Netspar Brief 16: Working Beyond Retirement Age: What Do Employers, Employees, and Independent Contractors Think?
The impact of raising the state retirement age is felt by employers, older employees and self-employed people in the Netherlands. The first two groups are mainly concerned. Employers are most concerned about the limited employability of employees with health problems. Approximately 40 percent of the older employees share these concerns. They worry about being able to continue working until they reach retirement. Many older workers would prefer to retire at a much younger age than what is allowed under the current policy. The gap between the average desired age of retirement (63.4) and the expected age of retirement (65.7) is considerable: 2.3 years. In the construction industry, that gap is even higher (2.8 years). Independent contractors show a greater eagerness than employees under contract to continue working until a ripe old age. While their more limited pension savings presumably have something to do with this, work characteristics such as greater flexibility appear to also play a substantial role.
Sustainable employability policy
The concerns that employers have about working longer seems to translate into action. Unlike 10 years ago, the majority of employers actively invest in HR methods for sustainable employability. In particular retraining and additional training for older employees is regularly used, but also informal measures such as information and awareness.
Read the Netspar Brief (English Summary)
Reading tips
- Training participation of older workers: supply and demand constraints, Andries de Grip, Annemarie Künn-Nelen, Davey Poullissen, Didier Fouarge (2018)
- Later retirement: decisions for now and later, Daniel van Vuuren, Jonneke Bolhaar, Rik Dillingh, Netspar Brief 12 (2017)
- Retirement savings adequacy of the Dutch self-employed without employees, Jim Been, Kees Goudswaard, Koen Caminada, Marike Knoef, Wim Zwinkels (2017)
- The self-employment retirement puzzle: Self employed fail to fulfil their pension ambitions, Netspar Brief 7, Mauro Mastrogiacomo (2016)
- Maintaining older workers’ job proficiency requires better HR policy, Andries de Grip, Didier Fouarge, Raymond Montizaan, Netspar Brief 4 (2015)