For as long as I’ve been a business owner, the narrative surrounding the baby boomer generation was all about the coming retirement wave. We were promised a mass exodus from the workforce, a seismic shift that would leave companies scrambling to fill the void. At Optima Office, an outsourced accounting and HR company I founded almost six years ago, we began preparing for the shift in the workforce by focusing on high retention. We felt that listening to the needs of our employees was one way to do that.
After speaking with some of our baby boomer employees, I realized that many of them loved their work—and mentoring the younger team members—so much that they didn’t want to hang up their hat when they turned 65. That generation was led to believe that retirement was the dream that they had worked so hard to achieve, but upon reflection, the stark transition from full-time work to full-time retirement felt more like a demotion than a reward.
