Baby Boomers love breaking the rules. Or, they used to at least. Back when they were the ones rattling the cages. They were the biggest bulge in the U.S. population before or since. They were the generation of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Weathermen, Charles Manson, the Great Society, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Monkees (I have it on good authority that they once or twice “monkee-ed around”). They grew up standing up to “the Man” only to find that their generation is now “the Man.” They are the founders of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream empire, they hold the top spots in the majority of the Fortune 500. And, as they creep towards retirement, a lot of them are thinking “so now what?”
Even though the Boomers will likely do a lot of the things that retirees before them have done (cruises, golfing, investing in “cabana wear,” enjoying grandchildren, etc.) this generation will try to do things a little differently than their parents. Even as far back as the late nineties the media has talked of how these active retirees will want to keep one foot in the working world while enjoying the flexibility and freedom of retirement.
One reason for this difference in retiree behavior is because of advances in medicine. The Boomers are likely to stay active and live longer than any generation before them thanks to medical science. For example, when the official age of retirement was set in the 1930s at 65 the average life expectancy for an American male was 61.7 years (which is part of why Social Security used to be so easy to manage because not nearly as many people were alive to collect it) and in 2010 it is projected to be about 80 years.
This higher level of activity could translate into more time on the golf course or volunteering for many, but because organizations are letting so much organizational knowledge walk out the door at retirement there is a huge incentive for them to find ways to preserve ties with the keepers of that knowledge.
Though most organizations attempt some form of knowledge capture as part of their process for outgoing employees, knowledge does not suffer capture the way data does. Therefore, we see the kind of temporary or project based work that many retired employees are doing for their former full time employers. As Tammy Erickson suggested in an HCI webcast HR in an Aging Industry, the Boomers may prefer an arrangement where they still contribute a great deal to their organization as individuals but they have scaled back the level of responsibility and increased their level of flexibility.
Though much hay has been made out of the idea that Baby Boomers are lingering in their jobs longer than planned as a result of the hit their 401(k)s took in the Recession, I wouldn’t bet on the Boomers moving down to Florida and never coming back once the market rebounds. They’ve got too much to do.