up to 1,000 hours of paid time off, which some use as extended vacations to see if they want that much free time.

While the Baptist Health story is more about what an entire organization can do to keep Boomers than what one manager can do, every strategy started with one manager's creative contribution and the courage to recommend it (even push it) to decision makers.

Many organizations and individual managers are already getting creative with this topic. Why? Because they believe the numbers. So do we.

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